FDR was the only president that fought for poor people. He used dirty tactics too. Everyone else that was a good guy didn’t have the spine or the political genius of FDR to get anything done.
WHY THE PAST 10 YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE HAVE BEEN UNIQUELY STUPID
- Thread starter OfTheCross
- Start date
FDR was the only president that fought for poor people. He used dirty tactics too. Everyone else that was a good guy didn’t have the spine or the political genius of FDR to get anything done.
White poor people
Saying that Haidt is too fond of the "good ol days" is fair. I'm obviously far more radical than Haidt on most issues.
But in terms of whether social media has been a largely positive or largely negative influence, I don't see the argument for positive as being viable anymore. It's clearly made society more negative, and not just on this one axis (creating political dysfunction through division) but on numerous ones (attention span, anxiety, addiction, body image, commercialization of life).
In terms of how important it is, I don't know how to address that on such a vague level. So let's get concrete? Does Donald Trump get elected without social media? No. So that's just one messed-up leader...but have you seen how much the same thing is happening globally? Marcos getting elected as president yesterday is fukking insane. Does it happen without social media? It's difficult to say, but what looks certain from my Filipino sources is that social media was a massive boost to his campaign. The democracy index shows that democracy has been declining broadly in Europe, North America, and Latin America since 2010, in the Middle East since 2013, and in Asia and Africa since 2016. Social media may not be the only factor in that decline but it does appear to be one. I've watched fascists take over in real time in places like India and the role of social media in that effort has been massive.
At some level, "how important has social media been in these declines" is an impossible question to answer, because there's no control group. But the argument that its impact has been largely negative appears difficult to dispute anymore.
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NZA
LOL
i do agree that social media has more negative impacts outside of politics, and i support some regulation of it to minimize that. however, there is no media that doesnt have problems. traditional media made people much more materialistic and vain, for instance. i support all evidence based efforts to find where social media is creating harm and regulations to prevent it. facebook appears to be out of control and actually was weaponized to some extent by russian intelligence.
i dont think trump wins without social media - and neither does obama. you can even say tv made JFK more likely to win - not due to any merit, just him looking better than nixon. this is not unique to social media, and depending on who wins, you may actually like the result - just like how voting always works. we also got global obama jrs like trudeax and macron in the internet era.
i dont even view america as having been a democracy for most of its existence. the fact that others around the world are struggling with democracy just means they are similar to american history pre-civil rights. as for fascism, the germans didnt even need tv let alone social media to go much further than any indian. certain factions never want democracy, others want just a semblance of democracy. if the ones who are authoritarian get their way, of course they will use government to rein in democracy. the truth is, there is some popular sentiment for this. that needs to actually be looked into. there are people in TLR who want stop and frisk to come back if they see a story about crime.
i think the world is becoming more honest, but not more accurate (if that makes sense). "honest" sentiment of various sectors are now identifiable. i think that is not necessarily something one measures when judging if social media is "good or bad", but it is something to consider.
i think honesty can help you diagnose and attack problems that normally go under the radar. the fact that citizens needed to record police brutality instead of journalists and pundits simply applying their skills to the phenomenon is an indication that MSM monopoly is suppressing all kinds of severe issues in society. those issues are still real, they just dont get focused on until something breaks. the break is not totally new, even if it occurs during a time of high social media use. that break may rely on social media to reach its logical progression, but it was a crack in society long before.
i view haidt's piece as a biased attempt to delay the inevitable, but i do think we have to do something about some aspects of social media.
Bobby Kennedy was easily going to be the GOAT president for poor folk and black folk both until he got clapped.
That's a good start for agreement.
You're ignoring my entire post about what narratives social media tends to support though. Social media is:
a) an agent of chaos
b) a booster to extremists
c) an elevator of fears
d) a friend to misinformation over truth
e) a friend to manufactured narratives over real-world nuance
Can a "better" candidate get lucky and use social media better in some instances? Perhaps (I don't know whether your examples are accurate or not). But in the long run, in general, it is far easier for terrible people to optimize social media than for good ones.
This entire argument again ignores that it is far easier for a fascist to optimize social media than it is for a democrat to do it, it is far easier for a liar to optimize social media than for an honest person to do so.
