SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
When we consider how much time young people spend on social media, negative news content may have a bad impact. And those already psychologically vulnerable may be particularly susceptible to the ill effects of a constant stream of negative news. This is because stress responses are often accentuated in those already suffering from symptoms of anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses.
So, it is encouraging to see some technology companies proactively showing concern about their users' mental health. For example, Twitter is teaming up with the youth mental health organisation ReachOut to provide resources to help young people learn about the possible negative impacts of social media, so they won't be overly consumed by it and know how to cope if they are.
This is a good start – Twitter is making more information available. But it can do more, and Twitter shouldn't be the only one doing it.
Yes, I'm certain this is exactly what is needed. Much better idea than shutting your Twitter app.
Source: The Conversation
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday June 02 2017, @04:43PM (10 children)
This is a good start – Twitter is making more information available.
I can think of a better start: stop using Twitter. There is nothing good about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @10:07PM (9 children)
There are 320+ million people [statista.com] who do get value from twitter.
Your failure to use twitter effectively does not mean there is no good about it. Only that you can't figure it out.
Whinges like yours about twitter, facebook, instagram, etc are the modern version of old people with their VCRs perma-blinking 12:00.
Social media has plenty of problems, but to proclaim it has no value is just virtue signaling of the lamest kind.
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Friday June 02 2017, @10:16PM (6 children)
Or if you're too weak to survive real news then maybe shutting it down rather than screwing it up for everyone is the best solution. Some people just can't handle real life, that doesn't mean real life needs to change to suit them.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday June 02 2017, @11:14PM (3 children)
Well, to be fair, there's nothing but bad news everywhere.
Can't we see more human-interest stories about fund-raisers saving the kitten-orphanage?
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Saturday June 03 2017, @12:05AM
Good point. Or categorize things such that if you want to read about happy things you only get happy things. If you select "What's going on in my area" and awful things happen to be going on...caveat emptor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @05:51AM
"Well, to be fair, there's nothing but bad news everywhere.
Can't we see more human-interest stories about fund-raisers saving the kitten-orphanage?"
.
.
.
Surely you are aware that "bad news" is artificially emphasized by the news outlets BECAUSE THEY ARE TRYING TO INCREASE THEIR RATINGS.
This is an old phenomenon but is no less true because it is old.
There's plenty of good in the world -- but you have to look for it instead of expecting to be spoon-fed such happy news, because news outlets
thrive on bad news.
In fact I really DID save a kitten today. I am not joking. I found a stray kitten in my back yard and I took it to a vet and paid for all the necessary
initial medical care and set up a plan for adoption for the kitten with zero risk of euthanasia in the event it takes a while for adoption.
I can tell you without getting sentimental that it felt pretty damned good to help a somewhat helpless animal make progress toward what
I hope is a happy life. In a manner of speaking, I "created" my own "good news" by doing this. I submit that doing nice things is something
which is within reach for nearly all people. You just have to look for opportunities and then take action.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @12:16AM
I go to a local news site to read those. It does tend to restore a little bit of faith in humanity for me.
In general, though, I've taken the approach suggested above. I no longer read political or most news nearly as much as I used to. If it's about Trump I don't read it at all. Soylent is probably the only news site I visit on a daily basis.
I've learned I have absolutely no say in what politicians do. I now understand why people don't vote. So I don't see any reason to subject myself to something that's only going to cause me emotional distress.
At first I was worried because it's still real whether I know about it or not. However, if anything is going to happen that might affect me personally, and so much of it just simply doesn't, I'll find out about it without the media's help. It's not like giving the media my eyeballs was giving me a say in anything anyway.
It's still weird to me that I don't think I'm going to vote in 2018. I used to be very enthusiastic about voting. I'd nag everyone I knew who wasn't going to vote and if they didn't have a car offer them rides to their polling station. But really when was the last time somebody I thought was the best person for any office got elected and especially for a reason that was even close to my reasoning? All the Green and Libertarian candidates I've voted for just simply can't get in. The system is rigged. So there's absolutely no point in participating in it or even hearing about it.
I do still like science news, and I'm encouraged that we've gotten a lot more science submissions it seems in the past week or two. Learning more about this universe is fascinating to me. I just so have no more interest in what the dominant lifeform on this planet is failing at today or what new cruelty they've decided to subject themselves or other life forms they share this planet with to today.
