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Klout? He spits on your klout
By adamg on Sat, 02/19/2011 - 10:52am
Ric reacts rather harshly to the Globe story that starts with the BU student who admits to checking out the size of would-be suitors' Twitter rankings, and rejects those who don't measure up.
These are the people who will have to deal with global warming, major economic dislocations, war, global hunger, predatory politicians, and all the rest of it.
The Lion senses some difficulty ahead ...
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Comments
You're kidding right?
First, it's hard to take seriously accusations of ridiculousness leveled by someone who refers to themselves in the third person. And by a nickname which includes the word "The" to boot.
Secondly, "The Lion" misuses "social darwinism" in his opening paragraph. Screening potential romantic partners via their social standing is not social darwinism, a term which refers to certain assertions about the moral implications of competition between social groups, rather it's just shallow.
Third, like most "what is this world coming to" types, The Lion mistakes what he's reading for something new which is indicative of a deep sickness in our current culture rather than a variation on a theme. What's new here isn't that people care about social aspects and popularity of others but that we're now doing it with electronic media and that Klout has systematized our online popularity.
He deploys the laughable notion of "would you want to do business with a company that judges you on this most ridiculous standard" as if social standing has never played a part in commercial relations before the advent of Klout. Try getting a professional job when you're dressed as a homeless person. The only difference here is the more systematized nature of a Klout score. And yes, how utterly ludicrous that celebrities and social media figures, whose livelihood after all depends on their social cachet, would be interested in keeping their Klout score as high as possible.
While the opening anecdote may reflect a certain shallowness on that BU student's part, the idea that The Lion puts forth that this is some kind of marker of generational decline is laughable.
Klout
Shallow analysis indeed, anon. You should at least include the juicy bits, like "Welcome to the modern age of man, where your value as a person is measured by the number of people you don’t know who for a few seconds engage your name in an ephemeral electronic space apparently populated by people with the attention span and intellect of an insane two-year-old suffering major attention deficit disorder."
By the way, you have no clout at The Lion's den. Go to the back of the line. Or bus.
Go to the back of the line.
That is such a dicky thing to say, especially during Black History Month. But you're sixty-six, so it's "okay", right?
Klout
No, because when you start rating people's value on idiot measures like the color of their skin or their bank accounts or their Klout score then you start deciding who has to sit in the back of the bus. It's non-trivial. You seem to think it's okay so I simply turned it on you in a trivial way. You've been judged, albeit trivially. How's it feel?
As I said Mr
As I said Mr Third-Person-Self-Reference, this isn't anything new. We've ALWAYS taken social standing into account. This is nothing new. It's just a variation on a theme. I would imagine that most people here, and certainly most people in the US, are in relationships with people of similar economic and social backgrounds. And while most of them are screening on a less than conscious level it's ludicrous to argue that it's all happenstance that most middle class people marry other middle class people and most college grads marry other college grads. You don't find a lot of PhDs married to high school drop outs or investment bankers married to janitors. We all screen based on social criteria and that has always happened. The only difference here is the systematization of the Klout score and the use of electronic media to scrutinize potential mates (indeed, the latter isn't even all that new since people have been googling online dates to find out information about them for several years now).
Your whining is, ironically, the same superficial "what is this world coming too" claptrap that has been going on for ages. As older generations confront changing social practices of newer generations they react with distaste and try to assert the dominance of their own mores by pathologizing the difference of youth. As they said on MadMen "I bet there were people walking around in the Bible complaining about kids today." This kind of hand wringing has been going on since time immemorial and somehow society has failed to collapse.
You lament the capacity of the young to deal with coming social problems but frankly I've got a lot more confidence in the morals and reasoning ability of someone who is using social media tools for what they were intended for as opposed to someone who misuses "social darwinism" and thinks that superficial dating criteria among college coeds is something new and devastating to society.
Yeah, I get it. You're comfy
Yeah, I get it. You're comfy letting anonymous software engineers determine your worth in society. Good luck with that.
As for your juvenile screed about whining and older generations, you're confusing me with someone who gives a damn. I simply think Klout provides a silly and shallow standard for people to judge one another, and that anyone who takes it seriously doesn't inspire confidence that he can deal with the storm of crap coming down the pipe. I'll be dead, so it doesn't matter to me what you people do with what humanity is handing you. Good luck with that too.
As for social darwinism -"In its simplest form, Social Darwinism follows the mantra of "the strong survive," including human issues. This theory was used to promote the idea that the white European race was superior to others, and therefore, destined to rule over them." You're just using Klout to decide who the 'strong' are and who should be superior. My use of the term doesn't go any deeper than that in my original context.
I think we've wasted enough of each other's time on this, and I don't have enough left to waste, so ciao, whoever you are.
There's one thing that's new.
There's one thing that's new. At least judging by PhD's or jobs are something that I would imagine to be more reflective of a person. You don't become an investment bank or gain your PhD by being dumb and years of work.
Screening based on a Klout score is a hell of a lot dumber than the previous ways of screening.
All I hear
when I read posts like that is, "Hey you kids, get offa my lawn!"
Klout
Actually it's more like, "Hey you kids stop twittering on my lawn - I had to shovel all that stuff off it yesterday."
I hope that one day in the
I hope that one day in the future someone get snubbed by a low Klout score because they consider his low score as lacking "Klout" but turns out he has a lot of clout then they thought and smashes them all.
It will be a sad, dystopian future if every spend their time frantically trying to up their Klout scores. This is not "get off my lawn" or just a bruise to the ego problem. This is a problem that it is possible that many people can take the score very seriously as a measurement of a person's value while taking no account of their accomplishments, authority, personality, knowledge, or actions.
There was once an old quote about a Boston long ago: "In Boston they ask, How much does he know? In New York, How much is he worth? In Philadelphia, Who were his parents?" -Mark Twain
I can see social media influence can be correlated, but can still absolutely fail to measure the ultimate value of a person. It can even fail in measurement of those three qualities. A scientist can be so intelligence and accomplished, but can carry no influence online. There are many millionaires in the world who are complete unknown on Facebook and/or Twitter. There are families who runs influential businesses and perhaps contribute much to the local community, but the kids value are only measured by have many friends they made in college.
Yet, as the article shows, people have already started to take that site seriously as a measurement of a person's value to the world.
On top, this can add more hoops a person have to deal with in the future. A most absurd and ridiculous hoop that people have to jump through too.
Money. Looks. Class. Family.
Money. Looks. Class. Family. Popularity. And now Klout score. I for one don't object to young women erecting another hoop when deciding whom to sleep with.
Recommended Reading
Uglies, Pretties, Specials and (particularly) Extras by Scott Westerfeld, if you want to see how far this can be taken in a distopian future. http://scottwesterfeld.com/blog/books/uglies/
Not sure what the problem with this is anyway. People have always had shallow "criteria" and "standards", and those people usually get what they deserve in the long run for their short-sighted and exclusionary activity - specifically, they get worked over by narcissists like themselves. It isn't like Mr. High Dudgeon has a right to a large pool of potential dates, or a right to not be rejected for stupid reasons. Shouldn't he feel fortunate that unsuitable and vacuous people are selecting themselves out of a chance to waste his time?
Klout
High dudgeon? Moi? Hardly. I'm 66. I don't date. Too busy laughing at the silly while I'm still around to enjoy it.
She'd better be hot
Because lots of companies won't hire someone who Google says is still an airhead in college, so she'll need to marry a stockbroker who wants a stuck-up trophy wife.
A woman can do a lot worse
A woman can do a lot worse than becoming a trophy wife.