12 ms·

Avoiding the Global Lobotomy

• twic 6y ago
  Who's James Mason?
  • jamiecollinson 6y ago
    I can only assume this is a #MeToo reference as he was the male lead in Lolita - c.f. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/feb/16/times-finally-up-for-hollywoods-lolita-complex https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/feb/16/times-finally-u...
  • Luc 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Mason_(neo-Nazi) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Mason_(neo-Nazi)
• jonnypotty 6y ago
  The truth is probably that no one should use Facebook or Instagram in the same way that people shouldn't smoke or drink too much. Mental health ya know.
  • asiachick 6y ago
    Or maybe just use them responsibly? I have ~900 "friends" but I only follow somewhere between 20-30 people. I've stopped following anyone who isn't actually close. I've also stopped following anyone who posts too much (except my sister) or posts a lot of political stuff. I've also hit the "don't show this person for 30 days" on people who are ranting with lots of posts about the topic of the moment, whatever it is". My feed is just a few close friends and family and pretty much all of it nice. It's also not that busy, a few posts a day. I can keep up with 1 view day. I have notifications off except for the Messenger app. Instagram is similar. I only follow about 8 people and none of them post too often. I unfollowed friends that post too much and I have notifications off. I check it 2-4 times a month at most.
    • luckylion 6y ago
      > Or maybe just use them responsibly? Possibly. It may be that some people are able to, but others are not, similar to some people being perfectly able to drink alcohol sometimes and within limits while others will quickly spiral into heavy drinking. It may also have to do a lot with your circumstances, whether social media is where you get your gratification and social interactions or is just something you use to make plans with friends to get together. I knew a woman ages ago that smoked three cigarettes a day: one in the morning, one after she got home from work, and one before she went to bed. I've never been able to control my smoking that well, and I've never met any other smokers that could.
    • tchaffee 6y ago
      Using a highly addictive thing responsibly is trickier than a list of bullet points that worked for you. Everyone starts out using thinking "I can keep this in control".
    • bluntfang 6y ago
      >Or maybe just use them responsibly? This isn't a personal responsibility thing. Personal responsibility goes out the window when companies are spending hundreds of millions on research and design to keep you "engaged" (see addicted).
      • mmerlin 6y ago
        Parallels with Opioid companies Excessive use of social media may have a similar impact as using opioids... https://www.foxnews.com/tech/facebook-cocaine-opioids-how-addictive-is-the-social-network https://www.foxnews.com/tech/facebook-cocaine-opioids-how-ad...
  • dr-detroit 6y ago
    I haven't logged in to FB in a decade. It was crap since always, strictly in terms of the content Im not commenting on how these sites are backed by the CIA and not in order to be your "friend". You, your friends, your mum, aren't making good content. If you did it would be hosted on a better site.
• elcomet 6y ago
  I find it very hard to not look at my phone every 5 min (to check HN, emails, or anything). I wish I didn't, and I feel quite like the author (at the beginning of its article): lack of concentration, mentally tired.. Do people have any advice to help ?
  • amelius 6y ago
    A picture of your mother-in-law on your home screen?
  • Strom 6y ago
    Replacing an addiction with a void won't work. So instead of focusing on "how do I stop doing this?" focus on finding a different activity. If it's something you're truly interested in, then you'll spend your time doing that and you won't have time or a desire to check your phone. In other words, you're only checking your phone because that is more interesting than whatever else you were doing at that moment. So the key is to replace that boring activity with a more interesting one.
    • limomium 6y ago
      I disagree - that just leads to learning to distract oneself. The most effective method in my experience is to do nothing instead of the thing you want to stop doing. Literally, stop the thing you're doing, do not transition into doing anything else, and then do nothing. For a good while. Give it an hour or two. This is based on the theory that the REASON you keep checking your phone, HN, etc. is that you are compulsively anxious about "missing out" on information, so your brain seeks it at every opportunity, and the Internet and its services have an unending supply. The antidote is to PROVE to yourself that the compulsion is illusory, and nothing bad happens if you resist it. Over time, you can extend the time between these checks longer and longer, and begin to notice that it's OK to miss even MOST online content, really only occasionally and with INTENT stop to consume the stuff you ACTUALLY care about. Unfriend Facebook contacts that have nothing real to say. Unsubscribe from everything that doesn't truly interest you. Set your phone on 'Do Not Disturb' outside business hours. YOU decide what content and when you want to consume. Never browse feeds nor recommendation engines. They are intentionally tuned to be as addictive as possible, to keep you hooked, to serve you more ads.