Unfortunately, I think that kind of "honesty" is in itself a huge problem. The good thing about hypocrisy is that it always pointed towards the correct standard. When a internally racist person is forced to condemn racists, it is a public act that affirms that racism is wrong. Over time, such a person's peers, children, followers, etc. are more likely to be anti-racist themselves, because they've internalized the concept that racism is wrong even though their own models hadn't internalized that themselves. But the more than "honest" sentiments become publicly acceptable, the less that growth occurs.
For a historic example, the hypocrisy of the Founding Fathers is a major reason why the USA was able to steadily ban slavery in the north and eventually across the country even though the country was fully founded on a backbone of racist abuse of Black folk. Jefferson and his ilk were evil in their personal conduct - but when they were hypocritical in public and claimed "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness", it enabled the Americans that followed them to push closer towards that reality. If Jefferson instead wrote the Declaration of Independence based on his "honest sentiments" as a slaveowner and abuser of black bodies, does that same progress occur?
Take It In Blood
Banned
Anti science, drill music and cancel culture
Breh you watch Joe Rogan and think Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro make a lot of sense, you're literally the person OP article is talking about.
Take It In Blood
Banned
OP believes women were created by Adams ribBreh you watch Joe Rogan and think Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro make a lot of sense, you're literally the person OP article is talking about.
NZA
LOL
a) i would argue the 20th century was far more chaotic. the climate of the 19th century led to assassination and civil war
b) MSM exploited extremists. they are just progressing in a way that you would expect if you keep dogwhistling to them in exchange for votes or compliance with the status quo.
b) again, i dont know how to grapple with this in an objective way. i doubt the chaos of the 20th century was lacking in fear in different sectors. the MSM made us worried about ww3 with the soviets
d) MSM misinforms us in its own particular ways. there would be no need for jet magazine if time magazine was doing right by all.
e) MSM crushes nuance with either the approved status quo line or forced both-sides. the status quo stuff leads to pushback eventually, and the forced both-sides stuff leads to an inability to hold the right wing accountable for anything. all pre-social media.
to put it simply, i dont see the platform as some unique danger that creates otherwise avoidable problems. history shows us that. the emotional appeal of this type of thinking is mostly for people privileged enough to not have to care about the true complexity that was being suppressed. ive been kinda guilty of this kind of thinking myself in some ways. it's extremely ahistorical and myopic. when i zoom out and look at the big picture, it is nothing but constant pressure applied to the most marginal until something breaks.
and we dont have enough time with social media to know what is happening in the long run.
it has never been easy for democrats to "optimize" any news media, traditional or new. this is a point of pain that cannot be easily dealt with. that is why democrats are always so calculating and compromising. progressives and radicals have been complaining about white moderates for ever. right extremists are to be harnessed, left extremists are to be neutralized. there is an inherent bias that is a feature of american politics, not the medium. it may be the same in other countries as well.
on hypocrisy - if the model isnt right, i dont really care about the political correctness. it's all a facade that apparently, can be easily undone with 140 characters. LOL. furthermore, the brits didnt need a hypocritical constitution to end slavery before us and without a civil war. and they didnt even view common white folk or celtic people as particularly worthy beings, let alone blacks.
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Rather than comparing to some irrelevant time period 200 years ago, would you say that social media itself has led the world to be more chaotic or less? Obviously in 200 years a huge amount of shyt has changed, no reasonable person would claim that you can measure the effect of social media by comparing the environment now to the environment in 1850, so why not compare to the era immediately previously with objective evidence - as I did when pointing out that democratic institutions are measurably regressing on every continent in real time.
And in terms of current chaos there are plenty of civil wars and assassinations happening right now, which is also driving the pro-fascism argument. "Let the fascists dominate because they rule with an iron fist and maintain control". Bootlickers claim Russia/India/Egypt/Brazil/Phillippines are "more stable" under violent nationalist rule than they were immediately before the fascists took control (most minority groups in those countries would say you're full of shyt), but that isn't a great measure of success.
That's exactly how the chaos of social media breeds fascism - people use social media to depict the world as out of control, "Look at all these riots! Look at all this violence! Look at all this crime!" and then propose that only a fascist could truly bring back control.
I don't see even the barest basis of support that MSM enhanced extremism more than social media does.
Well, here is one objective approach:
Social Media Use Is Linked to a Fear of Crime
And yet the promotion of misinformation on social media is orders of magnitudes worse, due to inherent nature of social media. I don't know how you can even begin to deny that.
False news travels 6 times faster on Twitter than truthful news
And yet the degree of nuance in the average news story is order of magnitude deeper than the nuance in a viral Tweet or facebook meme. Again, I have trouble believing that you don't know that.
