"And I would argue that 'social media' isn't any more social than television is." I'm so old I remember when there was ONLY television. Three networks. The entire country glued to the "boob tube." Parents worried about the plug-in drug.
But if you couldn't bear a celebrity, or even non-celebrity, female on the Tonight Show and you wan…
"And I would argue that 'social media' isn't any more social than television is." I'm so old I remember when there was ONLY television. Three networks. The entire country glued to the "boob tube." Parents worried about the plug-in drug.
But if you couldn't bear a celebrity, or even non-celebrity, female on the Tonight Show and you wanted to abuse her profanely and even threaten to rape or kill her and to reveal her address and phone number to countless numbers of other unhinged zanies, your options were to call the switchboard at NBC and hold the phone forever, only to be hung up on ten seconds into your rant, or you could write a letter to the woman c/o The Tonight Show, New York, NY. You were able to reach one or two people that way.
A difference in degree is a difference in kind. The speed and immediacy, combined with the anonymity, of social media has put us on a whole new playing field. Almost nothing about television was social, excepting the interchanges with the small number of people in the same room watching it with you. Social media is nothing BUT social.
"A difference in degree is a difference in kind. The speed and immediacy, combined with the anonymity, of social media has put us on a whole new playing field."
Absolutely. The scale of that difference can't be overstated. And more, it's such an all-consuming environment that people literally grow up in it.
TV was at home, and available for a few hours a day. Social media is everywhere. And is pinging people 24/7. And as well as giving you instant access to celebrities and whoever else you'd like to direct your ire at, as well as the algorithmic outrage it curates for you, it has the ability to punish you if you say something you're not supposed to. Or, increasingly, if you don't say the thing you're *supposed* to be saying loudly and stridently enough.
To whit, I was banned from Medium and from a nice thousand a month plus another half that in bonuses, for stating the uncontroversial fact that a "trans" woman is biologically male.
Wondering how long until inclusiveness requires no disagreement with geocentrism.
"Or, increasingly, if you don't say the thing you're *supposed* to be saying loudly and stridently enough."
Found on the web, In our society, a man can say he's a woman, and was "born this way," but a man who says he wants to be traditionally masculine is "conditioned by society" and "toxic."
Don't underestimate the negative impact of television. It did more to isolate people from one another (and from debate) than anything before it. No more newsreels at the movie theatre with your neighbors; instead people sat alone in front of a tray of fast food consuming entertainment.
Television was the beginning of the breakdown of democracy.
The isolation from one another is what worries me about avid social media consumers far more than anything they are "consuming".
Most people, in most cultures, at most times have far more in common with one another than not, and would be hesitant to pull the trigger or do other off the wall sh** if they had ever sat down beside them and broken bread.
I grew up without TV, so I don't understand its pull, nor do I understand the attraction to gaming or Facebook or any of that stuff. What I do know is that the addiction is real, the replacement of real connections and relationships with virtual ones is unspeakably dangerous and destructive, on par with fentanyl or meth, but just less immediately obvious.
Salvation, such as it is or will be, must be clawed back one human interaction at a time. When I see even close family members glued to their phones during dinner, unable to let 60 seconds go by without scrolling through something, I teeter on the brink of despair....
Over here you'll see twenty teens at a restaurant, and nobody is talking to anyone else, they're all smiling at their phones. Even with terrific food.
If I had any family left and they were texting during dinner I would make a scene. "Put. That. Away." But I'm ... "Now."
The main attraction Facebook has for me is staying in touch with people on the other side of the world, most of whom I am unlikely to see again (I live in Vietnam). And that is 90% on the messenger application; I write very little on FB itself. No TV for forty years. I was away from it for a month and when I tried to watch something I couldn't stand it.
Egregious hijack: we went out to eat at "Chicken Plus" which is easy to figure out is a Korean franchise; the tiny salad bar includes dried seaweed, which is no more Vietnamese than salad bars; the CEO is grandfather Park and Park is a Korean name. Korean is for Vietnam what Italian is for America: the second cuisine. Even rural people who won't eat Vietnamese sandwiches will eat Korean.
The chicken is inexpressibly delicious. Just wow.
Almost nothing is open right now, Lunar New Year, but this place was.
Korean BBQ is just indescribably good. I've passed through Korea on layovers but never stayed long, only ate the complimentary hotel buffet. But the food on the planes is just amazing, I remember a few ... bibimbap, ssambas (yes two S at the beginning), a few others.
Funny thing is that it doesn't taste at all like Vietnamese but they're crazy about it.
On a two-week trip to the Korean Airlines maintenance facility in Pusan, on the weekend the guys fetched me Sunday morning. First stop, by the shore, a squatting breakfast of raw squid, garlic cloves, hot peppers and Soju. We start our old-time music jam sessions with the tune, "Whiskey for Breakfast." I had that in Korea.
They took me to a church service. Must have been Baptist (it was in Korean language) because they had an "amen" guy saying that constantly throughout the service. Then off to where they lived for a piano recital by one of their daughters and a wonderful meal. They are an exceptionally gracious people. If there was chicken, it was lost in the variety of wonderful food.
Since I've never owned a television, I'm not objecting to your statement. But it wasn't toxic to the same degree that social media has become. Of course, the basic problem is the Homo sapiens is toxic. But that's another, albeit related, subject.
That is facile. The telephone enabled communication; television stifled it. Printing put knowledge into the hands of people who had been denied it; recording did the same for music.
What you're saying is as scrambled as "heroin and cocaine give people purpose."