If there's a decent candidate in 2018 or 2020, I might bother with voting, but only for them. I'll be leaving the rest of the ballot blank. Whether the asshole who gets in has an R or a D after their name just so does not matter to me. An R or D will get in, and a G or L doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell except for maybe city offices or a state office here or there. If both the R and D suck, I leave the decision about the kind of suck-a-tude we have to live with for their term up to others. It will suck no matter what. The D team will do things to try to make life easier for my demographic, and the R team will overreact every single time and make things worse for my demographic, almost as though that had been the plan all along.
I wish my demographic were more understood, but the older I get the more I realize that the only way to understand my demographic is to be forced into it by fate. I used to think that things about my demographic could be explained and understood. But it can't, and it never will. My demographic is only 0.01% of the population, and there is no force on earth that can make the other 99.99% of humanity even try to understand it. That's how powerful the shared experience of 99.99% of humanity is. I can wish that I could force people into this demographic even if temporarily so they understand on a visceral level that they're wrong, but that's a bunch of wishing when I still don't know where I may find a genie.
Even if I could find a genie, it would be a far better wish to grant the experience of 99.99% of the planet to the 0.01% in this demographic, no matter how cynical and vindictive I may feel in the moment that I rub the magic lamp and out comes a genie to give me 3 chances to change something that I'm otherwise powerless to change. But that's bargaining, one of the stages of grief about this I experience too often. There are no genies, at least that I may find, and this can never change.
I should probably add that in my precinct, voting takes literally 10 minutes from the time I pull into a parking spot at the high school down the road to the time I'm heading back home. I realize I'm being selfish since it's not like I live in a big city where I'll be in line for hours. I've simply decided that even those 10 minutes aren't worth wasting since no matter what I do the end result is just going to suck.
This comment gets too long, but I just wanted to say that even if I'm the men and angels AC, my debate opponent of choice does have very good points about the futility of living in a "violently imposed monopoly." I simply don't think his solution is an improvement, but I absolutely think he's hitting the nail on the head about the problems with living under a "violently imposed monopoly." I see no reason why I should go to the polls in 2018 and once again lend my acceptance and give any further legitimacy to the violent imposition. There is certainly no reason for me to waste my time on news about things that I have no say in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @11:54PM (1 child)
There is HUGE irony in your post. Apparently you are too weak to survive real news, since the article only proposes giving users better tools to control their own newsfeeds.
What's the matter, RTFA too hard for your fragile snowflake brain? Does it give you the bad feefees? Awww, that's OK. You go ahead and stay in your safe space where facts can't hurt you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @12:42AM
No, you are!
Check, and mate.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday June 03 2017, @01:53PM
There are 320+ million people [statista.com] who do get value from twitter.
There's millions of people who watch Honey Boo Boo too, but that doesn't mean there's anything valuable about that show.
Your failure to use twitter effectively does not mean there is no good about it. Only that you can't figure it out.
No, it means that, unlike morons like yourself, I can actually read and understand literary texts longer than 140 characters without losing my concentration. Apparently people like you can't and need everything in short, vapid little sound-bites.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday June 05 2017, @01:58PM
No, there are 320+ million people who tried it at least once. That's the only thing those numbers show. They say nothing about those people receiving any value from it. I have personally been in the position of being a monthly active user of the service while simultaneously considering it to be totally and completely worthless, so don't try to pretend that category doesn't exist.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @04:43PM (20 children)
Down with the nanny state.
Oh wait, private corporations. What say you libertarians? Shouldn't they be free to shape young user's traffic since they aren't the gov? The market will sort it out if it is undesired right?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 02 2017, @05:02PM (16 children)
That's where running stories about it so they have to deal with the negative consequences comes in.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @05:56PM (15 children)
I'm calling that bluff. Only a small minority of users will actually care, most will be on the side of more features to "think of the children" and a few on the fence will not care enough. Can we all just admit that market capture is a very real phenomena and you can't rely on the average person to be educated, informed, and to care enough to actually make these market corrections?
In an ideal world it would be great! But hey, so would hippy communes.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 02 2017, @06:51PM (14 children)
No. I prefer to treat my fellow human beings like they are rational and capable of running their own lives. That the difference between a progressive(fascist) and a libertarian(liberal).
