Comment by ToucanLoucan
2 years ago
I mean if the last 20 years is to be taken as evidence, it seems big tech is more than happy to shotgun unproven and unstudied technology straight into the brains of our most vulnerable populations and just see what the fuck happens. Results so far include a lot of benign nothing but also a whole lot of eating disorders, maxed out parents credit cards, attention issues, rampant misogyny among young boys, etc. Which, granted, the readiness to fuck with populations at scale and do immeasurable harm doesn't really make tech unique as an industry, just more of the same really.
But you know, we'll feed people into any kind of meat grinder we can build as long as the line goes up.
i am very skeptical of narratives saying that young boys or men are more misogynistic than in the past. we have a cognitive bias towards thinking the past is better than it was, but specifically on gender issues i just do not buy a regression
> i am very skeptical of narratives saying that young boys or men are more misogynistic than in the past.
They don't even have to be more misogynistic than in the past for there to be a detrimental effect. Because so many other things in society -- pre-school and school environments, upbringing by more enlightened parents than what those parents themselves had, etc etc[1] -- cooperate to make young men and boys less misogynistic than in the past... But maybe that effect would be even more pronounced without shitty influences from social media; don't you think it's possible that all the online crap inhibits the good influences, so without it the kids would be even better?
[1]: From comparing my sons' generation to what I remember of my own youth and childhood.
Maybe in the US context. In the global context I think social media is almost certainly net anti-sexist compared to the attitudes parents are passing down.
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I mean, I don't know if it's better or worse than it was. I do know that it's bad, thanks to tons of studies on the subject covering a wide range of little kids who watch shitheads like Andrew Tate, Fresh & Fit, etc. Most grow out of it, but speaking as someone who did, I would be a much better and happier person today if I was never exposed to that garbage in the first place, and it's resulted in stunted social skills I am still unwinding from in my thirties.
This shit isn't funny, it's mental poison and massive social media networks make BANK shoving it front of young men who don't understand how bad it is until it's WAY too late. I know we can't eliminate every kind of shithead from society, that's simply not possible. But I would happily settle for a strong second-place achievement if we could not have companies making massive profits off of destroying people's minds.
Blaming the internet for misogyny is kind of bizarre, given that current levels of misogyny are within a couple points of all-time historical lows. The internet was invented ~40 years ago. Women started getting vote ~100 years ago. Do you think the internet has returned us to pre-women's-suffrage levels of misogyny?
> Do you think the internet has returned us to pre-women's-suffrage levels of misogyny?
Well in the States at least we did just revoke a sizable amount of their bodily autonomy so, the situation may not be that bad, yet, but I wouldn't call it good by any measurement. Any my objection isn't "that sexism exists in society," that is probably going to be true as a statement until the sun explodes, and possibly after that if we actually nail down space travel as a technology and get off this particular rock. My issue is massive corporations making billions of dollars facilitating men who want to spread sexist ideas, and paying them for the pleasure. That's what I have an issue with.
Be whatever kind of asshole you see fit to be, the purity of your soul is no one's concern but yours, and if you have one, whatever god you worship. I just don't want you being paid for it, and I feel that's a reasonable line to draw.
I am firmly in favor of abortion rights but still I do not think that is even remotely a good bellwether to measure sexism/misogyny.
1. Women are more likely than men to be opposed to abortion rights. 2. Many people who are opposed to abortion rights have legitimately held moral concerns that are not simply because they have no respect for women's rights. 3. Roe v. Wade was the decision of 9 people. It absolutely did not reflect public opinion at the time - nothing even close to as expansive would possibly have passed in a referendum in 1974. Compare that to now, where multiple states that are known abortion holdouts have repealed abortion restrictions in referenda - and it is obvious that people are moving to the left on this issue compared to where we were in 1974.
Social media facilitates communication. As long as there is sexism and freedom of communication, there will be people making money off of facilitating sexist communication because there will be people making money off of facilitating communication writ large. It's like blaming a toll highway for facilitating someone trafficking drugs. They are also making money off of facilitating anti-sexist communication - and the world as a whole is becoming less sexist, partially in my view due to the spread of views facilitated by the internet.
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Do you believe that no subfactor can ever have a sign opposite of the factor of which it is a component?
In general it can. In this specific case, I really struggle to see even a single dimension in which young boys are more misogynistic now than they were 2 decades ago. The original comment mentions Andrew Tate - in the early 2000s there was an entire genre of Andrew Tates called "pickup artists".
Please look up the history of maxing out credit cards, eating disorders, attention disorders, and misogyny. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that anything before your birth was the Garden of Eden and that the parade of horribles existed only because of "big tech". What is next? Blaming big tech for making teenagers horny and defiant?
> You seem to be under the mistaken impression that anything before your birth was the Garden of Eden and that the parade of horribles existed only because of "big tech"
Please point out where I said that. Because what I wrote was:
> I mean if the last 20 years is to be taken as evidence, it seems big tech is more than happy to shotgun unproven and unstudied technology straight into the brains of our most vulnerable populations and just see what the fuck happens. Results so far include a lot of benign nothing but also a whole lot of eating disorders, maxed out parents credit cards, attention issues, rampant misogyny among young boys, etc. Which, granted, the readiness to fuck with populations at scale and do immeasurable harm doesn't really make tech unique as an industry, just more of the same really.
Which not only is not romanticizing the past, in fact I directly point out that making tons of people's lives worse for profit was a thing in industry long before tech came along, but also do not directly implicate tech as creating sexism, exploiting people financially, or fucking up young women's brains any differently, simply doing it more. Like most things with tech, it wasn't revolutionary new social harms, it was just social harms delivered algorithmically, to the most vulnerable, and highly personalized to what they are acutely vulnerable to in specific.
That is not a new thing, by any means, it's simply better targeted and more profitable, which is great innovation providing you lack a conscience and see people as only a resource to be exploited for your own profit, which a lot of the tech sector seems to.
> maxing out credit cards, eating disorders, attention disorders, and misogyny
social media doesn't create these, but it most definitely amplifies them