The Dictator observations thread.

Politics and other such topical creams.
Flex
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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

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Anyways, I think social media should be tightly regulated like public utilities, decoupled from a profit motive and with rigorous fact checking requirements build into any platform.
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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

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Flex wrote:
31 May 2022, 12:12pm
Anyways, I think social media should be tightly regulated like public utilities, decoupled from a profit motive and with rigorous fact checking requirements build into any platform.
That'd be a step in the right direction, definitely, if only to then gauge the effect.
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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

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A few more thoughts. I have conflicting, sometimes contradictory feelings about this topic as a whole.

1. Beyond political ramifications, I'm genuinely freaked out by what I hear from parents who are raising kids, especially in the pre/early teen age bracket, with social media. We were talking to a friend who has a now 12 (or thereabouts) year old daughter and her story was basically: even if you try to keep your kids off social media (limiting screen time/not giving them a phone or tablet/etc) the tech is so ubiquitous it's impossible to keep kids away from social media. For their daughter, the inundation of sexually explicit messages - mostly from male classmates but also from adult men - started when she was 9, and are almost impossible to fully stop. There are tools to monitor social media, with the exception of TikTok I guess, which not coincidentally is designed to be impossible to keep records of, but kids know how to get around this shit. The death threats and severe bullying are also extremely common.

Because they can track usage, they see their daughter is basically online, on social, constantly. Like literally no breaks. Her school, as is now common, doesn't even bother policing this shit anymore. Kids are just on social on their phones, tablets or school computers all the time. During classes, during breaks, all the time.

At home, she's on her phone constantly. After she goes to bed, if there's no intervention, she'll be in it into the wee hours of the morning. When the parents limit or take away the phone, their daughter acts incapable of doing anything on her own. A drug addict going through withdrawal. She doesn't self-direct outdoor play or anything. Her parents can sort of cajole her into doing stuff, but she has no independent desires outside of engaging with her phone.

She gets good grades, because her parents are insanely involved in helping with homework and so forth. Very difficult for their daughter to reason through writing that's longer than a tweet. Absolutely obliterated attention span.

Now, some of this sounds like an extreme case (frankly, we wonder if there's some underlying undiagnosed issues) but we've asked around to other parents with kids in this age range-ish, and while most of what we hear is a little less extreme the differences are just of degree. Thankfully (for us, personally) boys seem to have a lot easier time of it than girls on a bunch of this stuff.

I want to temper all this with the caveat that every generation says stuff like this about every new technology. And maybe they're sort of right! But society soldiers in and people figure shit out. So I dunno, but social media really seems like were all just pumping an entire generation full of an addictive drug that has extremely limited, dubious benefit.

Other thoughts later, maybe.
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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

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Flex wrote:
31 May 2022, 1:07pm
A few more thoughts. I have conflicting, sometimes contradictory feelings about this topic as a whole.

1. Beyond political ramifications, I'm genuinely freaked out by what I hear from parents who are raising kids, especially in the pre/early teen age bracket, with social media. We were talking to a friend who has a now 12 (or thereabouts) year old daughter and her story was basically: even if you try to keep your kids off social media (limiting screen time/not giving them a phone or tablet/etc) the tech is so ubiquitous it's impossible to keep kids away from social media. For their daughter, the inundation of sexually explicit messages - mostly from male classmates but also from adult men - started when she was 9, and are almost impossible to fully stop. There are tools to monitor social media, with the exception of TikTok I guess, which not coincidentally is designed to be impossible to keep records of, but kids know how to get around this shit. The death threats and severe bullying are also extremely common.

Because they can track usage, they see their daughter is basically online, on social, constantly. Like literally no breaks. Her school, as is now common, doesn't even bother policing this shit anymore. Kids are just on social on their phones, tablets or school computers all the time. During classes, during breaks, all the time.

