SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Tech and social media are making us feel lonelier than ever:
You've had a social day. Two hundred Facebook friends posted birthday messages, your video of Mr. Meow shredding the toilet paper stash got dozens of retweets, and all the compliments on your latest Instagram selfie have you strutting with an extra swagger. Still, you can't help but notice an ache that can only be described as loneliness.
That we feel this way even when hyperconnected might seem like a contradiction. But the facts are clear: Constant virtual connections can often amplify the feeling of loneliness.
"Internet-related technologies are great at giving us the perception of connectedness," says Dr. Elias Aboujaoude, a Stanford University psychiatrist who's written about the intersection of psychology and tech. The truth, he says, is the time and energy spent on social media's countless connections may be happening at the expense of more rooted, genuinely supportive and truly close relationships.
If virtual socializing cannot substitute for the real thing, will social media prove out to be nothing more than a fad of the late 20th and early 21st centuries?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @05:52PM (1 child)
The modern social programs, including SNAP, were first envisioned in the mid sixties. They were not widely implemented til the early mid 70s. Do you think people were just starving to deaths in massive numbers before the mid 70s?
These programs were envisioned and intially executed by LBJ. This [snopes.com] inquiry into an alleged quote of his emphasizes the sort of person he was. Snopes does not affirm the initial quote but the evidence provided for what he is, without doubt, known to have said is just as informative. For instance he was also the president when MLK was assassinated after the FBI had been trying to force him to commit suicide. [wikipedia.org] By the time these programs were starting poverty had already been on major decline for decades due to economic and technological development.
These programs are not about helping people, but about forcing people into a dependency relationship to ensure they are coerced into voting for such relationship to continue. It was an extremely clever, extremely unethical, and extremely effective ploy. However, yes you also have to understand that letting yourself get into a dependency relationship is also, in part, your fault. I grew up urban poor, like many do. And also got out of it, like many do. It was even relatively easy. In spite of an almost entirely absent parent I did well in school, was able to get some scholarships in large part thanks to my shit circumstance, went to college, took on a real degree, and it was gg poverty from there.
I think you'll find something quite frequent is that people who have no clue what it's like to live in poverty are those making all of these ignorant comments such as yourself. It's people that who have actually lived through this stuff that realize that these sort of programs are not helping anybody. It's all about political power and exploitation. I don't think you can get much worse off than I grew up, drive-by shootings on the reg, yellow tape a regular adornment at my apartments, single parent who was -at best- neglectful, and living primarily off a diet of ramen + iceberg lettuce (which is actually quite delicious). Doesn't really matter. Was still relatively easy to get out.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 20 2020, @08:05PM
Bullshit. If you're too sick, you're not getting out (can't hold down a job). If you're otherwise healthy but get sick at the wrong time, you're not getting out (you had a good job, but you were sick for two weeks and got fired). If there are no good employers near you, you can't find a good job and you can't save up enough to move somewhere with better job options. Maybe you could if you were friends with someone living near a better job - but that's not a 'relatively easy' thing, either. If none of your childhood role models were good people, able to impress upon you the value of education and hard work, you wouldn't even understand what you can do to get out.