The notification icon across social media is the famed bell 🔔
"ring the bell" has even become an annoying platitude on YouTube to garner followers.
Have you ever wondered why? Why would the world's #1 social engineers design all their websites with a bell as the notification icon?
I posit that it is because they view their users as "consumers", biological matter to be manipulated and controlled through Operant Conditioning techniques. I believe the bell represents Pavlov's bell, a means to apply variable reinforcements for addictive dopamine responses. It's to manufacture a conditioned response, like a dog salivating for food that does not exists. It is a means to mock you and shape your behaviour.
Many have a misunderstanding of the field of cybernetics, this is mostly due to the influence of pop-culture like the Cyberpunk genre.
The founder of the term cybernetics, Norbert Wiener in 1954 defines cybernetics as the method of control through communications or information. This, in his own words would logically follow the transformation of humanity:
We have so radically modified our environment, we now need to modify ourselves, to fit in this new environment. pg. 46, The Human Use Of Human Beings: Cybernetics & Society
κυβερνήτης (kybernētēs) is the Greek word for a shipmaster or steersman. The idea is that one is steering the course of a ship through nudges.
Therefore the means of cybernetics is often confused with it's result. The cause of transhumanism is the technological environment, an environment based upon social engineering and bell ringing (cybernetics).
I propose that on Stasher we exorcise this familiar spirit which has bewitched the masses and replace it with a more appropriate symbol.
Perhaps a megaphone 📣 or better yet, the Monero logo, as every notification will have some reference to Monero's economic activity. On Stasher you are not being controlled, you are the one doing the controlling through free market economics based on untraceable and unstoppable money. Perhaps the icon should be 💪lol
If your heart is set on the bell, I'm not going to "unfriend" you. It is not a hill I'm going to die on, so to speak. I do think these small things are important however and it is a way to stand out from the other social media sites that have not considered or thought deeply about the implications of their design.
What say ye?
The bell thing is a stretch. Bells have meant "something needs your attention" since before the internet existed. Doorbells, phone rings, school bells. That's convention, not a behaviorist weapon.
But the underlying point is fine. Stasher having its own look instead of copying Twitter and Facebook makes sense. The Monero logo works as identity since every notification is tied to Monero economic activity. The catch is it won't read at notification badge size. 💪 is fun but same problem.
If you're going to change it, change it for identity reasons, not a Pavlov manifesto. The practical angle lands better than the philosophy.
You are generalising, there is a quantitative defference between a memento mori death knell, or a door bell than a social media slot machine designed to transfer human input into data streams for behaviour modification.
Facebook grew out of a project funded by DARPA's Information Awareness Office, called Lifelog. The bell has been present from it's inception and was not present on MySpace.
@AilliA this might be something you want to consider for the bazaar too 😁