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @07:17PM (9 children)
My point was that hoping for "market corrections" is naive and idealistic. It rarely happens and generally requires a massive scandal. With all the PR propaganda the average person will not be likely to think these things through rationally as they don't have the time or desire to educate themselves fully on every topic. I see you're still mired down in the extremist world view, but at least you don't promote nanny state crap. Libertarian != Liberal btw. They are probably closer together than Libertarian and Conservative, and every human is some political shade and not 100% conformist.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 02 2017, @07:41PM (8 children)
Yes, I'm afraid libertarian does = liberal. As in the actual meaning of the word not the insanely illiberal nonsense that gets called liberal today.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @08:26PM (1 child)
See that is a problem with the media, and you're apparent fixation on it. Politicians have coopted the term "liberal" and warped it around. That doesn't mean libertarian == liberal, only when viewed through the shit colored glasses of the media.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 03 2017, @02:38AM
They can use it wrongly all they like, it doesn't change the meaning of the word.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 02 2017, @08:55PM (5 children)
What does liberal and libertarian mean then? I have the feeling that people refer to them using different definitions which makes them talk past each other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @11:58PM
Don't ask buzz. He's got no idea what real libertarianism is about. Its just a group identity he's taken on because he thinks it makes being a misanthrope into something the cool kids do.
No, seriously, he thinks nobody can say what libertarianism is because "nobody speaks for libertarians."
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 03 2017, @02:36AM (3 children)
The etymology of both traces back to the Latin libertas, meaning liberty. It is the bedrock foundation of liberalism and became the same for libertarianism when liberalism was corrupted by socialist fascists into what it is today.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @03:01AM (2 children)
Exactly as predicted you gave a total non-answer that only served as vehicle to get digs in against your 'enemies.'
You don't have one damn clue about what libertarianism actually is.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 03 2017, @10:22AM (1 child)
I don't have enemies, just people I occasionally slap upside the head with some truth in the hopes that it might sink through the uncountable layers of denial.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @02:10PM
Douchey docuhey roo! You need help boy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @10:19PM (3 children)
> That the difference between a progressive(fascist) and a libertarian(liberal).
Lol. Being a social reject doesn't make you a libertarian. It just makes you incompetent at understanding people, yourself included.
Twitter providing tools for users to help them manage their data feeds is the libertarian solution.
Your braindead solution of "shutting your twitter app" is actually the fascist solution. Requiring that people take all or nothing guarantees that the 10% that is good information gets drowned out by the other 90% crap. Fascism fundamentally rests on being unable to distinguish quality from crap. Its no surprise that's what you advocate for.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 03 2017, @02:31AM (2 children)
Broken record much?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @02:58AM (1 child)
Wah! Suck it up buttercup.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 03 2017, @10:22AM
*looks at his morning coffee*
Sound advice.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @05:05PM (1 child)
Can you show me on this doll where the invisible hand touched you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @06:05PM
According to the berts and cons: everywhere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @07:47PM
There is no contradiction in maintaining the position that someone should be allowed to do X while criticizing them for doing it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by a-zA-Z0-9$_.+!*'(),- on Friday June 02 2017, @05:18PM (3 children)
Like back in the '90s and '00s the internet was correctly portrayed as a haven for crime and evil - a Mos Eisley spaceport of villainy. That hasn't changed even if everyone has decided to slap some smiley faces on it to make some money along the way. Children aren't supposed to watch movies unsupervised, or television, and the internet is everything bad TV and Movies could offer times 1,000 on acid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F2sfMm-ynU [youtube.com]
https://newrepublic.com/article/114112/anonymouth-linguistic-tool-might-have-helped-jk-rowling
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 02 2017, @05:56PM
People that can't let go of the bad parts of town will not do so on the internet either. It's a human problem not a technological one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @12:05AM (1 child)
Inherent in your complaint is the assumption that nothing can make it better. Well, any parent can tell you that is OK to let their children watch the PBS Kids channel unsupervised. That you can let them watch a G-rated movie unsupervised too. There is no reason that all the billions of dollars in tech can't improve the situation for internet users too.
Besides this isn't really about seeing extreme things on the net. This is about seeing too many shit-quality things and not enough high-quality things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @05:39AM
"There is no reason that all the billions of dollars in tech can't improve the situation for internet users too."
.
.
.
You are a soft-brained cunt and for the sake of humanity I sincerely hope you get terminal cancer soon.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @05:33PM
There's no hope for humanity's continued survival.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 02 2017, @06:05PM (4 children)
People and kids needs to be way more selective about who they interact with. And make a clear choice to interact with people that respect others, have something intelligent and relevant to say, are constructive etc.
