Chamath Palihapitiya, a former vice president for user growth at Facebook, feels (some) guilt about his role in expanding the social media giant:
Palihapitiya's criticisms were aimed not only at Facebook, but the wider online ecosystem. "The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we've created are destroying how society works," he said, referring to online interactions driven by "hearts, likes, thumbs-up." "No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth. And it's not an American problem — this is not about Russians ads. This is a global problem."
He went on to describe an incident in India where hoax messages about kidnappings shared on WhatsApp led to the lynching of seven innocent people. "That's what we're dealing with," said Palihapitiya. "And imagine taking that to the extreme, where bad actors can now manipulate large swathes of people to do anything you want. It's just a really, really bad state of affairs." He says he tries to use Facebook as little as possible, and that his children "aren't allowed to use that shit." He later adds, though, that he believes the company "overwhelmingly does good in the world."
[...] In his talk, Palihapitiya criticized not only Facebook, but Silicon Valley's entire system of venture capital funding. He said that investors pump money into "shitty, useless, idiotic companies," rather than addressing real problems like climate change and disease. Palihapitiya currently runs his own VC firm, Social Capital, which focuses on funding companies in sectors like healthcare and education.
From a partial transcript:
You don't realize it, but you are being programmed. It was unintentional, but now you gotta decide how much you're willing to give up. How much of your intellectual independence, and don't think, yeah, not me, I'm a genius, I'm at Stanford. You're probably the most likely to fall for it. Because you are check-boxing your whole damn life. No offense, guys.
Previously: Facebook Founding President Sounds Alarm, Criticizes Facebook
Related Stories
Both takyon and Phoenix666 bring us news of some harsh words that ex-Facebook president Sean Parker has for the company:
Ex-Facebook President Sean Parker Criticizes Facebook
Facebook's first President has sharply criticized the behemoth he helped shape:
Sean Parker, Facebook's first president, had some harsh words about the social network during an interview this week. The tech investor, also a co-founder of Napster and, perhaps most recognizably, the guy played by Justin Timberlake in "The Social Network," said Facebook was designed to exploit the way people fundamentally think and behave.
There have been "unintended consequences," Parker said, now that Facebook has grown to include 2 billion people -- two out of every seven people on the planet. "It literally changes your relationship with society, with each other," he said in published Wednesday night by Axios. "It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains."
[...] Parker on Wednesday drilled into the addictive nature of Facebook that keeps so many of us coming back. He said it's all by design, because receiving a "like" or a comment on your post gives you a little hit of dopamine. "It's a social-validation feedback loop ... exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology."
But that didn't matter to people like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, he said. Or Kevin Systrom, founder of Instagram, which Facebook owns. Or even himself. In addition to co-founding Napster in 1999, he started Airtime, a video social network that never gained traction. Now he's the founder and chair of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.
"The inventors, creators ... understood this consciously," he said. "And we did it anyway."
Also at The Verge and Business Insider.
Facebook Founding President Sounds Alarm
Even Facebook doesn't like Facebook?
"God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains."
A view on social media shared not by some uninformed luddite, but by one of the people responsible for building Facebook into the social media titan it is today.
Sean Parker, Facebook's founding president, unloaded his worries and criticisms of the network, saying he had no idea what he was doing at the time of its creation.
Speaking on stage to Mike Allen from Axios, Mr Parker said: "The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, was all about: 'How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?'"
"That means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever.
Silicon Valley technologists, including former Google and Facebook employees, have formed the Center for Humane Technology:
A group of Silicon Valley technologists who were early employees at Facebook and Google, alarmed over the ill effects of social networks and smartphones, are banding together to challenge the companies they helped build.
The cohort is creating a union of concerned experts called the Center for Humane Technology. Along with the nonprofit media watchdog group Common Sense Media, it also plans an anti-tech addiction lobbying effort and an ad campaign at 55,000 public schools in the United States.