• hyko 6y ago
  Avoid the global lobotomy, “please support me on Patreon”.
• greggman3 6y ago
  I don't know where to get started but I wish there was a manifesto for companies to pledge and social pressure for them to conform to design their software to not be distracting/addict. To not gameify it with badges, and points, and up votes and downvotes. Most native phone apps seemed designed to distract. Most internet forums including HN seemed designed to distract. There's this like score at the top right corner and I'm aware of anytime it changes. When it does change I feel compelled to go look into why. The same thing happens on Stack Overflow. On both sites I've use Ublock Origin to block all scores. All of them. I've also used it to block the downvote button on HN. But, I honestly believe the world would be a much better place without this gamification and I believe that HN and Stack Overflow and Reddit and all the rest are acting irresponsibly by having these features. IMO they're addicting, compelling, and they have other negative consequences like promoting group think. I have no idea how to convince others of this and to get the various companies to give up their skinner box features.
  • hordeallergy 6y ago
    I have a different account eg for hn on every device. I don't add my email and immediately forget my password, so the accounts are all disposable, and doomed. Karma has no value on my accounts.
  • leto_ii 6y ago
    > I have no idea how to convince others of this and to get the various companies to give up their skinner box features. Convincing others may not be very hard in the end, since everybody is going through this in one way or another. Convincing companies on the other hand may be impossible under the prevailing economic ideology. As long as the primary and basically sole purpose of a corporation is maximizing shareholder value, they will be compelled to find the most effective ways to do so. If that entails designing addictive products that rot the mind, then that's exactly what they will do.
    • H8crilA 6y ago
      Exactly. Hedge yourself from this insanity, because you ain't going to fix the world, and wait for the new world order. Most young people will probably disagree with this approach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...
• billme 6y ago
  While I would be the first to agree the world increasingly makes it easier to go on “auto-pilot” - this largely is by choice for the average person and I would argue has been around as long as written history. Being critical of people for doing this will not help, nor will assuming the average person becoming more engaged will align with the outcome you would think would be reasonable; for example, the world working together to insure a positive future for Earth and beyond. I don’t know what the answer is.
  • leto_ii 6y ago
    > this largely is by choice for the average person I would disagree. While indeed we're all in a sense free to choose, your environment can actually make certain choices a lot easier than others. We're indeed free to not have a smartphone, social media etc. but since there's now a social expectation to have those things, opting out may lead to social isolation. In turn, since you're almost compelled to opt in, you will be exposed to those things, which are designed to be addictive => there's a risk you will become addicted. > I would argue been around as long as written history Here I really have to disagree. For most of written history the vast majority of people spent a lot of their time outside, doing mostly manual work. Their equivalent of social media and news feeds were tales told by the elders and various community social events or ceremonies. No auto-pilot there, as far as I can see.
• leto_ii 6y ago
  The body of the article is too verbose for my taste. However, I found the advice section at the end valuable and actionable; especially the following: > Continually check your thoughts, actions, purchases and posts. Do I actually like this? Do I actually believe this? What do I actually think? > Read old books, preferably books published before the 1900s > Go outside, seriously go outside. Look around, it’s great out there. Also, of course, everything about reducing smartphone/screen exposure.
  • Merrill 6y ago
    Remind yourself occasionally that none of what you see on a screen is real - it is only colored dots on a piece of glass.
    • tuyiown 6y ago
      Photons are real whatever the light source. Reality is more something related to trust, if you want a hierarchy to reality, you can trust more your direct testimony of an event from your senses that someone's account, and it's much better when you shared reality with a third party. «Did you see that ?» Everything's real, the only point is whether it fits in your belief system or if you trust the information enough to adjust it.