At home, she's on her phone constantly. After she goes to bed, if there's no intervention, she'll be in it into the wee hours of the morning. When the parents limit or take away the phone, their daughter acts incapable of doing anything on her own. A drug addict going through withdrawal. She doesn't self-direct outdoor play or anything. Her parents can sort of cajole her into doing stuff, but she has no independent desires outside of engaging with her phone.

She gets good grades, because her parents are insanely involved in helping with homework and so forth. Very difficult for their daughter to reason through writing that's longer than a tweet. Absolutely obliterated attention span.

Now, some of this sounds like an extreme case (frankly, we wonder if there's some underlying undiagnosed issues) but we've asked around to other parents with kids in this age range-ish, and while most of what we hear is a little less extreme the differences are just of degree. Thankfully (for us, personally) boys seem to have a lot easier time of it than girls on a bunch of this stuff.

I want to temper all this with the caveat that every generation says stuff like this about every new technology. And maybe they're sort of right! But society soldiers in and people figure shit out. So I dunno, but social media really seems like were all just pumping an entire generation full of an addictive drug that has extremely limited, dubious benefit.

Other thoughts later, maybe.
That is so so so sad.

I'm not a tech-phobe, and I doubt I ever will be, but I do worry about a generation that is always tuned in like this. If kids that young want to use social, hey, whatever, but there has to be a healthy balance. If a child can't self-soothe, entertain themselves, work without reaching for their phone, or do anything without scratching that itch, there's a problem in the making that will be (sadly) interesting to see how it manifests itself into adulthood. In your example, I wonder if there's an OCD issue.

Another reason I worry about it, as a gen-x'er who grew up without this stuff, I find my attention span has shrunk drastically since I've been playing around on the intertubes. And don't even get me started about the dirty old men shit.

Edited for spelling
Last edited by Mimi on 31 May 2022, 2:17pm, edited 1 time in total.

Dr. Medulla
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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

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When Adorno and Horkheimer formulated their critique of mass culture, with its emphasis on pseudo-individuality and reinforcement of capitalist discipline outside the factory, one thing they emphasized is that participation is not optional. You either buy in or be a pariah. This was an absurd statement to make in 1941, when not participating was, in fact, a legitimate option. But with the advent of an always-plugged-in society, their assertion does ring more true. It's when it all achieves a self-perpetuating quality that the dread is apparent.
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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

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Mimi wrote:
31 May 2022, 1:42pm
In your example, I wonder if there's an OCD issue.
Yeah, that was our first reaction too. But they didn't volunteer anything and it would be impolite to inquire further along those lines. But even if that's the extreme end of the range of experiences, everyone seems to be getting a taste of it.
Another reason I worry about it, as a gen-x'er who grew up without this stuff, I find my attention span has shrunk drastically since I've been playing around on the intertubes. And don't even get me started about the dirty old men shit.
I'm younger but I didn't have any cell phone at all until college and didn't have a "smartphone" until 2008 for work (a blackberry, very glamorous). I didn't have a real "smartphone" the way we think of them today for personal use until a couple years later. So about a decade with it, and I can definitely say 1) I'm FOR SURE addicted to social media, twitter specifically and 2) like you, my attention span has gone to shit. I have to really, really work to focus on, say, reading a book and it's always a losing battle to not eventually turn to my phone. If I can get an hour of time in without fucking with my phone, I consider it a pretty big accomplishment.

At the same time, since we've moved to Denver (during a pandemic and with a new baby) I don't really have any friends or social network down here, twitter et al is really my only regular social connection left to other people. So I don't really want to just shut down my accounts. Despite knowing it would be better for, say, my attention span I think the net effect is I'd be lonelier and more isolated. That's the flipside to social media, I suppose. I actually disagree that people don't or can't have meaningful personal relationships on social media, even if they're much rarer than people really think (I mean, I think they're rare in real life too).
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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