Just because people happens to exists in a workplace, school, neighborhood, online game, sheep media etc doesn't make them worthwhile. Sturgeon's law unfortunately applies.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday June 02 2017, @07:10PM (3 children)
Yes, that, but also learn critical thinking in general. It has fallen out of fashion in this modern age, but it's timeless advice that will stand us in good stead no matter where we are, who we are, or when we are.
Another Soylentil recommended recently--and it might have been you--that everyone read and consider sources that do not agree with their worldview. That is sound and sensible. It is difficult to have perspective if we don't look at things from different perspectives.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday June 02 2017, @07:23PM (1 child)
I absolutely agree with that sentiment. One difficulty is the "filter bubble" effect though, which social media platforms frequently seem to love. For them, they're giving you "more of what you like." For you, you're only seeing more of stuff you already agree with. I deliberately try to seek out different perspectives on controversial issues, but it takes initiative.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 02 2017, @08:17PM
The problem is that the social media platforms actively tries to second guess peoples likes and dislikes. Facebook seems to be the worst. On good sites, the user has to take a conscious choice to filter in or out. This kind of unaffirmed active filtering should probably not be allowed for kids.
I also find that platforms like Facebook actively confuses navigation. On sane sites one can simply GO and read subject X and there's no meddling in that process.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 02 2017, @08:22PM
When did critical thinking really got lost?
I have however more or less always experienced that most people are more or less reactive thinkers. And can't get themselves to think through things even if their lives depended on it. These kind of life forms are usually just bad news and better kept out of ones presence.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday June 02 2017, @06:41PM (9 children)
From the editorial commentary in the summary:
From the link in the summary actually detailing the proposal (the second link on the word Twitter [reachout.com]):
It would help if the submitter/editor actually read the proposal before writing a comment dismissing it, when it actually agrees with them.
(Score: 4, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 02 2017, @06:59PM (7 children)
That got edited. The original submission also included "or grow a pair".
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by charon on Friday June 02 2017, @07:37PM (6 children)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 02 2017, @08:14PM (5 children)
I'm not bitching, just clarifying. You know me, if I've got a beef I'm certainly not silent about it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @10:36PM (4 children)
But you are never constructive about it.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 03 2017, @02:31AM (3 children)
Just because my solutions are not to your liking does not mean they aren't constructive. Now tossing pearls before swine might be but not everyone who reads them are fools.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @03:04AM (2 children)
Don't flatter yourself.
You literally have no solutions.
Hell, you barely understand the problems.
Everything you see as problems are merely a projection of your own insecurities.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 03 2017, @10:19AM (1 child)
Oh, good to know. Thank you for informing me about what goes on in my mind.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @02:12PM
Someone has to, you're obviously not paying attention.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 02 2017, @08:32PM
A better tip is perhaps to learn to take pauses from all attention seeking electronics and people. More importantly is to filter heavily on what is important and relevant. Kardashian butt size = irrelevant, technological disruptive inventions = important. etc.
But shutting the Twitter app might be a good idea. It seems to attract the crowd that loves to look for faults in other people that are of no importance. And then escalate it into a big fight about something, not important.
(Score: 3, Informative) by GlennC on Friday June 02 2017, @06:55PM (1 child)
It's a basic fact that bad, sad, and depressing things happen all day, every day.
I think that a big part of maturing is realizing this, and accepting that most of the time there's nothing you can do about it. Another big part is developing the ability to selectively ignore those things that are completely outside your control.
Social media is eroding this coping mechanism, and as a result there appears to be a lot more impotent rage in the world, and it's going to make the upcoming downfall much worse, since more and more of our neighbors have become strangers to us.
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Friday June 02 2017, @07:21PM
Oh, I don't know. Seems to me that venting that rage on the internet is what we are actually seeing on twitter.
All the bad news spewing from twitter is the result, not the cause of any real or imagined problems of coping in life.
Somewhere past the mental age of 18, (which an alarming number of people don't reach until well into their 40s) most people come to understand that old adage that winning an argument on the internet is like peeing yourself in a black wool suit: You get that warm and fuzzy feeling, but nobody else notices.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 02 2017, @07:08PM (10 children)
Just roll with this to the end before reacting, I know how bad stereotypes are....
There's a certain segment of the population that's more disposed to act on hate and fear, these people tend to live (and vote) in more rural, small-towney areas than urban. We all get the same news feed. The rural folks don't interact with a large enough population sample to get perspective on how real or overblown the bad stuff is (hint: media delivered news amplifies bad stories by huge factors), while on the other hand urban dwellers more often live near where some of the bad stuff goes down and they have a more realistic perspective on how it fits into the picture of life overall.
