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Amusing Ourselves to Death (2009)

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Re: Amusing Ourselves to Death (2009)

#281

Post by valval »

mdp2021 wrote: post #253
valval wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My question was rhetorical, since I knew the previous poster’s position was indefensible. Whatever point you’re trying to make is also hilarious to watch. In democracy it does not matter what instincts were provoked to get the votes. Sometimes the person you didn’t like wins, and that’s part of the deal.

«Deal» as in "I was dealt this"? As in, you play a cretinous game and we should be part of it? You seem to say, you called 'democracy' a game in which "who is elected rules, whatever the means that brought to election" - i.e. you are stating that a game is there which is pure filth. To that, you also seem to add that no judgement or criticism should be added, because the game would be under some unexplained extraordi…

You’re either way too smart or way too stupid for me to understand. In any case, there must be at least a 40 IQ point difference between the two of us.

Re: Amusing Ourselves to Death (2009)

#282

Post by bccdee »

tehnub wrote: post #38

People make too much of what Orwell supposedly feared may happen some day. He was writing about stuff the Soviet and British governments were doing in his time, and in particular, imagined what Soviet rule over Britain may look like. Assigning this philosophy to him and criticizing him for it seems unfair.

Yeah I think this is a misreading of Orwell. Orwell wasn't afraid that the government would point a gun at the public's heads and the people would hate it. He was afraid that, when that happened, the people would love it.

Authoritarians are popular. The January 6th Capitol attack was perpetrated by people who wanted the state to exert itself violently, because they believed The State and The People were one and the same, and anyone who is a victim of The State was not truly part of The People to begin with.

The threat of Big Brother is not that he'll watch us, but that we will believe he is watching everyone else on our behalf. Police militarization and mass incarceration are already proof that Americans are willing to cede rights when they believe that only "outsiders" will suffer as a result.

Re: Amusing Ourselves to Death (2009)

#283

Post by dang »

r721 wrote: post #23

Original comic source: https://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ours... (archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20100111052839/http://www.recomb... ) HN discussion from 2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1554733 Wikipedia entry for the book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death

Thanks! We've changed the URL to that first link from https://otpok.com/2014/01/03/amusing-ourselves-to-death/.

Edit: err never mind, now I see why you included the archive link. Switched to that.

Re: Amusing Ourselves to Death (2009)

#285

Post by larkinnaire »

podviaznikov wrote: post #192
tines wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technopoly is also amazing, make that your next read.

yes, I’ve read that and many of his books. they all a bit similar and he reuses tons of similar quotes and ideas. but that is even better, he just tries to drive the same points.

I remember rolling my eyes at Technopoly a lot more than I did at Amusing Ourselves, but actually...I read Technopoly maybe 15 years ago, when the Internet had a lot more promise and less downside. Maybe if I read it now it would seem a lot more correct.

Amusing Ourselves, on the other hand, was brilliant when I first read it, but now we seem to be living in a world that is both Orwell and Huxley. The free market provides endless pap, AND governments/political figures have learned to use new media to provide endless misinformation designed to keep us fearful. So maybe if I read it today it would not seem as relevant.

Re: Amusing Ourselves to Death (2009)

#286

Post by larkinnaire »

Spivak wrote: post #262
larkinnaire wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not exactly correct. When the book was written, a lot of commentators had written off television as useless garbage -- totally bad for society. Postman (correctly) complicates that by pointing out that television is great for emotional storytelling, and he is in favor of fictional television shows that model social values for people. Television turns everything into emotional content, which is why TV news evo…

TikTok is good at personal content— short form videos that capture a slice of life for other real people. TikTok is a salon . Little bits of entertainment — music, poetry, jokes/clowning, gossip, show and tell on all kinds of topics, musings about life and interpersonal relationships, practitioners demonstrating their craft. It presents an interesting cross-section of news that's hard to get anywhere else. It's not g…

That makes sense. It sounds like the good parts of TikTok are getting little slices of life from interesting people, and of course, jokes and entertaining stuff, and the misaligned parts are accounts that purport to be "informational" about news or politics. TikTok is probably just as bad a source for that as TV is.

Re: Amusing Ourselves to Death (2009)

#287

Post by zetsurin »

richk449 wrote: post #222

For those who haven’t read the book, Amusing Ourselves to Death is incredible, and absolutely worth reading. One of my mentors gave it to me years ago and it became one of those mind blowing reads. In the book, Postman analyzes how media affects humans and society. He basically gives a framework for predicting and understanding the effects of different types of media. The book was written before social media, so the…

I'm a huge roger waters fan, in particular the album named after this book (not to mention huxley). I was excited to finally get to read what had inspired him. I found it dated (obviously I'd read it nearly 40 years after it was published), commentary on the evils of tv.

Re: Amusing Ourselves to Death (2009)

#288

Post by robocat »

scarecrowbob wrote: post #207
bdowling wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, most people pretended to read Animal Farm and 1984 in middle school and haven’t thought about them since. They didn’t understand them at the time, and they don’t see the similar manipulations going on in today’s society.

I agree. _Animal Farm_ was taught to me by my capitalist and authoritarian teachers as an anti-communist screed. The problem with the farm is that the pigs end up being capitalists, though I have never seen or heard of the text being taught to children as an anti-capitalist text. This culture does a very good job of assuming that the field of possibilities can easily and quickly be reduced to two choices and, further…

> _Animal Farm_ was taught to me by my capitalist and authoritarian teachers as an anti-communist screed

And then you find out:

  Animal Farm (1954 UK animated film) was funded in part by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who also made changes to the original script.
Sometimes there is a "conspiracy" and the truth is weird. The animated movie has a entirely different resolution at the end than the book does. Presumably teacher's materials in the USA were similarly biased?

As an outsider, occasionally I am surprised by the similarities between the USA and the USSR even if the precise details are very different.

Re: Amusing Ourselves to Death (2009)

#290

Post by [deleted] »

zetsurin wrote: post #287
richk449 wrote: post #222

For those who haven’t read the book, Amusing Ourselves to Death is incredible, and absolutely worth reading. One of my mentors gave it to me years ago and it became one of those mind blowing reads. In the book, Postman analyzes how media affects humans and society. He basically gives a framework for predicting and understanding the effects of different types of media. The book was written before social media, so the…

I'm a huge roger waters fan, in particular the album named after this book (not to mention huxley). I was excited to finally get to read what had inspired him. I found it dated (obviously I'd read it nearly 40 years after it was published), commentary on the evils of tv.

[deleted]
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