I don’t think the question was condescending. ‘Digitile’ is not standard English, so he asks her to explain what she meant. He’s inviting her to say something more specific than “I’m mad at the world,” which is already clear. She explains “They are trying to make us robots, where we have no choice”. I think her word is a portmanteau of ‘digital’ and ‘infantilize’, and is meant to express resentment at a world that being increasingly controlled by big tech and big data, and by the rich men who control that other world, and whose machines are coming for her job.
Whether she also realizes that she has gotten sucked into a manipulative cult that has no interest in helping her but simply preys on her grievances and misfortunes, I’m not so sure.
They’re going to have less opportunity than she did because the educational system is much worse than when she was going through it. That’s not a Trump thing, that’s a half-century concerted effort by multiple players in one political party. And she can’t help them because she’s squandered any educational advantage she ever had by filling her brain with nonsense. It’s a form of drug addiction, to desperately fill every waking hour with right-wing propaganda.
But they COULD have a much better life than hers, if they just get away from her and learn how to prepare their own path instead of whining incoherently as she does.
Think about the coal miners who have refused free training to learn new jobs in alternative energy, or healthcare, etc. Better paying jobs, with a lot less danger and health issues, but nah…they’d rather whine that liberals are taking away their coal jobs.
No one owes them a job. That’s what they tell others, right? Well, that’s one of the basic rules of capitalism. Maybe they should start to realize that they backed the wrong team.
I mean, to be fair, every robotics lab seems to have some creepy sex-doll adjacent “female robot” project, and they always act like they’re actually sentient, e.g.
…but yeah, probably.
I think it’s more basic - mixing “digital” with “digitize” and coming up with word salad (and not knowing enough to realize it and correct herself).
Yeah, I also don’t think that’s the issue - she represents a group that definitely doesn’t listen to those outside their extreme right-wing media bubble because they think everyone else is a Satanic child molester (literally - and were saying so at the event). They’ve absolutely gone out of their way to isolate themselves from the reality of others. The rest of us do listen to them and know perfectly well what they think, though - and it’s completely insane.
I know it’s really appealing to try to think of it as a “both sides” issue to some degree, where if maybe we reach out a bit more, it might go some way to solving the problem, but unfortunately the problem really is all on their side and there’s very little we can do to force them to confront - and meet us in - reality. Extending a hand and trying to meet in the middle is an admirable instinct that just does not work in this situation.
Hey I just wanted to put out a thanks to the BB community for keeping it real in here.
I don’t have all my wits and emotions about me lately, not sure that anyone really does anymore, so apologies if I sounded… scoldy.
I still don’t particularly love the make-fun-of-the-other-side spirit of some posts, but I have to admit it’s coming from a smart, sincere, and well meaning place. Shit’s really weird and scary in every direction right now, I wish it was as easy as just listening to “the other side” - and it’s hard to accept that it’s not, ya know?
Either way, thanks for calling me out when I’m dumb.
Well y’know… I’m getting real fuckin’ tired of people describing fascists and their enablers who would happily see me dead as ‘people we disagree with.’
Just sayin’.
Sure thing, we’ll get right on that.
Personally, I’ll follow suit just as soon as people on the extreme right start ‘showing some empathy’ for Black folks, women, LGBTQ+ folks, the disabled, the obese, the elderly and anyone who isn’t White male and cis-het.
But just FYI, I do decline to hold my breath while I wait.
Sorry, I just caved in and watched that video. She’s clearly talking about the 5g/nanochips/rfid conspiracy idea, where nefarious powers inject us with nefarious technology to do nefarious things.
There is nothing else. Certainly nothing to discuss. Sure, there may be such a thing as surveillance capitalism, but I bet that the moment something becomes convenient to her, like carrying a smartphone or paying by card, all her concerns go out of the window. Magical thinking all the way through.
Seriously? Hundreds of idiots (I use that there very specifically) drive their trucks north to protest against a life saving therapy.