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Dr. Medulla wrote:
31 May 2022, 1:52pm
When Adorno and Horkheimer formulated their critique of mass culture, with its emphasis on pseudo-individuality and reinforcement of capitalist discipline outside the factory, one thing they emphasized is that participation is not optional. You either buy in or be a pariah. This was an absurd statement to make in 1941, when not participating was, in fact, a legitimate option. But with the advent of an always-plugged-in society, their assertion does ring more true. It's when it all achieves a self-perpetuating quality that the dread is apparent.
Yeah, it's not optional anymore. At least when I was growing up a lot of this stuff was still nascent or a few years off. Sure, I got made fun of a little for not having a cell phone but it didn't break my ability to function day to day to not have one. Now, even if I wanted my little duder to, like, not have screens until he's a teenager (or whatever) it would be literally impossible to have him go to school or participate in society. And all these platforms are trojan horses for all this other shit. The critique is real.
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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

Post by Dr. Medulla »

The past ten years or so has forced me to concede that Adorno and Horkheimer's doom-mongering has more merit—not just as an intellectual position—than I gave it back in the 90s, when I was first exposed. Technology has caught up, so to speak, with their argument enough so that it's just not as easy to dismiss now as too abstract.
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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

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Mimi wrote:
31 May 2022, 1:42pm
Flex wrote:
31 May 2022, 1:07pm
A few more thoughts. I have conflicting, sometimes contradictory feelings about this topic as a whole.

1. Beyond political ramifications, I'm genuinely freaked out by what I hear from parents who are raising kids, especially in the pre/early teen age bracket, with social media. We were talking to a friend who has a now 12 (or thereabouts) year old daughter and her story was basically: even if you try to keep your kids off social media (limiting screen time/not giving them a phone or tablet/etc) the tech is so ubiquitous it's impossible to keep kids away from social media. For their daughter, the inundation of sexually explicit messages - mostly from male classmates but also from adult men - started when she was 9, and are almost impossible to fully stop. There are tools to monitor social media, with the exception of TikTok I guess, which not coincidentally is designed to be impossible to keep records of, but kids know how to get around this shit. The death threats and severe bullying are also extremely common.

Because they can track usage, they see their daughter is basically online, on social, constantly. Like literally no breaks. Her school, as is now common, doesn't even bother policing this shit anymore. Kids are just on social on their phones, tablets or school computers all the time. During classes, during breaks, all the time.

At home, she's on her phone constantly. After she goes to bed, if there's no intervention, she'll be in it into the wee hours of the morning. When the parents limit or take away the phone, their daughter acts incapable of doing anything on her own. A drug addict going through withdrawal. She doesn't self-direct outdoor play or anything. Her parents can sort of cajole her into doing stuff, but she has no independent desires outside of engaging with her phone.

She gets good grades, because her parents are insanely involved in helping with homework and so forth. Very difficult for their daughter to reason through writing that's longer than a tweet. Absolutely obliterated attention span.

Now, some of this sounds like an extreme case (frankly, we wonder if there's some underlying undiagnosed issues) but we've asked around to other parents with kids in this age range-ish, and while most of what we hear is a little less extreme the differences are just of degree. Thankfully (for us, personally) boys seem to have a lot easier time of it than girls on a bunch of this stuff.

I want to temper all this with the caveat that every generation says stuff like this about every new technology. And maybe they're sort of right! But society soldiers in and people figure shit out. So I dunno, but social media really seems like were all just pumping an entire generation full of an addictive drug that has extremely limited, dubious benefit.

Other thoughts later, maybe.
That is so so so sad.

I'm not a tech-phob, and I doubt I ever will be, but I do worry about a generation that is always tuned in like this. If kids that young want to use social, hey, whatever, but there has to be a healthy balance. If a child can't self-soothe, entertain themselves, work without reaching for their phone, or do anything without scratching that itch, there's a problem in the making that will be (sadly) interesting to see how it manifests itself into adulthood. In your example, I wonder if there's an OCD issue.

Another reason I worry about it, as a gen-x'er who grew up without this stuff, I find my attention span has shrunk drastically since I've been playing around on the intertubes. And don't even get me started about the dirty old men shit.
Hello,

We need to raise children strong enough to resist being consumed by others' opinions/social media - easier said than done.

