Comment by gchamonlive
1 month ago
So if you are helpless in a world dominated by the billionaires and the clerics of psychological research, what's the hope for the average person? Should we just accept our fate and waste away in endless Instagram feeds, alcohol, drugs, gambling and all forms of addiction? These need to be managed at society level, banning or taxing goods. But no amount of regulation can compensate for someone determined to destroy himself. So yeah, it's your fault. But it's also society's fault. And at the end of the day the most effective thing you have is your choice.
>So yeah, it's your fault
This framing is doing so much PR work for the alcohol/tobacco/social media companies of the world. Effectively removes any blame from the corporations making billions of dollars off harming our societies.
It doesn't, or it shouldn't, but you are right, they subvert any responsibility the individual has so they can offload their responsibility into them. But my mistake here is not realising that people under abstinence doesn't behave as if they had any choice. In any case, my original comment was about social media only, which I think has a lot of psychological pressure over the individual, but doesn't have the pharmacological component.