11–20 of 77 posts
When I was in college, we studied and analyzed the case of Megan Meier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Megan_Meier It was tragic how she was bullied and felt compelled to suicide in a method that's often invisible to parents and other responsible adults. Even more appalling, in Megan's case, is that a supposedly responsible mother posed as an underage boy in order to bully her, and wound up in federal court…
The answer seems to be yes, all the way through to a dose-dependent response [1]. I'm cautious to label people as evil. But Adam Mosseri working to addict younger and younger children to the dopamine hit of ad-driven social media challenges me on that restraint. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6278213/
To them it's a cash cow, and who has the minds of the kids has the future. TikTok ans SnapChat specifically entered the market by attracting attention of ever younger users.
The answer seems to be yes, all the way through to a dose-dependent response [1]. I'm cautious to label people as evil. But Adam Mosseri working to addict younger and younger children to the dopamine hit of ad-driven social media challenges me on that restraint. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6278213/
Ever read, 'Lord of the flies', written ages ago - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Flies Now with social media we have all manner of bullying, both from the local peer group as well as any good/bad/perverted person who can type, ' yes, I am a 13 year old girl, just like you' Those who weather this are scarred by it, but those who do not are often crushed by it, badly scarred, even prompted to death. It woul…
It's interesting to see people deny this over and over, as they bask in the cold glow of their phone's screens.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Counterpoint: How much of these novels are imaginative paranoia driven by cynical consumers? The closest similar incident - the Tongan castaways (granted they were aged 13 - 19 instead of 6 - 12) had the boys create a more or less exemplary society. They worked in teams, hunted and fish, created instruments to sing songs - no where even close to what happened in the novel.
The novel was a dark satire of other contemporary novels. In those, "civilized" white kids basically brought modernity to the natives after getting shipwrecked in what was essentially colonialist propaganda. So it's a bit like The Boys surviving in history and Marvel being lost from memory and people thinking that superheroes are violent psychopaths.
The movie, in contrast, showed an imperfect Wild West where there was injustice, government corruption, blatant racism, vice, all-round stupidity, etc. It wasn't just transgressive shock value for its own sake.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Counterpoint: How much of these novels are imaginative paranoia driven by cynical consumers? The closest similar incident - the Tongan castaways (granted they were aged 13 - 19 instead of 6 - 12) had the boys create a more or less exemplary society. They worked in teams, hunted and fish, created instruments to sing songs - no where even close to what happened in the novel.
Tongan castaways numbered only six boys. I think social dynamics get very interesting in larger numbers and with mixed genders. For consideration, look at the utopian rat experiments.[1] As resources become scarce and competition increase - the likelihood that a social structure will collapse increases. While humans are not rats, this has been seen over and over again in primate colonies. There are parallels in moder…
Humans are not rats, but nor do we really behave like other primates. We have evolved to co-operate socially and we do it very, very well, including (and perhaps especially) in resource-constrained environments. And we even engage in self-domestication to weed out individuals who attempt to dominate or cheat in such situations.
But the problem with modern society is it throws all of that evolved ability out of the window. We are attempting to learn how to co-exist and thrive while living in cities of millions of strangers, while living lifestyles their bear no relation at all to traditional human life. In a way, it's a miracle that we do as well as we do.
In terms of pure Maslow, the tendency of modernity to destroy the transcendency of life, leaving the moral vacuum we see, is the central issue.
Settle down; marry; enjoy parenthood; participate in a community of faith; ignore the haters and their ersatz noise.
When I was in college, we studied and analyzed the case of Megan Meier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Megan_Meier It was tragic how she was bullied and felt compelled to suicide in a method that's often invisible to parents and other responsible adults. Even more appalling, in Megan's case, is that a supposedly responsible mother posed as an underage boy in order to bully her, and wound up in federal court…
No. In terms of pure Maslow, the tendency of modernity to destroy the transcendency of life, leaving the moral vacuum we see, is the central issue. Settle down; marry; enjoy parenthood; participate in a community of faith; ignore the haters and their ersatz noise.