For the family, I might suggest a cell phone blocker/signal isolator. When I taught in public schools, I used one and the results were very good. The funniest thing was the kids didn't complain - they knew they shouldn't be on their phones during class (I only had a problem with a teacher on the floor below me as she wanted to use her cell phone quite often during the school day). This was during 3G days but I believe the technology of blockers has kept up with cell technology. I would suggest buying a blocker and starting it up at bedtime. Obviously, there would need to be a healthy discussion of why this was being done. Depending on the blocker, the parents may lose their usage as well but if need be they could turn the blocker off, make a call, and then resume.

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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

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Flex wrote:
31 May 2022, 1:53pm
Mimi wrote:
31 May 2022, 1:42pm
In your example, I wonder if there's an OCD issue.
Yeah, that was our first reaction too. But they didn't volunteer anything and it would be impolite to inquire further along those lines. But even if that's the extreme end of the range of experiences, everyone seems to be getting a taste of it.
Another reason I worry about it, as a gen-x'er who grew up without this stuff, I find my attention span has shrunk drastically since I've been playing around on the intertubes. And don't even get me started about the dirty old men shit.
I'm younger but I didn't have any cell phone at all until college and didn't have a "smartphone" until 2008 for work (a blackberry, very glamorous). I didn't have a real "smartphone" the way we think of them today for personal use until a couple years later. So about a decade with it, and I can definitely say 1) I'm FOR SURE addicted to social media, twitter specifically and 2) like you, my attention span has gone to shit. I have to really, really work to focus on, say, reading a book and it's always a losing battle to not eventually turn to my phone. If I can get an hour of time in without fucking with my phone, I consider it a pretty big accomplishment.

At the same time, since we've moved to Denver (during a pandemic and with a new baby) I don't really have any friends or social network down here, twitter et al is really my only regular social connection left to other people. So I don't really want to just shut down my accounts. Despite knowing it would be better for, say, my attention span I think the net effect is I'd be lonelier and more isolated. That's the flipside to social media, I suppose. I actually disagree that people don't or can't have meaningful personal relationships on social media, even if they're much rarer than people really think (I mean, I think they're rare in real life too).
Yes to all that.

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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

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Dr. Medulla wrote:
31 May 2022, 9:09am
Your defense in the first paragraph is comparable to Kory's, in that you have to use it responsibly, as an amusement and distraction or a way of keeping up with friends. Which is a very liberal view of things—it's up to each individual. When I think about social media, tho, oddly enough I often go back to Fredric Wertham and his crusade against comics because that's how his opponents responded. It's up to each individual to read responsibly, to not act out torture scenes from Crime Does Not Pay, etc. Wertham said that a liberal interpretation of a social problem doesn't work. He likened the effect of crime and horror comics to an infectious disease sweeping a neighbourhood. If 80% of readers are unaffected, but 20% are harmed and that has far-reaching social implications—crime, loss of civic participation, those harmed by those 20%—then it's not worth the pleasure for the 80%. Now, of course Wertham had a jaundiced view of comics all around, but I think his perspective is worthwhile to consider. Even if we can regard our use as responsible and beneficial, does that justify its existence when, on a larger scale, the effects are harmful?
I can't remember when we last talked about this so I can't make any specific follow-up references, but my viewpoint is very strongly on the side of commenting and likes being outlawed across the entire social media app-verse. I wouldn't mind if all social media was shut down as long as I had some sort of aggregator for music and comics news—I can keep up with friends via text or email. But, as I can't do anything about it, and they're the easiest game in town, I have been working on not dunking on people and just using it for what I mean to. Sort of the equivalent argument to still driving my car once a week since climate change is in the hands of world-ending corporations and not my 2004 Saturn (not nearly enough to blame it on citizens instead of capitalists, anyway).
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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