So, the media feeds us all a constant stream of rape, murder, racketeering, fraud, and a fuzzy bunny story to "keep things light." For the people "close to the action" there's some realism about the good things that go on in and around the places and people who make the bad headlines. Meanwhile, out in rural utopia (where the actual crime rates per-capita aren't all that different from the cities), people tend to believe that such terrible things don't happen in their towns, or families, because it just doesn't make the news much - if at all.
My question is, then: do the cities vote liberal because city life makes the people liberal minded, or are people "born with it" and migrate to their preferred habitat?
Extension to tie back to TFA: if we "shape" people's news feeds, especially in their neurodevelopmental years, will we be shaping their future dispositions? I have a hard time believing the answer is no, I have a very easy time believing that the direction of the resulting change is un-predictable.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @07:26PM
People are shaped, there may be some biological factors that trend towards conservative / liberal but I imagine it is mostly the nurture aspect. Exposure to ideas and viewpoints allows people to figure things out, but without exposure people grow up with whatever viewpoint is around them and that becomes their reality. People change, just many people get comfortable and refuse to continue their change / growth.
I agree with you, shaping the newsfeed of younger generations will affect their outlook. However, such plans could easily backfire. If you push some bullshit narrative then it is likely some percentage will see through it and notify their peers. Then you can have a mass defection and disillusionment with "the system" for better or worse.
Oh, for liberals and cities: I think a lot of that is simple exposure to a broader world view. To some extent I'm sure its exacerbated by the fact that more liberal minded people are more likely to move to a city, the more xenophobic conservative types would find it repelling. Not that all conservatives are xenophobes or all liberals truly open minded. Humans still do a large amount of tribe picking.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday June 02 2017, @08:15PM (6 children)
First, while people vary in temperament, and some of that is either genetic or determined at a VERY early age, I sincerely doubt that most people have some sort of "innate" political view or even the psychological factors that tend to push them toward a standard political "side." Witness that it's a common trope for people to start out liberal and become more conservative as they age. That's not universally true, but it does happen a lot. And, no, I don't think it's because they move to the suburbs.
As to why there's a geographic correlation, I think it depends on how you define words like "liberal" and "conservative." There are some factors that seem to make a bit of sense regarding the urban/rural divide. Xenophobia and general fear of people "different from you" makes some sense when you live in a clustered isolated community and aren't familiar with outsiders. Urban dwellers generally are forced to deal with all sorts of people who are very different from them on a regular basis. Religion can seem more powerful in a small community with one or two churches that almost everyone attends. In an urban setting, you see the local rabbi walk by followed by some Muslims and some Hindus, and it somehow starts to seem a little less likely that your one preacher must have all "the answers."
And a lot of the other stereotypical urban/rural issues are tied up with religion. I don't think there's any grand reason why rural people should be more anti-abortion other than that's what they're taught from the churches.
And yet there are other divisions that don't seem to have any clear explanation, or even a clear reason why one issue should be tied to the other platforms of "conservatives" or "liberals." For example, the death penalty. Doesn't correlate well with religion: many churches are officially anti-death penalty, and pro-forgiveness. And why should urban dwellers be more strongly against the death penalty when they're more likely to see a higher concentration of murders, etc. around them? Another thing is government aid to help those less well-off. Rural communities frequently have strong social clubs, church communities, etc. that provide local support to those in need, so I suppose it may seem unnecessary, but why such strong opposition to government assistance? Why not view it as an extension of the giving mission of the local church, rather than in opposition to it? On the other side of things, urban dwellers frequently live more "isolated" lives these days, without the tight-knit communities where "everyone knows each other's business" that can still exist in small towns. Why should urban folks necessarily be more disposed to be in favor of government assistance? Rural poverty is a real thing too.
Bottom line: stereotypical "liberal" and "conservative" philosophies often have a bunch of different components that aren't all necessarily interdependent, but we're taught that there is a single unidimensional political "spectrum," so most people just take a side that seems to correlate with issues they feel most strongly about. There may be a few views driven by different geographic circumstances, and a lot of the rest is just crap people (from politicians to preachers) pile up on top to create a set of political binaries that build group identity through stereotypical divisions.
