That people take their behavior cues from social media comes as no surprise to me, nor should it to you.
As long as I've been alive it's been obvious that people take their cues from television, which tells them how they are supposed to act. Since before my teens I have had vast contempt for this level of conformity and have called it "s…
That people take their behavior cues from social media comes as no surprise to me, nor should it to you.
As long as I've been alive it's been obvious that people take their cues from television, which tells them how they are supposed to act. Since before my teens I have had vast contempt for this level of conformity and have called it "sposta," the colloquial pronunciation of "supposed to." And most of all from TV ads, which have to be upbeat and perky to Sell The Product. Manipulatively drawing people in.
Leading this charge is The Smile. The Smile is youthful, it's attractive, people will click a link to something otherwise uninteresting if the link is below Smile. In my high school there was a hallway of yearbook photos going back to the late 19th century. Up until around 1955 the expressions were serious, from solemn to engaging, and postures were vertical and facing the camera. Later you saw that broken neck with the elbow on the knee that has become the standard, with, yup, The Smile.
My uncle gave me some books from the middle of the last century by a satirist who went by the single name Osborne, and in one of them he talked about this. Reading it in my teens affected me deeply. The effect contributed to losing my job teaching because my students compained that I didn't smile all the time (I have minor facial paralysis and cannot smile except in reaction, not that I would if I could).
Vietnamese girls *are* instructed to smile all the time; one of my students kept a vapid expression on her face as I described a gang of kids on motorbikes kicking a little lost dog to death. The girl who sent me into motorbike tumble was beaming at the air like she had a 16oz Coke bottle in her. They make misogyny tempting.
I smile very rarely. I am not going to let TV ads tell me how I'm sposta behave.
Looking at ancestral family pictures 3+ generations back they all looked like Baptist ministers about to preach hell fire and damnation. The oldest picture with a smile is my maternal grandmother. A genuine unforced smile. She was a beauty.
That people take their behavior cues from social media comes as no surprise to me, nor should it to you.
As long as I've been alive it's been obvious that people take their cues from television, which tells them how they are supposed to act. Since before my teens I have had vast contempt for this level of conformity and have called it "sposta," the colloquial pronunciation of "supposed to." And most of all from TV ads, which have to be upbeat and perky to Sell The Product. Manipulatively drawing people in.
Leading this charge is The Smile. The Smile is youthful, it's attractive, people will click a link to something otherwise uninteresting if the link is below Smile. In my high school there was a hallway of yearbook photos going back to the late 19th century. Up until around 1955 the expressions were serious, from solemn to engaging, and postures were vertical and facing the camera. Later you saw that broken neck with the elbow on the knee that has become the standard, with, yup, The Smile.
My uncle gave me some books from the middle of the last century by a satirist who went by the single name Osborne, and in one of them he talked about this. Reading it in my teens affected me deeply. The effect contributed to losing my job teaching because my students compained that I didn't smile all the time (I have minor facial paralysis and cannot smile except in reaction, not that I would if I could).
Vietnamese girls *are* instructed to smile all the time; one of my students kept a vapid expression on her face as I described a gang of kids on motorbikes kicking a little lost dog to death. The girl who sent me into motorbike tumble was beaming at the air like she had a 16oz Coke bottle in her. They make misogyny tempting.
I smile very rarely. I am not going to let TV ads tell me how I'm sposta behave.
Looking at ancestral family pictures 3+ generations back they all looked like Baptist ministers about to preach hell fire and damnation. The oldest picture with a smile is my maternal grandmother. A genuine unforced smile. She was a beauty.