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posted by chromas on Tuesday July 31 2018, @11:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the smells-like-teen-spirit-Nirvana dept.

Very fine Article at The Atlantic. Remember, think of the children, and comment responsibly.

It's harder and harder to have an honest debate on the internet. Social-media platforms like Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook Groups are rife with trolls; forums are plagued by archaic layouts and spambots. Teenagers who are looking to talk about big issues face additional frustrations, like the fact that most adults on these platforms don't take them seriously.

Naturally, they've turned to Instagram. Specifically, they've turned to "flop" accounts—pages that are collectively managed by several teens, many of them devoted to discussions of hot-button topics: gun control, abortion, immigration, President Donald Trump, LGBTQ issues, YouTubers, breaking news, viral memes.

Just when I get a Facebook account, they have all moved!

The accounts post photos, videos, and screenshots of articles, memes, things, and people considered a "flop," or, essentially, a fail. A flop could be a famous YouTuber saying something racist, someone being rude or awful in person, a homophobic comment, or anything that the teen who posted it deems wrong or unacceptable. Some of the teens who run a given account know one another in real life; more likely, they met online.

Uh-oh, I am starting to suspect something.

"Flop accounts bring attention to bad things or bad people that people should be aware of. We also post cringeworthy content for entertainment purposes," said Alma, a 13-year-old admin on the flop account @nonstopflops.

According to teens, flop accounts began as a way to make fun of celebrities and popular YouTubers, but sometime over the past year they've morphed into something more substantive: a crucial way to share and discuss opinions online.

"Content [on flop accounts] is centralized around things that we think are factually or morally wrong, and it's how we critique them," said Taylor, a 15-year-old in Illinois who is an admin on a flop account. "Today, for instance, I posted a flop that was this lady making fun of someone for being homeless. That's a horrible thing to do."

Kids! Huh! What do they know?

The main thing teens who engage with flop accounts share is a strong distrust of the news media. Teens said they turned to flop accounts specifically because they didn't believe what they read in the news, saw on TV, or even were taught in their U.S.-history class, since, as one teen saw it, their teacher is just one person giving an opinion. Teen flop-account admins and followers said they found information on flop accounts to be far more reliable because it could be crowdsourced and debated.

Wow. Well. We just wait for the next generation, eh? Worked before. The barbarians actually cleaned up nicely.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by captain normal on Wednesday August 01 2018, @05:13AM (5 children)

    by captain normal (2205) on Wednesday August 01 2018, @05:13AM (#715534)

    What??? Are you saying Republicans and extraction oriented corporate cartels are ?...PROGRESSIVE?? Whow! did I fall asleep and wake up in a biszarro 2021??

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @06:13AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @06:13AM (#715542)

    Yeah, jmorris is very much trying to seed an agenda.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @06:47AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @06:47AM (#715545)

    How many billionaires are liberal democrats? Now, why is that?

    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 01 2018, @11:15AM (2 children)

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday August 01 2018, @11:15AM (#715594) Homepage Journal

      Most of the top ten richest. Why? I'll leave that to yall to figure out.

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      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @09:31PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @09:31PM (#715922)

        Because people who are more educated tend to be more liberal, and people who are more educated tend to have higher income and wealth?

        Because people who have more money than they know what to do have more freedom to pursue soft-subjects such as "be moral" over than day-to-day pressure of trying to find something to eat?

        Because people who are rich have more to lose, so are trying to appease the masses such that a violent revolution is less likely... and if one does happen they are less likely to be targeted?

        Because it's liberal policies and outlook (e.g. California, New York) tend to be more economically successful than authoritarian or conservative ones (e.g. Kansas, Georgia)?

        • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 02 2018, @03:25PM

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday August 02 2018, @03:25PM (#716286) Homepage Journal

          See, this confuses me. The richest men in the world are progtards and progtards point their hate of rich men exclusively at conservatives.

          As for that last sentence, you're confusing cause with effect. Only those with more money than they need have the luxury of sitting around naval gazing enough to decide that they know everything wrong with the world and should fix it for you whether you want them to or not.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.