(P.S. I know there may be people reading this who think there's an "obvious" explanation why all their conservative/liberal platform MUST make sense together. I'm not denying that the parties have gone to great trouble to try to justify and create consistency. But there are a lot of alternative alignments among issues that could be possible and logically consistent with a different rationale.)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 02 2017, @09:25PM (4 children)
Obligatory, if you haven't tried this, you should:
http://chartsme.com/ [chartsme.com]
Still debatable whether nature or nurture is predominant in determining these things, but I think it tracks with the urban/rural divide: lots more disgusting stuff to encounter in a city.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday June 03 2017, @06:05AM (3 children)
Really? Cities are more disgusting? I think they're just different. I know lots of city folk who can't stand the smell of livestock, for example, and walk around a dairy farm looking like they're about to vomit. I've come upon lots of dead animals walking in the woods... Not so many in cities. True, in run-down or poorly maintained city locations, you get rats, roaches, etc. But plenty of "disgusting" bugs out in the country too. More rotting trash smells around the city, though.
Anyhow most of the scenarios in your link don't seem well-correlated with the urban/rural divide.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 03 2017, @11:51AM (2 children)
Short on time now, but the things that stuck with me from the survey involved dead human bodies...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday June 03 2017, @04:17PM (1 child)
Again, I'm not sure how dead bodies are more "urban." I've spent a lot of time living in cities and never randomly encountered a dead body.
Also, I'm not sure what patterns of disgust really tell us other than culture. Psychological studies have shown a lot of disgust is determined by culture, which is why children seem to have so little of it (they'll happily pick up all sorts of things adults might be revolted by). Accouns of feral children seem to show thet develop very little disgust reflexes. So it appears conservatives are likely taught more or stronger signals of disgust than liberals. The specific things that disgust conservatives (gay sex, etc.) are likely substantially learned behaviors.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday June 04 2017, @07:42PM
When I'm thinking of "rural" I'm not thinking of out in the deep countryside with the chicken factories and slaughter houses, I'm thinking more of Crockett, TX or Starke, FL - people may live "out in the country" and even have jobs in the small towns, but they're not really living an animal husbandry type lifestyle, because, really, not very many people do that anymore, anywhere.
Maybe I just had bad luck in Miami and Manhattan, but the cook at a Chinese restaurant I used to eat at was blown up by a copy-cat terror bomb just after the Atlanta Olympics bombing. I didn't see the body, but I drove by the bus bench with the police tape on it the morning it happened. Then their was my neighbor who murdered his uncle in the front yard, again - I didn't witness the body, but I saw evidence later when walking the neighborhood, same place I had walked days before the murder. The local news station there would occasionally show dead bodies from helicopter footage covering big traffic crash stories, always at places that would be familiar to anyone who lived in the city. The beach condos were filled with really old retirees, you'd see gurneys being loaded into ambulances in no particular hurry then drive away with lights off. Miami street people were generally pretty healthy, but lots of the ones you'd see in Manhattan in the 1980s were near death, and plenty of places in Manhattan were open air latrines at that time. I never saw anything like that when living in smaller towns / rural areas - not that it didn't happen at the same rate per-capita, just that it was kept out of sight better, more actively hidden even, and the lower population density meant that less of it was happening physically nearby.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @11:48PM
You might not be aware, but one american religious institution has a lot to do with what you see as unexplained.
The southern baptist convention was created as a white supremacist organization. They splintered from the Triennial Convention [sbcvoices.com] over one single issue: slavery.
It was only about 20 years ago that they finally officially acknowledged their racist heritage. [sbc.net] And that racism is still a strong undercurrent. [faithfullymagazine.com] You don't undo 150 years of white supremacy in just one generation. Especially when racism was still an official policy as recently as 2000 — The last time "religious liberty" was a popular phrase [thinkprogress.org] was in 1983 when Bob Jones University wanted to be exempt from Title IX requirements regarding first admitting blacks [drslewis.org] and then inter-racial dating. [christianitytoday.com]
That racism informs their views on welfare. Part of the protestant work ethic is not taking handouts and that can easily get perverted into prosperity gospel - where being poor is evidence of not being right with god. But that gets squishy when it comes to seeing people who are obviously in need. Racism affects the perception of who deserves welfare. So all those racist stereotypes about blacks being lazy feeds right into that prosperity gospel shit and while they are OK with people they know personally (because their friends are all good, god-fearing people, natch) or even themselves, getting welfare, they don't want all the undeserving (aka non-white) people to get free handouts (remember the "welfare queen" bogeyman?) Which is also why they are always freaked out that illegal immigrants are sucking on the teat of the state too, despite that not really being possible.