The campaign, titled The Truth About Tech, will be funded with $7 million from Common Sense and capital raised by the Center for Humane Technology. Common Sense also has $50 million in donated media and airtime from partners including Comcast and DirecTV. It will be aimed at educating students, parents and teachers about the dangers of technology, including the depression that can come from heavy use of social media.
"We were on the inside," said Tristan Harris, a former in-house ethicist at Google who is heading the new group. "We know what the companies measure. We know how they talk, and we know how the engineering works."
Omidyar Network is listed as a key advisor/supporter.
Also at TIME.
Related: How Facebook Can Be Addictive
Facebook Founding President Sounds Alarm, Criticizes Facebook
Another Former Facebook Exec Speaks Out
FBI Whistleblower on Pierre Omidyar and His Campaign to Neuter Wikileaks
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday December 11 2017, @08:46PM (18 children)
He is quite right about how gullible smart people can be. They think they're too intelligent to be taken in by manipulation. The manipulation is conducted on a deep emotional, almost limbic, level, though, and so is not communicated in a way that they're equipped to respond to. Facebook and social media are cult-like, and the need for approval from the crowd they foster is the exact same mechanism that real cults employ to rope people in.
In fact intellectuals are more susceptible to manipulation than the average bear because emotional and social insecurity are practically a by-product of the focus and effort it takes to hone their intellect.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @09:33PM
James Randi always said something similar about educated people, but a bit more direct and without all the dime store psychobabble.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday December 11 2017, @10:18PM
There's also no formal curriculum for emotional and social education -- those who know those things, have innate skills in those areas or learn them as a survival instinct. If there was a formal curriculum for how/what to recognize and behave in these areas, I bet intellectuals could pick it up well enough to act accordingly.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Monday December 11 2017, @10:28PM (11 children)
I didn't see Facebook as cult-like: to me it was just stupid. "My chef baked too many cookies, so i'm sending you 100 cookies." "I just had a poo and now i'm going to my shitty job"
Thanks, but no thanks, i got better things to do with my time!
Went on fb to be involved with my daughters life and left because of STUPIDITY.
Is it a cult of the stupids?
At least i hear the young kids are abandoning fb. Good for them.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Insightful) by arslan on Monday December 11 2017, @10:57PM (8 children)
So you're immune, please pat yourself in your back for me. However the problem is real and still exists. Kids are abandoning fb for _other_ apps/products but with the same base concepts.
I don't see how you can call addiction stupid. It is a different form - this method preys on the emotional side of people not necessarily their intellectual part.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday December 11 2017, @11:26PM (6 children)
Sigh.
It's NOT addiction, it's stupidity.
Just. Drop. It.
Delete your account and go do something else! Simple.
Im an alcoholic.
I stopped cold turkey. (How you ask?)
I don't buy booze. If you don't buy booze, you can't drink it. Simple.
I don't go to bars. If you don't buy booze, you can't drink it. Simple.
I now fill my time with other things. Sometimes it's hard, reeeal hard, but again if I don't drive to the liquor store, I can't have any to drink. Simple.
So, delete your account. Now. Do it.
So simple.
Or are you not a strong enough person? If not, don't blame addiction. Blame yourself.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Insightful) by arslan on Tuesday December 12 2017, @06:11AM (1 child)
You're just redefining the label from your perspective. Others view it as an addiction, so yea fine if you view it as stupidity. That's yer opinion.
I used to a smoker too and yes I stopped because I just willed it. There was a struggle much like you put it. It was only stupid in so far as I knew the consequences but still smoked, but in terms of quitting its not like stupidity where I educated myself out of the habit. I had to fight it mentally like an addiction. Not buying fags or alcohol or deleting your social media account is just a simple act, the hard part is the mental and at times physiological (I don't know if the cold sweats and hunger pangs were real or just in my head) battle.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday December 12 2017, @11:46AM
Yeah, it can be hard: I just hate all the "it's a disease, I am helpless, I need GOD!!" bullshit.