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Kory wrote:
05 Jun 2022, 3:58pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
31 May 2022, 9:09am
Your defense in the first paragraph is comparable to Kory's, in that you have to use it responsibly, as an amusement and distraction or a way of keeping up with friends. Which is a very liberal view of things—it's up to each individual. When I think about social media, tho, oddly enough I often go back to Fredric Wertham and his crusade against comics because that's how his opponents responded. It's up to each individual to read responsibly, to not act out torture scenes from Crime Does Not Pay, etc. Wertham said that a liberal interpretation of a social problem doesn't work. He likened the effect of crime and horror comics to an infectious disease sweeping a neighbourhood. If 80% of readers are unaffected, but 20% are harmed and that has far-reaching social implications—crime, loss of civic participation, those harmed by those 20%—then it's not worth the pleasure for the 80%. Now, of course Wertham had a jaundiced view of comics all around, but I think his perspective is worthwhile to consider. Even if we can regard our use as responsible and beneficial, does that justify its existence when, on a larger scale, the effects are harmful?
I can't remember when we last talked about this so I can't make any specific follow-up references, but my viewpoint is very strongly on the side of commenting and likes being outlawed across the entire social media app-verse. I wouldn't mind if all social media was shut down as long as I had some sort of aggregator for music and comics news—I can keep up with friends via text or email. But, as I can't do anything about it, and they're the easiest game in town, I have been working on not dunking on people and just using it for what I mean to. Sort of the equivalent argument to still driving my car once a week since climate change is in the hands of world-ending corporations and not my 2004 Saturn (not nearly enough to blame it on citizens instead of capitalists, anyway).
As my views towards speech have moved from the individualist or libertarian ideal toward a communitarian perspective—i.e., the value to the individual must be measured against the value, especially harm, to the community—I think social media needs to have incentives for participation to be socially responsible. I have no clue how to make that work without heavy-handed regulation, but the current model is abhorrent.
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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

Post by Flex »

This just in: Kory loves to open mouth kiss social media.
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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

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Flex wrote:
05 Jun 2022, 5:03pm
This just in: Kory loves to open mouth kiss social media.
It haunts my dreams and then I wake up sticky.
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Re: The Dictator observations thread.

Post by revbob »

Dr. Medulla wrote:
05 Jun 2022, 4:10pm
Kory wrote:
05 Jun 2022, 3:58pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
31 May 2022, 9:09am
Your defense in the first paragraph is comparable to Kory's, in that you have to use it responsibly, as an amusement and distraction or a way of keeping up with friends. Which is a very liberal view of things—it's up to each individual. When I think about social media, tho, oddly enough I often go back to Fredric Wertham and his crusade against comics because that's how his opponents responded. It's up to each individual to read responsibly, to not act out torture scenes from Crime Does Not Pay, etc. Wertham said that a liberal interpretation of a social problem doesn't work. He likened the effect of crime and horror comics to an infectious disease sweeping a neighbourhood. If 80% of readers are unaffected, but 20% are harmed and that has far-reaching social implications—crime, loss of civic participation, those harmed by those 20%—then it's not worth the pleasure for the 80%. Now, of course Wertham had a jaundiced view of comics all around, but I think his perspective is worthwhile to consider. Even if we can regard our use as responsible and beneficial, does that justify its existence when, on a larger scale, the effects are harmful?
I can't remember when we last talked about this so I can't make any specific follow-up references, but my viewpoint is very strongly on the side of commenting and likes being outlawed across the entire social media app-verse. I wouldn't mind if all social media was shut down as long as I had some sort of aggregator for music and comics news—I can keep up with friends via text or email. But, as I can't do anything about it, and they're the easiest game in town, I have been working on not dunking on people and just using it for what I mean to. Sort of the equivalent argument to still driving my car once a week since climate change is in the hands of world-ending corporations and not my 2004 Saturn (not nearly enough to blame it on citizens instead of capitalists, anyway).
As my views towards speech have moved from the individualist or libertarian ideal toward a communitarian perspective—i.e., the value to the individual must be measured against the value, especially harm, to the community—I think social media needs to have incentives for participation to be socially responsible. I have no clue how to make that work without heavy-handed regulation, but the current model is abhorrent.
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