      • Merrill 6y ago
        The photons from the screen are real. Everything else is conjecture. If I look back at photos I've taken, I can conjecture that they appear to be an accurate record of what I was seeing when I took them, and that no one has surreptitiously hacked my phone and altered them. If I look at a photo of a grandson posted by my daughter, I can reasonably conjecture that it is also a faithful facsimile of his appearance at that time and place. If I look at a video of a third person posted by my niece, there is zero assurance that it represents reality. So the default position has to be that the colored dots are for entertainment only, and not to be taken seriously, unless there is some valid reason to believe otherwise.
        • 6y ago
• hi5eyes 6y ago
  “ The Best Minds of My Generation Are Thinking About How To Make People Click Ads”
  • balladeer 6y ago
    What metrics decides the best minds and who designed those metrics? They may not be the best minds. In fact if they were maybe they would not be doing it in the first place.
    • giantDinosaur 6y ago
      Even if true, I'm sure the 'best minds' historically were often occupied by, say, justifying the existence of a God over exclusively dedicating their immense talents to fundamental scientific theory. We can excuse it, in some cases, I suppose.
    • banads 6y ago
      It can of course be superficial, but perhaps "the best minds" as it applies in this context could be measured by salary, education level/cost of education (i.e. how many Ivy Leaguers work at said companies)
  • nailer 6y ago
    It genuinely bothers me that the biggest name in tech is a massive advertising company that hasn't made a significant new product in a decade.
    • majewsky 6y ago
      Just to let me know, you made me go through the Wikipedia article "List of Google products" to see if I could disprove you. I only see two things that I would count as "significant new products", Chrome OS (and hence, Chromebooks) and Google Assistant. The other stuff they made in the 2010s is just carbon-copying other successful services (Drive), already discontinued (Inbox) or both (Google+).
      • 6y ago
• ilaksh 6y ago
  The phone delivers important news which must be checked at least once a day, and also is a core mechanism of socializing. I think you can't just randomly ignore it for arbitrary amounts of time. What you can do is cut back on your digital socializing. Which means interacting with fewer people or less often. For me that comes naturally, but on days where I have even two people chatting with me routinely, it easily starts to eat into my attention for work and other things. The trick is to avoid Facebook entirely, not have friends, and not have any followers on Twitter that are not bots.
  • omreaderhn 6y ago
    > The phone delivers important news which must be checked at least once a day I think you've nailed the reason why it's very difficult to completely cut your phone out of your life in terms of it being something you depend on in your routine. It's relatively easy to block social media and uninstall apps like Instagram but for me this was the use case that I hadn't been able to find a substitute for. I build this service to deal with this specific problem, essentially allowing you to have news and other kinds of content (like blog posts) delivered to your Kindle to read in a newspaper format: https://omreader.co https://omreader.co We're still in beta and I would love any feedback from HN readers. If you have any questions or feedback you can email me at the email in my bio.
  • fullshark 6y ago
    > The phone delivers important news which must be checked at least once a day I'm beginning to think the news is really not that important. Even in the midst of a global pandemic when presumably the news would be crucial to explain how to keep you and your family safe it's not clear it helped given the noise level of the information published. At the crucial early stages, being informed (masks don't help! don't buy them: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-cdc-says-americans-dont-have-to-wear-facemasks-because-of-coronavirus-2020-01-30 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-cdc-says-americans-don...) would have hurt you (whoops our bad: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/diy-cloth-face-coverings.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-si...). Being largely uninformed and just getting the gist of information might have been fine. When I go on vacation and stop checking the news for a week, i'm amazed at the volume of information I missed, how much I enjoyed not thinking about said information, and how unimportant it truly was in the grand scheme of my life.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
  I have no idea what this article is actually arguing for. But the author also has essays on “accelerationism”, making me somewhat suspicious.