You just need to want it and do it. Don't hide and say you're helpless.
Congrats on quitting smoking! :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday December 12 2017, @06:53AM
Most voters for example
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1) by DiarrhoeaChaChaCha on Tuesday December 12 2017, @12:54PM (2 children)
Well...you clearly have never truly been addicted to alcohol, if you could just quit drinking 'cold turkey'.
Either that, or you're letting your own smugness get in the way of understanding that addictions, whatever form they take, are as bad as whatever debilitating effect they have on each addict.
Still, that would be rather dissappointing, coming from a recovering addict.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday December 12 2017, @07:10PM (1 child)
And you know all this how?
Tell me:
If I don't buy liquor, can I drink liquor?
If I am HONEST with myself, and I occupy myself when I start wanting a drink (which I wanted (again) today) instead of driving to the liquor store, HOW CAN I DRINK?
Tell me how?
How do you drink booze when you have no booze?
How do you eat if you have no food?
If you're NOT honest with yourself, you get in the car and you buy liquor. But that means you are fooling only yourself and you are not really ready to give it up.
If you are, you just don't buy it, and you go outside and you shovel snow like a fiend.
It all depends on DO YOU REALLY WANT TO QUIT!?!
No babying yourself, no fooling yourself...no being weak.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by DiarrhoeaChaChaCha on Wednesday December 13 2017, @01:09PM
I do not know. That was kind of my point. Just like you don't whether FB can be addictive or not. It isnt' for you. Good for you, but you're just you.
At the same time you seem to equivocate Facebook not being addictive with your own alcoholism, leaving me to conclude that, for you, neither is an addiction.
I doubt there are very many addicts who really want to be addicted. That's the nature of addiction. It's compulsive.
I am glad you had (and still have) the mental strength to step away but stating 'they just do not want to quit badly enough', while technically true, is grossly oversimplifying the problem.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday December 12 2017, @07:09PM
So you're immune, please pat yourself in your back for me.
The people who think they're immune are the least immune.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 12 2017, @07:26AM
I didn't see (Soylent|Slashdot|The Register) as cult-like: to me it was just technobabble. "My lusers did stupid things.." "systemd has become self-aware and it has a redneck level of consciousness..." "blah blah blah PHP root of all evils blah blah blah no, it's perl blah blah blah no, it's APL blah blah blah "
(And don't get me started on reddit, or even stackexchange...)
Anyhoo, re smart people, anecdote from the early days of the 419 scams back when I looked after MTAs as part of my job, I had an internationally famous (TV appearances etc, so not just in the field) theoretical physicist almost fall for one of them, he approached me at the last minute *after* making initial contact with the buggers, but *before* any financial shenanigans started (should add, for the record, the initial email was to his personal account on a college server, not the institute one, I ran somewhat draconian filtering back then...still do),
smart? yes
common sense? not one femtogram...
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday December 12 2017, @07:12PM
I didn't see Facebook as cult-like: to me it was just stupid.
Gaaark would never do something as stupid as posting things on a website in the hope of earning internet points.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday December 11 2017, @11:44PM
Not disagreeing with any of it but an interesting alternative tack to
In like the 60s if a newly minted physics phd wasn't perfect in all ways, that's OK if there's 10 jobs for each grad, so they can be themselves, but now that the ratio is flipped and there's ten times as many grads for each job even in STEM and in the liberal arts its ten times worse, there's going to be pressure to be the signal-iest holier than thou-ist perfectly correct conformist little social media poster the world has ever seen, because, you know, there's only one job and 50 grads applying for it and the other 49 who don't get it will never pay off their loans as bartenders and baristas, no house no car no family their whole lives flashing before their lives now click "like" or move under the highway overpass with the rest of the liberal arts grads, etc.
