From Army of One to Band of Tweeters | Hacker News Reader

From Army of One to Band of Tweeters

nytimes.com

15 pointstkschneider16 comments

It's not just in military situations. The ability to communicate globally, almost trivially maintaining connections to people you knew a decade or more ago, is fantastic. However, it also leads to people not forming new bonds in their current environment. Or at least not significant bonds.

I was in college when IM was still hot, before Facebook existed and continued on through grad school by which time it and Twitter had exploded. Over the years, the community at the universities changed. Students became more and more distant from each other, with less emphasis on social activities with those locally available to them. I've observed the same after nearly a decade in the workforce. The different attitudes, based primarily on age since social media use corresponds highly with age, is astounding. 40+ year olds are far more invested in ideas like office social events, group lunches or fun days, as a way to form bonds and also relax. 30-40 is pretty mixed. Under 30, they don't get it. They may show up, but they're only physically, and not mentally, present. It's really frustrating to try and bring people into a group and get them to function as a team when they're virtually incapable of communicating and connecting with those around them.

Not incapable. Just not interested. If you have a healthy social life outside of work (ie you're still in touch with old friends, and whenever they move close enough you know it and can rekindle the friendship), why do you need to invest so much in a work-centered social circle?

Fair. But I've also witnessed this outside of work environments. People are so strongly (and as I say, this isn't bad on its own) tied to past relationships (HS, college) and easily connected to them via FB, Twitter, etc. that they aren't making relationships in their new locations when they move. The latter part is the problem. You're in a new environment. You're working and living with new people. You need to connect to them in some manner, if you remain strangers with those around you (work, neighborhood, etc.), then you will be lonely and unhappily disconnected from people unless you're particularly introverted.

In social situations, they are the same thing.

I missed your parenthetical earlier.

> you're still in touch with old friends, and whenever they move close enough you know it and can rekindle the friendship

This is a big if. I'm speaking of people who have moved across the country or state, and where the likelihood of this is near zero. The only way they'll rekindle the friendship (specifically being physically local) is if they move back themselves, rather than waiting for their friends to move to them.

Well, I'm in the Bay Area and grew up in LA, so the drift is very prounounced. People at my old workplace who came from farther afield (e.g. Canada or the East Coast) tended to take a lot more initiative in socializing at work.

This reminds me of the time when an officer in the Navy invited me to fight him because I was against the Iraq War via Facebook in 2008. I wonder if that officer was demoralized to hear that the public was not supporting them during the war.

I think the article has a point regarding soldier morale. It's hard enough to maintain morale when fighting in foreign lands for no real cause, and close communications with home will definitely communicate the message that the public largely doesn't care about the wars or the soldiers fighting it. On the bright side, now soldiers can come back from patrols and watch cute cat videos. I assume this has a positive effect.

I wish there was a good way to make it clear to the troops that even though you don't support their mission you still support them. Often cancelling a useless mission is the best way to support them.

The "Support the troops" movement is a perfect way for politicians to hide behind the troops to suppress any criticism.

> The "Support the troops" movement is a perfect way for politicians to hide behind the troops to suppress any criticism.

As long as you have an American flag on your lapel, you're a patriot and above reproach.

Or you know, quit doing massive military deployments with nebulous goals, requiring people to be stationed abroad for years. Obama has it right; lots of intelligence, then a small, very focused mission to act on the intelligence.

Except that these small missions sprawl when they fail, and never end because they're too small. The goals are still nebulous.

We still have soldiers in Okinawa.

So you're implying the 1945 invasion of Okinawa was nebulous?

Nah, WW2 era occupations were anything but nebulously defined. Just reminding people that the US never honors its promises when it comes to withdrawal.

EDIT: I'll admit that the first Okinawa comment wasn't entirely thought out.

I agree that WW2 era occupations were fairly nebulously-defined. However, the "US never honors its promises when it comes to withdrawal" is a gross mischaracterisation.

The U.S. military base system on Okinawa is a part of a bilateral agreement with the Japanese government. Although unpopular with Okinawans, multiple successive Tokyo governments have approved expansions to the original bases, including one this year. [1]

To my knowledge the only forcibly-held U.S. base is the one in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

[1] http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21674839-okinawa-takes-go...

I can't go with "never". I can't even go with "usually", unless you've got a study that lists promises of US withdrawl and which promises were kept.

But I can agree that there was, quite recently, a promise of withdrawl from Afghanistan, and even more recently, a "no we won't".

Url changed from https://fcw.com/blogs/lectern/2015/11/kelman-facebook-milita..., which points to this.

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