Related to that: many within the SBC saw the writing on the wall about racism during the 70s and decided they needed a new "enemy" to unify them. The settled on abortion. As recently as 1976 the SBC supported full abortion rights [sbc.net] based on scripture that said (among other things) that god doesn't put a soul into a person until they are "fully formed." [biblehub.com]
The SBC is by far the single largest protestant denomination in the US, with 200,000 churches and 15.5 million members (although membership has been declining for about a decade).
Trump got the highest share of the (white) evangelical vote ever measured [pewresearch.org] (although they only started measuring in 2004). That coincides with a truly massive reversal in how much evangelicals think character matters in a presidential candidate. [npr.org] They sold out their principles for racism.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday June 02 2017, @11:28PM (1 child)
Untrue. I grew up in rural communities and it was living in a big city (as well as another big city in the past) that turned me into a mega-racist. Those of you who remember my infamous "Brown Menace" journal would probably agree with the details if not the message.
You get a next-door family that smokes meth, drops bags of dope and passes out on your doorstep on a regular basis while blasting mariachi music all night (in a decent neighborhood) where nobody over 30 knows a single word of English and they suddenly spray-paint their truck a different color and then disappear. Oh, and that Puerto-Rican across the street puts fart-pipes on all of his family cars and very illegally does his own paint-jobs to include spreading toxic dust all over the place from the sanding, and one of his cars is resonant in a bad way because, oh, maybe he doesn't know how to seat his harmonic balancer or his rings are shot or something. Every goddamn one of them blasts bass all night, and that includes plenty of doors and trunks rattling because they're too cheap to afford dynamat. Even when you're cool with those people they think its funny to greet you at the door with a gun to your head (yes, this actually happened to me, even though he was just joking and laughed after putting the gun down and inviting me in, it's never cool to put a pistol to somebody's head point-blank).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @05:28AM
"I grew up in rural communities and it was living in a big city (as well as another big city in the past) that turned me into a mega-racist."
.
.
.
I submit that you may not be a racist at all. You may just be a REALIST.
You lived in proximity to humans who are and will always be SCUM. It sounds quite unpleasant. I've been in unpleasant situations myself,
but I have done whatever has been necessary to make certain I don't subject myself to such things any more other than when absolutely
necessary, which is rare.
Life is too short to live near scum. For your sake I hope you have escaped that shit.
By the way, though I know your posts are sometimes viewed as "controversial" here and on Slashdot, I enjoy many of your posts and I think you have a good
head on your shoulders, though your bluntness can be more than many of the pussies who hang out on these forums can tolerate without getting their panties
in a twist.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday June 02 2017, @07:20PM (4 children)
I frequently listen to the news while driving. Years ago, I used to drop my son off at preschool, and I'd just have the radio on in the car with news in the morning.
At some point, after a few days after some sort of natural disaster (I think it was flooding somewhere), my son asked me if we could turn the radio off. I asked why. He said, "Why are there always people dying on the news?" We talked about it, and I realized he was really stressing out about this. He was worried we could lose our house in a flood. He was worrying about people dying.
Until that point, I guess I never thought much about how the news impacts kids. (After that, we mostly started listening to music during our commutes.) I realize that news of disasters, shootings, horrible accidents, etc. has been a news staple forever, but it's nearly impossible to avoid news summaries that don't consist largely of dramatic sensationalistic portrayals of disturbing current events. For young kids in particular, such news summaries often immediately follow theme music that happens on the hour or half hour that can grab their attention. Local TV news frequently does the same.
I realize I'm talking about a young kid here, not teenagers on Twitter. But even as he got older, I'd notice my son would still obsess over certain news stories that seemed scary to him.
Obviously we can't hide from bad news, and kids need to learn to cope with bad news around them. On the other hand, the news industry obviously thrives on promoting fear and outrage (as well as virtual "rubbernecking"). It can be difficult to get "perspective" when surrounded by such negativity. Social media often magnifies these sentiments and makes the reactions personal. I don't have any good solutions, other than perhaps good parental support. That can be hard during teenage years, but if you're letting your kid on social media, you should have a sense of what's going on and how they're using it.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 02 2017, @08:48PM (2 children)
Most news of disasters, shootings, horrible accidents etc are for the most part completely irrelevant but it plays into the morbid inclinations of people. And makes them feel it's important to listen into. It's important be updated on accident statistics to take proper preventive actions and accidents that actually affects oneself directly. Other than that it's just empty stuff to fill airwaves with.