Its an evolution in action... give the bottom 90% the economic death penalty over and over and you'll eventually breed up some weirdness along with whatever you thought you were selecting for...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by FatPhil on Tuesday December 12 2017, @12:32AM (2 children)
But I think all kinds of smarts are orthogonal to the attraction that Facebook holds. For me, there was none, I have no account, and no desire for an account, and the reasons for that are simply that I already have perfectly functional methods of communicating with the people I give a fuck about communicating with. Facebook added nothing. Apparently it wasn't just about chatting - I can post images as well. Erm..., yes, I have had my own website, and I can post/host images on my own webserver. It gives me nothing apart from things I don't actually want or need. Call me cynical...
And I think that's the distinguisher - the cynical. The cynical won't be caught off-guard and tricked, because they're probably too bloody cynical to even want to play the game in the first place. The modern generations seem to place their cynicism elsewhere, and are a bit wide-eyed when it comes to the technology that we tech-oriented oldies saw clumsily lollopping into existence, understanding the limitations and potentials thereof. To them it's just the birthing pool they've been born in, they don't see the pipes and pumps that make it work.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Funny) by ewk on Tuesday December 12 2017, @01:24PM (1 child)
Tubes... How many times do we have to repeat it: The internet is made of tubes!
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday December 12 2017, @05:29PM
You know, every Fiber cable I've heard of has been laid in a PVC Pipe.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday December 11 2017, @08:53PM (5 children)
Translation:
This is to protect my golden parachute. If I leave this out I'd have to go back to working for a living.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @09:21PM (4 children)
I was thinking something similar: it would seem quite twisted to vehemently disallow your kids from participating in something that "overwhelmingly does good in the world."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Monday December 11 2017, @09:25PM (3 children)
Facebook does a lot of good for its customers*
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Monday December 11 2017, @09:27PM (2 children)
I loved Zuckerberg's virtual tour of hurricane damage in Puerto Rico. Cleared that situation right up.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 12 2017, @08:02AM (1 child)
Hey, don't knock it...
It was his version of the Psiloon's TA [scientologyhandbook.org], y'know merely by his exaltedness actually being there, Mr Farcebook Incarnate provided the poor dis conn e cted Puerto Ricans with their connection to his divine creation...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday December 12 2017, @07:09PM
I think the Puerto Rico demo might have gone better if he had interviewed someone live on the ground. Instead they went the easy route and played some prerecorded 360-degree video, not very exciting either.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Disagree) by BananaPhone on Monday December 11 2017, @08:57PM (6 children)
When someone sets up a meeting time and doesn't show up or excuse themselves for it: Facebook manners
When someone just stops answering your messages while on text/Chat/etc. : it's Facebook manners
Thank you Facebook for making people shitty.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday December 11 2017, @09:25PM (3 children)
Those are poor manners, but do they map to Facebook? When i was young adults blamed poor manners on tv and rock and roll. Later they switched to blaming dungeons & dragons and video games.
Specifically, trailing off in mid-chat is something people started doing the moment chat was invented. Thus was not only an intrinsically rude medium created but also a terribly inefficient one. How else could you stretch a 2 minute conversation into 45 minutes?
Institutionalized narcissism is rather how i would describe all of it. Smartphones, social media, narrower and narrower discursive bubbles, and over-scheduled people are layered on top of old school propaganda via mass media. Everyone is drowning, filled with a sense of impending doom about what should happen if they stop thrashing around.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @10:06PM
Compared to chatting on the phone, text based chat allowed me to dramatically shorten many conversations I would otherwise have over the phone since I could type and others could read faster than we could speak/listen/reply.
Furthermore it allowed me to multitask multiple overlapping conversations where one person would be taking time to word their reply/research/handle RL responsibilities, while the other conversations could continue at whatever pace was acceptable. Back in those days however MOST people would tell you if they needed to BRB, or were going to AFK, or if they had to leave for the day/night. The generation *AFTER* them was the culturally insensitive and socially uncouth. The digitally ignorant who got a computer from a nerdy relative, or heard about the internet and wanted in, thinking it would be like 'cyberspace from the movies'. They could never be bothered to read the internet etiquette faqs that were posted over and over, nor remember specific rules even if stated to them along with a reason you found their behavior offensive.