Yet they did it for the exact same reason - because they realized they were being hypocritical to their ideals. The primary difference is that in Britain the driving force behind the abolitionist movement were religious ideals (Evangelical Christians pointing out that all persons were equal under God and thus it was hypocritical to treat Black persons as lesser) whereas in the USA the abolitionist movement was a meld of religious and secular ideals (Mennonites and Quakers pushing the religious equality argument while secular abolitionists pushed the political one).
One of the main reasons slavery lasted as long as it did in the USA was because inequality was already protected in official language at multiple levels and the slavers fell back on those previous agreements and statements. If we had had it your way, affirmation of slavery would have been even more resolutely established into the Constitution and other legal documents from the beginning and there would have been even less of a common narrative from which to attack it.
NZA
LOL
first let me say that im not particularly focused on recent international politics or really anything outside the scope of what this thread was supposed to be about. if somebody is living in a nation that doesnt have even a pretense toward something like the 1st ammendment, then they may be dealing with heavily curated internet. im not really making arguments for cases very far removed from america or american styled social media access. my comments need to be taken in the context of the article about why american life is now dumber than usual...
i take a look at the big picture because in the long view, democracy is not strong. we have barely had it. it is always going to be difficult to have for any and every reason. some of the people talking about democracy the most dont even really want everyone to have it. in a climate like that, regression can occur with growing income inequality, climate change, changes in the world order, immigration, or whatever. college graduates cant afford a place to live and there is no mass political movement on either side to put their energy into. we can look at those material things or just blame twitter. fascism is not coded into social media; social media is used by a lot of fascists, which makes it lucrative, just like the rest of the media.
that article also says the traditional media was stoking fear before social media. the common denominator in america is fear of urban crime, white supremacy, and capitalism incentivizing journalism.
i didnt say MSM enhanced extremism. i did say that it exploited them and then they progressed. extremists are not merely passive actors; they take a look at the situation and will make advances if allowed. there are risks involved with attempting to corral and exploit them, as the lincoln project republicans have learned.
i agree that there are more social media accounts spreading misinformation than there are traditional media accounts doing the same. people are biased and intellectually dishonest, so they actually want to be deceived if it conforms to their worldview. this is not in any way counter to what im saying. i actually said in the other post that social media gives us honesty without accuracy...
as for your comment about nuance, i dont even see where we disagree. just because i point out the flaws of older media, that does not mean i am saying that social media is flawless. i am saying that they are all loaded with their own particular quirks.
on slavery, i dont take the high-minded ethics of white people as a whole seriously. instead, in the kingdom, i would argue that increasing slave rebellions, slave owner payouts, and changing economic conditions actually did more to bring an end to brit slavery than morals. any explanation that doesnt prioritize the practical, material reasons and instead asserts white morals and the constitution, or common white narratives as forces for better behavior is some prager university type stuff.
Haidt? Nah I'm good.
These dudes love talking about "elites" something crazy.
Remember, Haidt was the one who OPPOSED letting minorities into his local school
Manhattan parents decry proposal designed to diversify city's most sought-after high schools
Others, who acknowledged how segregated the system is, urged more investment in black and Hispanic students to improve their academic opportunities and characterized the plan as a well-intended proposal that will flop. Some said the plan will create a “snake pit” among middle schoolers, who will resort to vicious competition.
“Put yourself in the place of the black and Hispanic kids who are there because of counting methods,” said Jon Haidt, a professor of social psychology at New York University, who has a seventh-grader at The New York City Lab School for Collaborative Studies.
This piece of shyt insinuated that black kids who "unfairly" get in will feel that they didn't "earn" it
Remember, Haidt was the one who OPPOSED letting minorities into his local school
Manhattan parents decry proposal designed to diversify city's most sought-after high schools
Others, who acknowledged how segregated the system is, urged more investment in black and Hispanic students to improve their academic opportunities and characterized the plan as a well-intended proposal that will flop. Some said the plan will create a “snake pit” among middle schoolers, who will resort to vicious competition.
“Put yourself in the place of the black and Hispanic kids who are there because of counting methods,” said Jon Haidt, a professor of social psychology at New York University, who has a seventh-grader at The New York City Lab School for Collaborative Studies.
This piece of shyt insinuated that black kids who "unfairly" get in will feel that they didn't "earn" it