"And I would argue that 'social media' isn't any more social than television is." I'm so old I remember when there was ONLY television. Three networks. The entire country glued to the "boob tube." Parents worried about the plug-in drug.
But if you couldn't bear a celebrity, or even non-celebrity, female on the Tonight Show and you wanted to abuse her profanely and even threaten to rape or kill her and to reveal her address and phone number to countless numbers of other unhinged zanies, your options were to call the switchboard at NBC and hold the phone forever, only to be hung up on ten seconds into your rant, or you could write a letter to the woman c/o The Tonight Show, New York, NY. You were able to reach one or two people that way.
A difference in degree is a difference in kind. The speed and immediacy, combined with the anonymity, of social media has put us on a whole new playing field. Almost nothing about television was social, excepting the interchanges with the small number of people in the same room watching it with you. Social media is nothing BUT social.
"A difference in degree is a difference in kind. The speed and immediacy, combined with the anonymity, of social media has put us on a whole new playing field."
Absolutely. The scale of that difference can't be overstated. And more, it's such an all-consuming environment that people literally grow up in it.
TV was at home, and available for a few hours a day. Social media is everywhere. And is pinging people 24/7. And as well as giving you instant access to celebrities and whoever else you'd like to direct your ire at, as well as the algorithmic outrage it curates for you, it has the ability to punish you if you say something you're not supposed to. Or, increasingly, if you don't say the thing you're *supposed* to be saying loudly and stridently enough.
To whit, I was banned from Medium and from a nice thousand a month plus another half that in bonuses, for stating the uncontroversial fact that a "trans" woman is biologically male.
Wondering how long until inclusiveness requires no disagreement with geocentrism.
"Or, increasingly, if you don't say the thing you're *supposed* to be saying loudly and stridently enough."
Like "Trump won."
Found on the web, In our society, a man can say he's a woman, and was "born this way," but a man who says he wants to be traditionally masculine is "conditioned by society" and "toxic."
I am stealing that, albeit with attribution (to the web)
Don't underestimate the negative impact of television. It did more to isolate people from one another (and from debate) than anything before it. No more newsreels at the movie theatre with your neighbors; instead people sat alone in front of a tray of fast food consuming entertainment.
Television was the beginning of the breakdown of democracy.
The isolation from one another is what worries me about avid social media consumers far more than anything they are "consuming".
Most people, in most cultures, at most times have far more in common with one another than not, and would be hesitant to pull the trigger or do other off the wall sh** if they had ever sat down beside them and broken bread.
I grew up without TV, so I don't understand its pull, nor do I understand the attraction to gaming or Facebook or any of that stuff. What I do know is that the addiction is real, the replacement of real connections and relationships with virtual ones is unspeakably dangerous and destructive, on par with fentanyl or meth, but just less immediately obvious.
Salvation, such as it is or will be, must be clawed back one human interaction at a time. When I see even close family members glued to their phones during dinner, unable to let 60 seconds go by without scrolling through something, I teeter on the brink of despair....
Over here you'll see twenty teens at a restaurant, and nobody is talking to anyone else, they're all smiling at their phones. Even with terrific food.
If I had any family left and they were texting during dinner I would make a scene. "Put. That. Away." But I'm ... "Now."
The main attraction Facebook has for me is staying in touch with people on the other side of the world, most of whom I am unlikely to see again (I live in Vietnam). And that is 90% on the messenger application; I write very little on FB itself. No TV for forty years. I was away from it for a month and when I tried to watch something I couldn't stand it.
Egregious hijack: we went out to eat at "Chicken Plus" which is easy to figure out is a Korean franchise; the tiny salad bar includes dried seaweed, which is no more Vietnamese than salad bars; the CEO is grandfather Park and Park is a Korean name. Korean is for Vietnam what Italian is for America: the second cuisine. Even rural people who won't eat Vietnamese sandwiches will eat Korean.
The chicken is inexpressibly delicious. Just wow.
Almost nothing is open right now, Lunar New Year, but this place was.
Like the Chinese Christmas dinner in the movie "A Christmas Story."
I missed trying chicken when I was in Korea, opting for sea food instead.
...Which is now a general store here in Toronto (where part of that movie was shot ;)
But, but, that was a cult classic ;0)
Korean BBQ is just indescribably good. I've passed through Korea on layovers but never stayed long, only ate the complimentary hotel buffet. But the food on the planes is just amazing, I remember a few ... bibimbap, ssambas (yes two S at the beginning), a few others.
Funny thing is that it doesn't taste at all like Vietnamese but they're crazy about it.
On a two-week trip to the Korean Airlines maintenance facility in Pusan, on the weekend the guys fetched me Sunday morning. First stop, by the shore, a squatting breakfast of raw squid, garlic cloves, hot peppers and Soju. We start our old-time music jam sessions with the tune, "Whiskey for Breakfast." I had that in Korea.
They took me to a church service. Must have been Baptist (it was in Korean language) because they had an "amen" guy saying that constantly throughout the service. Then off to where they lived for a piano recital by one of their daughters and a wonderful meal. They are an exceptionally gracious people. If there was chicken, it was lost in the variety of wonderful food.
Since I've never owned a television, I'm not objecting to your statement. But it wasn't toxic to the same degree that social media has become. Of course, the basic problem is the Homo sapiens is toxic. But that's another, albeit related, subject.
That is facile. The telephone enabled communication; television stifled it. Printing put knowledge into the hands of people who had been denied it; recording did the same for music.
What you're saying is as scrambled as "heroin and cocaine give people purpose."