Those same people are mostly who were responsible for myspace, then facebook becoming popular, and then the later generation of apps leading up to the mostly cell-phone based proprietary app ecosystem everybody is utilizing today. The 90s were mostly proprietary, there were some wins early in the new millenium, but by the late '00s were were right back to proprietary dominance. And the majority of internet users are genuinely too stupid to be able to understand why it is a danger, because they have been indoctrinated to believe open source is always bad and proprietary is always good, unless the open source has been coopted by the proprietary system, which they usually consider good and obviously what open source was meant for.
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Monday December 11 2017, @11:34PM
Having been there, I assure you D+D didn't cause rudeness, it caused sex and violence; my first uni room mate signed a pledge at church to never play D+D because of all the sex and violence in D+D. So when when everyone on my floor but my roommate played 2nd ed (yeah, I'm old) with the guy down the hall who had all the books, my roommate got teased a bit because we were all asking where all the wild sex could be located because we were young men looking for that sort of thing all the time. People screaming in the dorm hallway, hey Joe get over here we're gonna play D+D in so and so's room which causes sex you don't want to miss out do you? Oddly enough D+D seemed to repel college girls almost as well as it repelled high school girls, so it wasn't going to be sex with females anyway. So yeah, D+D, it causes rudeness and wild sex, or, maybe not so much.
Whatever young adults do, its always blamed. Not the kids themselves, because that's too close genetically to blaming the parents. The only problem must entirely be that "new thing". Its been that way for a couple millennia, far back as we have written records.
My favorite invented phrase "narrowcasting" as opposed to broadcasting. Everybody (more than 50%) watched MASH in the broadcasting era, nobody (less than 3%) watches Survivor in the narrowcasting era, both supposedly define pop culture of their eras.
(Score: -1) by fakefuck39 on Tuesday December 12 2017, @04:38AM
The point of your conversations is to get to the end as fast as possible? Do you also watch videos sped up, because the point of a movie is to get to the end real fast?
Hey - awesome. Guess what - no one gives a fuck about what you prefer. The rest of us normal people prefer a relaxed background 45 minute text conversation while doing something else (like being on a call) or watching a movie (w/o speeding it up 20%). When something is urgent we'll still have that 2 minute phone call instead.
I love you people with autism. Your lives are sooooo sad and shitty, and you refuse to admit it to yourself and fix yourself, so the funny clown show is guaranteed to continue.
And no, I've never had any social media accounts. I do love my lync and email though. loser.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @10:03PM (1 child)
Well this is awkward.
You see Jeremy, how shall I put this?
We try to be polite but -and I wish that there was a nicer way to say this- Your messages are so boring that we often fall asleep mid-chat.
There I said it.
It feels like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 12 2017, @06:03AM
And you'll feel cold in a minute, because the covers slid off.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @09:45PM (2 children)
Boo hoo for him. So he feels bad. Well, bully for him. Ten years or so ago I read an article on the guy who was behind the algorithmicization of the radio industry; the guy who is responsible for the fact that most of commercial radio only ever plays, like, 50 songs. He felt bad about the state of mediocrity we find ourselves in and he wanted to shake up the industry. My response to him then was: you can KMA. Unless these guys want to forego the wealth it made them to atone for their participation, I couldn't give a rat's ass about how bad they feel. I'm sure the pharma heads feel bad about all the people hooked on opioids. Unless he wants to dump the millions he made and go back to being a regular schmo, I don't give a flying you-know-what about how bad or guilty he says he feels.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @09:52PM
I go back and forth myself about how much to blame execs. Sometimes they are scum, sometimes they pursue something and only realize how bad it was in hindsight. At the very least kudos to him for speaking out, it certainly won't help his career because who wants a tattle-tale?? Any info we can use to disrupt FB's hold over our friends and family is welcome.