  • malwarebytess 6y ago
    Don't need to be suspicious. He's definitely inspired by nick land et al. the current reigning intellectual fascist and king accelerationist. https://twitter.com/meta_nomad/status/1187046976950587398 https://twitter.com/meta_nomad/status/1187046976950587398 And if you need any further proof of where this guy's at politically: https://i.imgur.com/LvaK31Z.png https://i.imgur.com/LvaK31Z.png . 1 is essentially an antisemitic dogwhistle meme and 2 is sort of self explanatory.
    • IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
      Ah, thanks! That explains the downvotes.
    • lasagnaphil 6y ago
      The tweets you've posted are very obviously irony; he's basically mocking one of the tropes related to accelerationism, which is the misconception that all accelerationists are NRx/alt-right white suprematists. The reality is a bit more complicated than that, there is both a left-wing and a right-wing version of it (if you want a wikipedia article on it here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism). From glancing some of the articles from the author, he's more into the former camp than the latter, and really has no interest in NRx politics. You can criticize all you want about accelerationism itself though - but now that's where you're going knee-deep into the territory of philosophy, and where you really need to fight against Land's vicious assaults on Western modernism. Nick Land is quite a controversial figure, but you have to understand that he was the leader of one of the strangest leftist post-modern philosopher groups called the CCRU, which was strongly influenced by Deleuze & Guattari's works along with futurism, sci-fi, cyberpunk, etc. . But he also did too many drugs along the away and broke himself - and after that breakdown is when he kinda changed 180 degrees and went full on with the neo-reactionary movement. He even said that he doesn't want to associate himself with his past CCRU works anymore. (You can read more about him in http://divus.cc/london/en/article/nick-land-ein-experiment-im-inhumanismus. http://divus.cc/london/en/article/nick-land-ein-experiment-i...) Clearly the author is interested in the former half of Land's works, seeing that he is running online lectures about the philosophy from the CCRU and not the NRx.
• op03 6y ago
  Platforms need to Turn off/hide/delay/limit the Like counts. Including HN. Just like we learnt the hard way about the conseqences of too much sugar, fat, nicotine, alcohol etc etc we now understand (and it took too long) what all damage a half baked reward mechanism does to society.
  • jansan 6y ago
    +1
• JohnStrangeII 6y ago
  Although I don't want to say that this post is not insightful at all, I'm always a bit wary of people who place themselves above everyone else and think they know so much better. One thing the author doesn't explain, for instance, is why getting your little dopamin kicks from time to time is so bad. The post generalizes from the extreme cases. For example, I buy too many VST audio plugins, stuff that I don't really need as a hobby musician. I know that I don't really need them, but from time to time when they are on sale, I like to buy another one just for fun, for the immediate satisfaction of trying it out. I can easily afford this, it's just a part of spending my modest discretionary salary (most of which I save). The habit gives me a nice feeling. What's wrong with that? Maybe the author needs to take it a bit more easy?
  • tenebrisalietum 6y ago
    VSTs are a tool you can use for creation. I see what you're doing as exploring and trying to find new sounds. I think this is different than what the article speaks about. From the article: > Now, defining successful social interactions used to be difficult, but the sphere of social interaction has since been immanentized onto the metric of likes, retweets, hearts etc, wherein a greater number of positive likes equates to a more successful social interaction I just don't see exploring sounds as equivalent to the above. I mean are you trying to get likes, retweets, etc. with your VSTs? Not in the same manner - sure you will be making a audio work that you hope will be appreciated but it's nowhere near the same as unconsciously regurgitating some text macro image from a political think tank group or radio station.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    As the author notes at the top, I think most people can directly feel the problem. We just don't often focus on it or try to solve it. It kinda fades into the background. I spend 10 minutes a day showering, an hour a day eating, and 3 hours a day randomly alternating between browser tabs - isn't that just what normal life is?
• dreen 6y ago
  Step 1: get rid of your smartphone. You probably spend a lot of time in front of a computer anyway, so you don't really need it. Trust me, it's good.
  • balfirevic 6y ago
    No need to trust you, I’ve checked and I’m better off with smartphone. Most people probably are.
    • PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
      Which metrics did you use? (i'm cell/mobile phone free since ... forever, but spend all day in front of networked computer screens for decades)
      • balfirevic 6y ago
        Personal satisfaction (I missed Whatsapp, maps, Uber, ability to check email and read when not at the computer).
• giantDinosaur 6y ago
  The saddest thing, personally, is I agree, made resolution to consume less media, was going to commit to some fairly radical life changes (that I wanted to try, knowing full well there is a reasonably high chance of failure) - but then the pandemic hit. Possibilities have gone, jobs are harder to change, staying inside glued to screens has become even easier to justify. Alas.
  • kace91 6y ago
    I've had the opposite effect. Being isolated at home, I had decreased needs of quickly consumable media (no commutes), a decreased need to keep up with hot topics due to less small talk with friends, and more free time. This has allowed me to engage in more activities that require deep concentration, like reading, learning piano, or studying foreign languages (hobbies that I had put on hold for years). I feel way sharper these days mentally speaking, and for the first time in a few years I'm thinking about my life long term (am I ok at my job? what comes after? I am ok with my current social circle or should I change things?, etc).
  • AtHeartEngineer 6y ago
    About 2 weeks ago I was banned from reddit for 3 days for calling someone a karma whore, I'm glad I was, and I don't feel bad about it at all. I have since removed every social media and news app from my phone except for hacker news, and even that I've considered removing. I love so much of what technology has allowed possible and despise how most of it's used, even by myself sometimes.
• mark_l_watson 6y ago
  Welcome to the surveillance and attention economies, the “modernity” that the author describes without naming. The article, near the end, has some solid advice: spend more time walking (preferably in nature) and try to use your phone less. The large tech companies’ business depends on collecting data on every aspect of our lives, and at scale and targeted/individualized to each person, seeks to control our actions since the easiest way to predict a consumer’s actions is to actually influence them. Companies like Google and Facebook may act as if collecting all data on people is inevitable, but it may not be, if enough of us just say “no” and push back as much as we can and still thrive in modern times.
  • JackFr 6y ago
    Conspicuously absent from the article is the bad guy. There is no evil villain scheming to destroy our attention spans. The evil villain is us.
• mrfusion 6y ago
  I barely had the attention span to read this :-(
• paulorlando 6y ago
  Good recommendations. I started doing this slowly over the past few years (watching almost no video, leaving phone behind while going out etc). Last week I went off Twitter, which was my main source of news. In a short time that's had a big impact on how distracted I feel. Also agreed on reading old books. Most new books (at least mass marketed ones) are mediocre. They may have a financial ROI but not a mental one. Reading books that have been around for a while means you're probably seeing the best. Same goes for old movies.
  • legulere 6y ago
    Old Books being better than new ones sounds just like survivorship bias.
    • base698 6y ago
      Lindy effect: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
    • paulorlando 6y ago
      Different than that. I'm saying that the small number of books published years ago that you still see around are probably the best from the large number that were published in their year. If it were survivorship bias, then I'd say "people used to be better writers..." There were certainly lots of awful books written in the past. We just don't see them anymore.
• chrismmay 6y ago
  It's quite ironic that this article is being up-voted here on Hacker News when the author's thesis is that voting systems are toxic.
  • swayvil 6y ago
    It's like discussing space-exploration while residing within an air-filled room.
    • chrismmay 6y ago
      No, actually it's like discussing how space exploration will cause the downfall of civilization from inside a spaceship bound for the moon.
    • chrismmay 6y ago
      For crying out loud, put down your phone and go play outside, after you read and up-vote my article, of course.
• neonate 6y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20200606100522/https://www.meta-nomad.net/avoiding-the-global-lobotomy/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200606100522/https://www.meta-...
• jjcc 6y ago
  I'm a little surprised the author recommended "The Shallow" but didn't mention "Deep Work" by Cal Newport.
• 7leafer 6y ago
  The best article on HN in ages.
• neilwilson 6y ago
  "If you’ve forgotten most of these, then the George Floyd event is another entry into a long line of various media events" If you're British the whole Dominic Cummings episode - where the entire media obsessed for a week over nothing at all - but demonstrated clearly that the old English Common Law maxim of "Everything which is not forbidden is allowed" is under serious threat. [1] Dr William Price would be turning in his grave - if he had one. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_which_is_not_forbidden_is_allowed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_which_is_not_forbid...