When was the last time a program discussed that say these areas have a statistical higher risk for floods so you should not build there or so? ;) Or the non-PC horror of doing a statistical profiling of what kinds of people do crime and where it usually goes down.
It all boils down to what's important and relevant.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday June 03 2017, @05:45AM (1 child)
I'm not sure if your entire post was intended to be sarcastic or not. But there's basically zero correlation between "accident statistics" in terms of what one should be aware of vs. what gets reported on the news. The news reports unusual or extreme events -- plane crashes, shark attacks, etc. -- not stuff that actually kills people regularly (e.g., single car crashes, not to mention stuff like heart disease). Yes, local news may also note fatal car crashes, but they'd only lead with that if there wasn't some scarier (and likely more improbable) scenario to cover.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday June 03 2017, @07:02AM
I meant that news usually gives a shewed picture of whats going on by emphasize on the unusual occurrences. It would be better if they put things in perspective.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday June 02 2017, @11:44PM
Bad news notwithstanding, it was the annoying blatantly partisan chirping and bleating of the NPR Jews that, after many years of dedicated listening, caused me to switch to sports radio.
And sports radio is awesome. They avoid politics like the plague (unless the politics are about which coach doesn't like which players) and since most of them are men who have played sports they have pleasing voices, great senses of humor, and don't pussyfoot around saying things that news outlets would never dare -- in fact, if you are a sperg with no social skills and you want to impress ladies talking about nothing, I suggest you listen to sports radio talk shows (the kind where 2 or more personalities are having conversations) and you get a good idea of rhythm, flow, when to talk and when to listen, it's just so goddamn comfortable. And unlike NPR they never, ever mention Trump -- not even once. And they're more than happy to have dissenting viewpoints and call out bullshit for what it is. The only mention of governmental politics you'll get out of them is when they lament that the injection of governmental politics is killing sports enjoyment, or talking about local governments financing stadiums or receiving teams.
I know a lot of you hate sports because the jocks bullied you in school, but sports radio is pretty goddamn interesting. You learn that your spinal discs start degenerating at age 29, athletes beating their wives and all the funny Manti Te'o kinda stuff, that sports teams hire private investigators to watch athletes during the draft so they won't get blindsided by any dirt later. But they say it all in a pleasant, informal tone of voice and in a conversational manner.
I'll probably make sports radio my permanent go-to listen to and from work everyday, even after NPR unfucks itself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2017, @08:46PM (7 children)
I thought about this after reading this comment the other day: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=19819&page=1&cid=519131#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
Someone commented that (contrary to the headline) the "Stratolaunch" wasn't really the largest plane, but only widest. I thought about reading this might really hurt the feelings of the people who made the plane and wrote the headline. Why not just let them call it "largest"?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 02 2017, @08:52PM (6 children)
Because SN users likely deal with realities not safe spaces. If something is wrong, it will be pointed out. But it doesn't make any author a bad person.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday June 02 2017, @11:31PM
There is always somebody with a larger cock than yours, and your wife has taken in the past a larger cock than yours, and she fantasizes about it from time to time. Deal with it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @12:11AM (4 children)
You really have no idea what a "safe space" actually is, do you?
Pro-tip, its not about hiding from reality. Its about not having assholes hassling you 24x7.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday June 03 2017, @12:52AM (2 children)
Having assholes hassling anyone continuously is abuse not about any space. Instead a lot of times safe spaces are used to deny other people free conversation among themselves because someone might be offended.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @03:07AM
A "lot of times" huh?
Name two.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @06:37PM
Still waiting...
Oh, you can't actually provide examples of something you consider to be such a fundamental problem?
Nobody
Is
Surprised
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @05:15AM
No, a safe space is a space created for humans who are children with the bodies of adult.
You're a bunch of goddamned pussies, and your existence drags down the quality of the
human race.
Adults know the world contains unpleasant things and they DEAL WITH IT. If you ever grow up,
you will come to understand this is a fundamental truth of human existence. In the mean time,
I will say that the thought of the existence of idiots like you makes me puke.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @05:12AM (1 child)
Hopefully more bad news will result in mass suicides, thus cleaning the gene pool,
which is badly in need of cleaning.
No, I am not joking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2017, @02:18PM
It is amusing that all the "real" opinions are posted as AC. Its like the alt-right folks don't want their own identities tainted by their own opinions. What a bunch of pussies. Afraid of a little social judgment you pansy? Need a "safe account"? Lolol
Disclaimer here*