You are bringing your own perspective and prejudices to this.
From the PDF:
“Read magazines and books which explain the world – Science, Nature, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly. Go for magazines that connect the dots and don’t shy away from presenting the complexities of life – or from purely entertaining you. The world is complicated, and we can do nothing about it. So, you must read longish and deep articles and books that represent its complexity. Try reading a book a week. Better two or three. History is good. Biology. Psychology. That way you’ll learn to understand the underlying mechanisms of the world. Go deep instead of broad. Enjoy material that truly interests you. Have fun reading.”
I see social media as a tool, like any other tool. The tool itself is neutral; what counts is how it’s used. Some people choose to use it constructively, by sharing art and information, fundraising and working together for good causes, and building communities among people who they never would have known otherwise. Others go for destructive ends, spreading hatred and lies, bullying their opponents, and tearing down anything and everyone that doesn’t suit them. Others can go back and forth, depending on the day.
It’s easy to get sucked into the endorphin loop when engaging in social media. I’ve done it. This past weekend I let myself get drawn into a book forum argument about a particular plotline. As much as I enjoyed sharing theories and pulling evidence out of beloved books… I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t an element of “I can’t leave, someone is wrong on the Internet” involved in my participation, though I tried to keep myself focused on the arguments and books themselves. I’m only human.
Moderation helps, a lot, in creating an overall tone and pattern of behavior for a forum. Smaller sites are much easier to manage than behemoths like Facebook and TwitterXchan. And, as we’ve seen, whoever owns the site can have a huge influence on how it runs, which voices get promoted and which get supressed.
At the end of the day, I think the drive to connect and communicate is part of human nature, and for better or worse, social media scratches that itch. We have to decide for ourselves how and where to participate, or not. There’s no shame in withdrawing if it’s not working for you, and there’s no shame in participating if it brings value to you. I do believe using social media well requires self-regulation and a sense of responsibility… but I’m still working out for myself what that should mean for me.
I disagree with what I told you I disagree with: his advice to turn off the news and get your information from your friends and colleagues. That’s not my perspective, that’s literally what he said. And I also stand by what I said next: that the average person may not be able to afford a subscription to Science, Nature, the New Yorker, and Atlantic Monthly. When you’re living paycheck to paycheck, which a lot of people are, you’re not going to pay for news and information. You’re just not. Is FoxNews a good source? Hell no. MSNBC? Marginally better. ABC, CBS, NBC? Again, marginally better. But those are a lot more accessible to most people. Let’s try to fix those. The major networks’ news divisions used to be provided as a public service, and were not expected to be profitable. And they weren’t. But because Capitalism Fixes All , we threw that away and these corporations decided their news divisions had to be profitable. That’s a problem. But giving up on those sources in favor of other corporate sources that, in your estimation, are more reliable is not the answer. The New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly are not as unbiased as you seem to think. Also, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, they are not as accessible to most people.
Reading books is awesome. Everyone should. But, again, when you’re living paycheck to paycheck, you’re not doing that. You also still need to be informed about what is going on in your world right now.
And lastly, this part, I disagree with about as strongly as it is possible to disagree with anything:
The world is complicated, and we can do nothing about it.
The world is complicated, but this fatalistic bullshit will get us all killed. No thank you.
Um… yeah. People aren’t neutral. Ever. Even if they think that they are the most objective and rational actor in history, that’s just not the case. Ever. Of course people bring their own experiences and perspectives to argumentative essays. The person who wrote that essay is making an argument, based on his own subjective experiences of the world, and of course people are going to answer from their own subjective experiences, because those matter in how you navigate the world.
In fact, people who are deeply read (especially in history) and engaged in the world (rather than ignoring it) know that while the world is indeed complicated, it’s people that make change happen. We do make our own history, even if it’s not in the circumstances we’d best like. But we DO, and historical scholarship is full of examples of how that’s true. Fatalistic bullshit is spot-on!
There’s nothing more disheartening to me than coming across someone’s social media account where it’s nothing but shared memes and jokes that are all conservative conspiracy mongering and hate speech, particularly when it’s stuff you can easily disprove via fact-checking sites or publicly available government info.
Case in point: this idea that gas prices are high because Biden has cut oil production, which seems to be a whispering campaign that never actually cites any sources (and is contrary to everything you can find online with just some basic googling.)
It’s the kind of thing where I really really want to point out their fallacies and lack of evidence, but know it’s like bailing out the ocean. Face-to-face, in a friendly way I could say “is that true or is it just something you heard?” and see where it goes, but online the result is a pig-pile of angry invective from a crowd that materializes out of nowhere.
The nature of social media means there is always this lurking mob ready to drown out reasonable discussion, and sometimes it really feels like the monsters are winning.
You’ve read me long enough to know i don’t agree with binary anything. In the world we’re in, with attention spans of milliseconds, and information silos everywhere, yes, i do find BB a breath of fresh air. Not perfect, but if it involves humans, it will not be. These happen to be humans i get along with, and share interests with, for the most part. We’ve seen enough kerfuffles lately to be able to safely say not perfect, but for me, and speaking only for me, pretty good, certainly good enough to keep working at it.
I respect both of your comments but you are supporting someone who hasn’t read the article and has taken a position on what they think that it is saying.
I hear you. I’ve felt that same despair. But I’ve found accounts that showed me that no, I’m not the only person in the world that holds a particular opinion or value. There are still people out there fighting the good fight, even though the tides of hate and fear threaten to drown us all. I choose to take some comfort in knowing I’m not alone in all this. It’s not much in the face of the horror we’re seeing in the world, but it’s something.
The Block button became a very good friend of mine when I was semi-active on Xchan. Taking breaks when we’re overwhelmed helps. “Switching channels” to more wholesome content for a little while does too, to help keep ourself balanced and healthy. And yes, I’m very much in favor of doing our own fact-checking, even (especially!) when it’s something I’d like to accept as truth. I’ve learned quite a few things that way.
All we can do is the best we can. I wish I could say something better than that in response, but I’m struggling on how to deal with all myself, and I haven’t figured it out yet.
Edit to add: that was supposed to be a reply to @generic_name 's last post, I’m not sure how it got detatched. Did another edit to add a link to the specified post.
You apparently didn’t read @danimagoo’s comment, where she said that she read the start of it, and then skimmed the rest… sometimes that’s more than enough to know the general argument.
But again, it’s not a law of the universe, it’s an opinion. People disagree with that opinion.
Which not everyone has the ability to get to or the time to go, or even the time to read for both information and/or pleasure. Some people work 3 jobs just to put food on the fucking table. The ability to have time to both seek out books and to read books is often a privilege that not everyone has.
Again, the point of access and privilege still is relevant here.
What’s your point? Public libraries were created to address monetary privilege - are you arguing that they’re somehow bad because they don’t perfectly address all other kinds of privilege, and aren’t perfectly funded, and are under attack?
Public libraries are a wonderful thing! But because of the various factors mentioned, they are an imperfect and only a partial solution to the “lack of accessible information” dilemma.
, we threw that away and these corporations decided their news divisions had to be profitable. That’s a problem. But giving up on those sources in favor of other corporate sources that, in your estimation, are more reliable is not the answer. The New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly are not as unbiased as you seem to think. Also, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, they are not as accessible to most people.