And THEN we should all have this feeling that we should mollycoddle “them” to make people with your perspective feel comfortable?
There is no way I or others should or could personally attack you for this absolutely strange inner logic you have expressed. You are entitled to your own thinking.
But seriously, should we as a society allow a crazed group of logistics operators to decide what is best of us and our children?
If THEY can create crazed events to alter peoples perception of reality, then why can’t others?
Do those still exist? Because we need a lot more of them. And that’s a real question, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. Seems more like for the past few decades society has been systematically destroying all the institutions and norms that used to allow movements to be organized. Plus, I suspect even before that they were a lot less organized in practice than they seemed from outside and afterwards do to the more selective recording and reporting that pre-internet media made necessary.
They do, and they work. I’m mainly involved in stuff on the regional level, and mainly environmental, and we’ve been making progress on a lot of stuff. To a more limited extent, voting and other stuff here. For example, in the past 12 years we got ranked choice voting, legalized gay marriage in the State, and recreational marijuana, enacted producer-based plastic recycling requirements, and stopped some really hazardous mining operations from starting up north, just to name a few things.
IME, Well organized movements offer informational sessions for participants, training, and they usually have a few designated spokespeople that you should point any press people towards if they come asking questions during a public demonstration like the one this lady was at.
The thing to remember is that it will never be done. They will always come back and try to take our rights away and pollute the commons. So we just keep defending stuff, finding a way to do it that we can maintain without losing hope I hope you can find something that feels worthwhile wherever you are.
FWIW, her unintentional portmanteau is pretty great; digital and infantilize in one word.
It describes children handed iPhones almost directly after birth and glued to them forever and you see freak out when it’s taken away at the grocery store etc.
I like the word, but I don’t like this lady at all.
It reminds me of how people jump to defend the mentally ill only when a drunk person attacks some one or makes a scene on a plane because it’s unfair to show them like that. No, what’s unfair is that seeing people threaten others on a plane is the only thing that seems to halfway motivate most people to see even rhetorical value in improving medical care (because you really cannot have mental health without a significant part of the rest of your health).
If we’re so damned ashamed that this is who we are, and that this woman is the product of our great society… well…
I agree with all of that. However, she doesn’t exist in a container. Deciding that such a large number of people are too stupid, or racist or whatever to deal with is not a great strategy. Especially given that the political system we work in gives rural areas such a political advantage and that’s not changing.
I do often think about coal miners. Given the choice of going back into mines versus what the democrats were offering, they chose to support the guy sending them back into the mines. I mean I guess we could say they are all morons. But i think political malpractice on the democratic side is more likely.
We have a constitutional structure that can very much be used to ensure basic human and civil rights for all of us, but we want that to work, we have to start by describing what some are doing to undermine the rights of others as what it fucking is. It’s not people being “dumb”. It’s very much people with an agenda, stirring up their base, to win power, and to erode the hard fought rights of various groups in this country (POC, women, the LGBQT+ community, etc) in order to stay in power as a minority party. Their voters are leaning into that, not ignorant of it. By dismissing them as “dumb” or having “economic anxiety” it really papers over the damage being done, in real time, to the lives of millions of Americans. YOU might not be personally impacted, but I promise you that lots of us on this BBS are, in one way or another.
We need to start by telling the truth about what has happened to the GOP over the past 50 or so years, which is that it has captured the racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic vote and has decided to run with that instead of offering actual policies that improves the lives of their constituents. They only have hate, deregulation and tax cuts to offer, and that’s not going improve the lives of people who are actually hurting - which is not rich assholes who have the time and money to drive in circles around DC.
Your opinions are welcome here. And you are obviously an empathetic person, but that can easily cross over into concern driving trollies or be mistaken for it. We all know that online commentary sometimes makes it difficult to convey nuance, and there is no vocal or visual clue to help to enhance our understanding of the statement. Anyway, we all care, and we all want to learn or we would not be here. Stick around.
I hope you can find something that feels worthwhile wherever you are.
