[HN Gopher] How to Destroy a Generation
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How to Destroy a Generation
Author : leotravis10
Score : 23 points
Date : 2024-11-14 17:40 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.joanwestenberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.joanwestenberg.com)
| CM30 wrote:
| Eh, for all the talk about a generation, this feels like it could
| apply to every generation on social media. Doesn't matter whether
| they're boomers or generation X, millennials or generation z or
| generation alpha, they've often withdrawn into echo chambers that
| reinforce their every belief and lost the ability to think
| critically about their views (if that was ever a thing before).
|
| But to be honest, something about this article strikes me as
| either inauthentic or 'off'. Like, it's very light on concrete
| details or analysis, and written in such a way that it could be
| applied to whatever group the reader dislikes the most. Admit it,
| when you read this, who do you think it's talking about? Gen Z
| with TikTok and Instagram echo chambers? Boomers with Facebook
| and Fox News? Millennials with Twitter and Reddit and YouTube?
| Someone else entirely?
|
| The answer is whichever group you're not part of. Or maybe the
| one you are. It's just so wishy washy with how it's written and
| so non specific that it feels designed to trigger an emotional
| response rather than start a debate.
| romesmoke wrote:
| The notion about "groups" is nowhere in the article. Your
| comment, however, is written as if belonging to _some_ group is
| necessary. Worse, your comment delineates the example groups it
| gives based on social media apps!
|
| ...and there 's the irony. Because in my view, this
| unquenchable need to tribalize and to identify enemy tribes is
| a direct consequence of the crisis described in the article.
| Which is fully aligned with my day to day experience BTW.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Whether the author likes it or not, the emotional manipulation
| genie is out of the bottle. We cannot compete with hundreds of
| industrial psychologists using attachment theory to bind us to
| brands, and outrage to sell clicks. We'd have to reorganize our
| society to reverse the incentive structure of the current
| arrangement which is ideologically forbidden.
|
| Instead it's easy to predict what will come. Those who are
| particularly affect will have their consequences individualized -
| it will be a personal moral failure on their part succumbing to
| the consequences of that influence, or greedy marketeers, or
| sadly simply "the way the world works" unable to even be reformed
| lest we unleash even more negative consequences.
|
| The way out is never back, it's through and it's structural. We
| used to be able to imagine a different world, a better world.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| This thesis seems like it could apply to any generation that has
| achieved a level of sufficient material development to focus on
| issues higher up on Maslow's Hierarchy. The postwar boomers. The
| post-Cold War millennials. Mass media and consumer affluence
| fuels it, but I don't think either alone is sufficient.
| RevEng wrote:
| I think people are thinking of "generation" wrong in this
| context. It need not mean people born in the 60s or 80s or 2000s,
| but just the people alive and involved in the social sphere
| during a time - like right now. I think we have seen a lot of
| this manipulation across media for the last decade or two but
| taken to extremes. Whether you are liberal or conservative or
| something else, many media outlets are spinning a tale that your
| rights are being violated and the others are bad people who wish
| to deny you of those rights. Even the same people yelling about
| their first amendment rights are simultaneously blocking and
| banning those who have opposing views on any topic. The Us vs
| Them mentality is being cultivated all around. Taken far enough
| that people legitimately feel like their existence is under
| threat, those telling the story can get you to do almost
| anything, like shoot up a mosque or trash the capital.
|
| It's nothing new. The Nazis, the Cold War, the Satanic panic - we
| see examples throughout history of how this can lead people to do
| terrible things.
|
| But I bet a lot of people aren't even aware this is happening to
| them. Sometimes you need someone to point out the elephant in the
| room.
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(page generated 2024-11-14 23:02 UTC)