When I reached out to him via FB a while back he said he had some “life stuff” going on. Understandable. However, that’s been several months ago and hasn’t prevented him from continuing to participate on other social media platforms but not Murmurs, which he relaunched as a fuck you to FB. I guess he had a change of heart about FB. Who knows.
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I can’t figure that out either, I’m trying to avoid thinking he’s stopped caring about this site. Ethan could be out there taking it all in, learning something, maybe getting into a battle or two on other social platforms. He stopped posting several times at the old murmurs too and came back with a new format.
@Polyman60 You sort of ressurected this thread, can I add, lately I see more ads & promotions on facebook than posts from my friends. Also, still too many scammers & frauds.
Hi, Lori, I was actually going through my Murmurs account deleting many of my posts. At least with Murmurs.com you know that people that visit are fans of R.E.M. while Facebook they can be anyone for sometimes nefarious reasons.
You were clearly not here the day someone joined and posted, “You’re all a bunch of FEAKS!”
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I don’t know the meaning of freak. Does that mean lover of great music?
The word they used was “feak.” It was adopted by Murmursians as a badge of honor. Point being, trolling isn’t unique to social media. It’s sort of like a member a while back that said they felt they could express certain opinions about R.E.M. here that they couldn’t on any of the R.E.M. FB groups because they believe Murmurs is a “safe space” for such discussion. In other words, I gathered they figured if they expressed an unpopular opinion about R.E.M. here that everyone would just agree with them. It has never worked that way at Murmurs. At least not to the best of my recollection.
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I’ve always thought the person who said that made a typo, and meant to say - freaks!
They did but as I recall, it became a mantra of sorts for Murmurisans to repeat it as originally posted, typo and all.
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Yep, we were proud to be feaks. It set us up as passionate R.E.M. fans.
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I’m no longer able to post this video to FB. When I do so, I receive the following error message: “Your message couldn’t be sent because it includes content that other people on Facebook have reported as abusive.” I receive the same error message when I try to post the trailer to the Big Star documentary Nothing Can Hurt Me. I gather their bots or whatever computer software monitors posted content detects keywords. In the case of the Icicle Works song I’m guessing it’s “scream.” With the Big Star doc it’s likely “hurt.” There is absolutely nothing abusive about the song or the movie trailer. I’m sure lots of other content is blocked for similar reasons. Ironically, if you search FB for the video or the movie trailer, you can find them. Perhaps they were posted prior to more stringent rules regarding content being put into place. Meanwhile, you can report content that actually is abusive or harmful in some manner and 9 times out of 10 you’ll receive a report saying the reported post doesn’t violate whatever in the fuck FB’s Community Standards are. It goes without saying but this is bullshit.
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I reported a page that glorified paramilitary groups in Ireland once. Got a message back saying it didn’t violate their policies. I’ve had similar experiences with Twitter regarding conspiracy theories and misinformation.
You can livestream a mass shooting, but you can’t post a picture of a breast cancer survivor’s tattoo. Social media is mostly a horrible place. It was quite a nice thing when it started but, much like the environment, we’ve fucked it.
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Not sure that we’re the ones responsible for what it’s become. By that, I don’t mean the bigger picture, I mean the examples above that I’ve cited. Something I read not long ago (not sure where) says that it is designed to be feed by negativity and to feed that back to us. I get that to extent. Lately, I’ve seen more than a few articles (most from Far Out magazine, which I can’t stand) about other artists Kurt Cobain, Keith Richards, etc. hate or hated. Obviously, that’s a clickbait type tactic to get readers to engage with the content and argue. I scroll past them.
Not that I don’t get involved in arguments or heated debates FB, I do but it’s not my sole purpose for being on there or remaining on there. @Parakeet, who I first met through the original Murmurs, and I had a discussion about FB not long ago where he mentioned it’s sort of like our journal. I agree and I get that. I don’t steer entirely clear of controversial topics but mostly what I post is fairly innocuous stuff: music, humor, pop culture, books, movies, art, family photos, my own photos (nature, concerts, etc.), writings, etc. Mostly gone are the days of email lists and message boards so FB is pretty much what has replaced that, for better or for worse.
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I think the general apathy, ignorance, selfishness, stupidity etc. of humans is problem number one, which makes us responsible. If we were better, then social media would be too. (See also: politicians, the environment, TV(!)…)
The journal argument is interesting. That’s kind of how it was when it first came out. But it’s evolved into something else now. Something a lot less pleasant. A tool for the insidious to manipulate the masses. A birthing pool for conspiracy theories and bullying, and a host of other unpleasant things.
And so we have Trump, Brexit, covidiots etc. Because, as a species, we’ve allowed ourselves to be manipulated in this way. Neither Trump nor Brexit would have happened in a pre-social media world. Both those things would have been deemed too ridiculous for political parodies. But here they are, because, one time, we saw a meme on Facebook…
I’m sure you know, but when I say “we”, I’m not referring to you, or I, or probably most of the people here on Murmurs. Humans. We’ve fucked it.
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I’m late to the party, but I saw a very worrying documentary about AI hackers stealing faces of attractive young women and putting those faces on top of actresses in porn films. I haven’t posted any personal video footage for yonks and now, not even still images of my grandkids. Identify theft is real, bastards are getting rich. It seems these douchebags mainly get their pictures from insta, but I never go there anyway. Don’t post images of yourself or kids. It’s a sick world.
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Ha ha! Instant karma…
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A while back someone stole my profile pic on Instagram and used it to try and scam my friends with fake investment deals. I reported it, I was told there is no rule for using someone’s profile pic, I would have to report the post. We all did and got it removed. Bastards.
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I have a collection of my concert ticket stubs on FB that I’ve made public. A few years ago, someone stole a few of those images and shared them in a FB group. I politely asked them to give me credit for the images. They refused. All they had to do was share them from my original post and it would have been fine. Instead, they wanted to be an asshole about it. I reported it to FB (I forget the exact wording used) and for once, they took immediate action and removed the images from that FB group. It pissed that guy off to no end but at that point I didn’t give a fuck.
When we share photos, images, etc. it’s the chance we all take in that they may be stolen. I was lucky that time. On my end, I do my best to credit photographers when I share their photos. Few people seem to understand the importance of that, at least to the person that originally took the photos. To me, it doesn’t seem that hard to do what I consider the right thing. Due to the internet, file sharing, etc. a lot of folks are under the false impression that everything is free or at least should be. I see people say how much they support their favorite artists by buying merch at their shows (including physical media), whatever means brings the artist the most money. However, these very same people will get pissed if an article is behind a paywall. Evidently, they feel it’s more important that their favorite artists are fairly compensated but that doesn’t apply to journalists, photographers, web designers, graphic artists, etc.
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Like me for some reason 
Haven’t been able to access R.E.M. Fans United for a couple of years and I found that group superior to the others.
Sadly I always forget about this forum
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