My "radical" belief: social media and the modern axis of port-side mainstream media outlets are the worst thing to happen to this country since slavery.
I think you could make just as good a case for banning them as banning crack or bazookas. At a minimum, we should be breaking up the monopolies to minimize the damage they're causing
Loved the piece, John. Don’t mean to oversimplify things but it would seem to me that there is an insatiable demand for the Doritos these days and a devil’s advocate might say the corporate media are just feeding the pigs while they are hungry. Seems to me we have a bad cocktail of shorter attention spans, tribal politics and we both know we aren’t getting any smarter as a society and I expect the dumbing down of our society is about to get worse with the new math and history curriculum. Just signed up and looking forward to catching up on the archives
Unfortunately, because the social media gurus have all this down to a science, they can give people exactly what they want, even if they don't know they want it. If you're a teen girl worried about your weight, YouTube can feed you videos about anorexia. If you are interested in astrology, YouTube can tell you all about flat earth theory. If you don't like the other side, Twitter can feed you stories that will convince you that they're demons and people will click, click, click away.
The sad truth is that there are an awful lot of things in this world that people shouldn't do because they will like it too much and it's ultimately bad for them. We are increasingly losing sight of that as a society and yes, Doritos journalism is one of those things, but it's far the only one of those things.
At the risk of beating the Doritos analogy to death, I do love Doritos and have to admit that the feeling I have after eating too many of them is the same as consuming too much social media!
My "radical" belief: social media and the modern axis of port-side mainstream media outlets are the worst thing to happen to this country since slavery.
I think you could make just as good a case for banning them as banning crack or bazookas. At a minimum, we should be breaking up the monopolies to minimize the damage they're causing
Agreed.
Loved the piece, John. Don’t mean to oversimplify things but it would seem to me that there is an insatiable demand for the Doritos these days and a devil’s advocate might say the corporate media are just feeding the pigs while they are hungry. Seems to me we have a bad cocktail of shorter attention spans, tribal politics and we both know we aren’t getting any smarter as a society and I expect the dumbing down of our society is about to get worse with the new math and history curriculum. Just signed up and looking forward to catching up on the archives
Unfortunately, because the social media gurus have all this down to a science, they can give people exactly what they want, even if they don't know they want it. If you're a teen girl worried about your weight, YouTube can feed you videos about anorexia. If you are interested in astrology, YouTube can tell you all about flat earth theory. If you don't like the other side, Twitter can feed you stories that will convince you that they're demons and people will click, click, click away.
The sad truth is that there are an awful lot of things in this world that people shouldn't do because they will like it too much and it's ultimately bad for them. We are increasingly losing sight of that as a society and yes, Doritos journalism is one of those things, but it's far the only one of those things.
At the risk of beating the Doritos analogy to death, I do love Doritos and have to admit that the feeling I have after eating too many of them is the same as consuming too much social media!
Are shorter attention spans and tribal politics the cause of social media, or are they the result of it? My guess would be they are the result.
I think social media has a lot to do with shrinking attention spans, but I think tribalism is always with us and it's just accentuating the trend.