iltoroargento

Are you me?

This is my main issue with this type of journalism as well. The one author of the paper comes off as flippantly myopic and that’s partially due to the way the article itself is written. If dude doesn’t have a really informed view of the underlying causes of the data being observed, don’t just throw some dumb quote he pulled out of his ass into the article lol.

It’s increasingly difficult to find articles that pose deeply thought out questions and analyses when every writer is pressured to produce something that satisfied their editors’ want for a story with a quick answer that doesn’t rock the boat or upset shareholders.

• Ted Kaczinsky (The Unabomber)

Absolutely. I totally agree that social media is a manipulative lens based on those engagement algorithms. I definitely see that as having amplified these issues (and in many cases, misrepresented and confused, as you said, which also drives despair and conflict).

I also didn’t mean to sound extremely dour in the first place, there are, of course, some aspects of society and progress worth celebrating, and I’m not particularly unhappy, so much as worried for others, myself.

The reality and perception of existential threats like climate change, violence, and exploitation is no doubt amplified by the lens of social media, but I would argue that those pressures would still be felt, regardless of that amplification, leading me to see them as the root causes.

I also agree that social media in general is another root cause, but argue that just throwing that out there as “the” root cause, as Bellflower does in his quote, is reductive and looks out of touch.

Lol this dude sounds super out of touch. There are a whole lot of societal and economic factors around the '00s and '10s that are likely contributing.

Fuggin’ “cellphones” sounds like a typical boomer answer.

Also, there is likely some lag time between a population’s perception of traumatic or disturbing events and the onset of despair. I know that learning more about the financial crises around the late '00s did not help my mental health and only really occurred some time after in the mid '10s as people had time to analyze the root causes of these issues.

The continual deathmarch of climate change, growing awareness of the exploitation of the working class, and the reactionary violence and hate bred by right wing fanatics and politicians which surged beginning in the early '10s are all contenders for massive, culturally debilitating, trends. Lol “cellphones”.

Smart phones and social media are obviously amplifiers of these issues and are part of the problem, but the quote is remarkably reductive and does not address the root cause of what makes the information communicated through cell phones and social media so disheartening. Maybe we are given poor context for the quote and maybe it was something Blanchflower said in passing during the interview, but, still, not a good look.

Nice, yeah, that’s kinda how I was thinking. Thanks for the recommendation!

Ooh. Those price points are pretty solid. If you had to pick one for daily use, including travel, would you go InkPad 4 or one of the eras?

Commenting to come back to this. Also interested!

“More at six…”