I also empathize with your irritation, hopefully he donates to some charities or something worthwhile.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @10:00PM
Ideally they should dump their wealth into a foundation dedicated to undoing whatever it is they're feeling regretful over. That's something that might approach repentance.
It would be good to have a foundation dedicated to decentralized social. Revive XMPP (yes, I know, it lost and I can't get over it). Fund efforts to create a distributed content platform for sharing family pictures in a way that respects and enables the privacy that a family should have. Etc.
We can't undo Facebook, but we can try to come up with something better. However, nothing will change without the inertia of billions of dollars in PR behind it.
(Score: 4, Funny) by VLM on Monday December 11 2017, @11:17PM (3 children)
I donno about checkboxing, people who like to increase their score for the sake of the score, completionist types.
I'd have gone on a conformity tack where I recall some of the A+ students in high school/uni were very smart, but most were hyperconformists who would do whatever the authority figure said, which is strongly rewarded in high school, well, at least rewarded by the teachers even if peers made fun of them. Having never been to Stanford I'd imagine this extends to there. I would imagine the campus is mostly kids who've never rebelled against a homework or teacher or parent demands or anything in their lives. Possibly an aspect of SJW misbehavior is here's kids who've never said "no" to any authority, ever, not even once, or they wouldn't have gotten in, who are now free and go hyper opposite direction wanting to burn it all down at the other extreme.
There's a lot of brainwashing in school. It works really well until it doesn't. Some decades ago, I remember my locker neighbor throwing her clarinet (or whatever it was exactly) into her locker and some, rather unusual for her, swearing and screaming because she only played that god damn thing for four years to get into Notre Dame and she didn't get accepted so fuck that god damn thing shes never going to play that piece of shit again and she dropped out of band class as of five minutes ago and fuck the clarinet and fuck band class and fuck Notre Dame and whaa whaa whaa. Which was pretty unusual to hear a petite and usually very polite and well spoken 18 year old uni/college-bound high achiever conformist girl screaming and crying in the hallway. Apparently she had been trained like a rat in a cage that if she pressed the bar by playing the clarinet for four years, she was a guaranteed her rat award pellet which for her was admission at Notre Dame, now she's like "where's my fucking rat pellet?" and freaking out. All brainwashing seems to end that way, this was just the funniest most memorable story I can remember of brainwashing ending. Ironically she was hot, so she's probably a trophy wife in a mansion somewhere now, so school doesn't matter anyway, and a degree in clarinet playing from Notre Dame isn't going to get her a better barista job or McDonalds job than a degree in clarinet playing from the local state U, so she was basically freaking out about nothing, which makes the story even funnier.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 12 2017, @04:47AM
It's okay VLM, you can stop pretending. We know that it was you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 12 2017, @04:51AM
Just like we knew all the time.
With love (yeah that's bullshit), from Berkeley
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 12 2017, @03:07PM
must you refer to SJWs in everything you write? it's like ethonal fueled yelling about jews. it gets old to hear a common source of blame laid out with no bearing on the conversation.
completionists, authoratarians, introverts, extroverts. they all exist. and they aren't SJWs because it explains your present worldview if they checked boxes that they hoped would get them to succeed in their group.
when you try to relate about decades ago experiences with people that used to be ironically hot because their conformity somehow make them less physically attractive (and so you've promoted her to trophy wife due to her assumed uselessness over these past decades) you can at least try to feel sorry for her in that she did what the adults she trusted said would work for her, and it didn't. and she learned a lesson that many people still haven't learned -- you can't believe what people tell you just because they seem to be in a position of authority.
she's probably way smarter now, and I would expect she still is upset about that. she probably grew up to be a cynic