  • growlist 6y ago
    Indeed. Obsession verging on criminal persecution of Dominic Cummings; identical or worse behaviour from those in their preferred political parties (Stephen Kinnock, Ian Blackford) passes almost without comment. The pro-EU class continuing to act deranged and anti-democratic; plus ça change...
    • somewhereoutth 6y ago
      The pro-EU class, as you put it, should be understood as the class of people who contribute to society, who make it tick, the people who might have half a clue about what is actually going on. For the last 500 years the UK has had one overriding foreign policy objective - to prevent the rise of a pan European power unaligned to our interests. By surrendering our seat at the EU we have at a stroke failed in that objective - now the EU is free to become ever more powerful without us, and our needs and wishes will become increasingly irrelevant.
  • somewhereoutth 6y ago
    The problem with his actions was that it demonstrated 'one rule for us, another rule for them'. While imploring the country to stay at home, the lead advisor to the PM (and possibly the 'power behind the throne') went and did just as he pleased. As per your reference, in fact it was forbidden (by strong advice if not actual law) - he went and did it anyway.
    • 6y ago
• ativzzz 6y ago
  > Read old books, preferably books published before the 1900s, it really alters your psyche to realise how different things were just 100 or so years ago. It's funny the author mentions this, because when I read old books I have the opposite reaction: I realize how similar life is and how little things have changed. We have new technologies and better infrastructure, but people's behaviors, thought patterns (particularly the negative ones, we just have names for a lot of them now), and ultimately the meat that makes us human has not changed one bit.
  • PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    I have a way of thinking about this that I developed in connection with travelling but also applies (for me) to reading older works. Consider two biologists. One is a molecular biologist and when they look at the living world, they are amazed by how almost everything is the same. Molecules, cell structures, chemical reactions ... almost all (visible) living things are incredibly similar. Now consider our other biologist, this one a zoologist. They look at the bodies and lives and eating habits and reproductive behaviors of whales and ants and eagles and snakes and are amazed at the vast diversity and range the living world presents. So who's right, the molecular biologist or the zoologist? Is (almost) all life fundamentally the same, or is it incredibly diverse and different? The answer, obviously, is that neither of them are right. They each are looking at the same phenomena in different ways. When you travel, or when you read and old book, you will notice that in general, people wake up, eat some food, start the business of the day, eat some more food, socialize a little or a lot with others, take in a little (or a lot) of culture, sleep. They have children. They live in homes. They (mostly) wear clothes. This is the "molecular biology" view of other lands/times. If you start focusing in on precisely what they eat, how they move from one place to another, details of their clothes, the nature and duration of friendships, the types of activities they do, the role of gender and age and beliefs and climate and soil ... you start to see enormous variation across space and time. This is the "zoologist" view. People are all remarkably similar and all remarkably different. That's true whether you look around the world, or back in time. And then of course, there's the French distillation of all this: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose ("the more things change, the more they stay the same").
• swayvil 6y ago
  >...We quite literally get anxiety attacks when we’ve misplaced our phones... >...phantom-vibration syndrome... Holy shit, this is me!
• crazygringo 6y ago
  This article describes a mix of normal memory function combined with what appears to be a mix of anxiety, fatigue, internet addiction, and possibly slight depression. First of all, all this stuff of "do you remember" is how the brain is supposed to work. Our brain stays efficient by forgetting information that is no longer relevant. Who cares what you had for lunch last week? Forgetting that is a feature, not a bug. As for the rest, the "advice" is fairly random and vaguely insulting ("start to fucking think", "read old books", "understand that things die", "wake up entirely"). My advice would be simpler and more direct. If you have a problem with internet addiction, treat that directly. There are many sources out there to guide you. If you have problems with fatigue and depression, see a therapist. There are many potential causes which a trained professional can help identify and work with. And if your main problem is anxiety, then mindfulness meditation has been shown to help in many cases -- lots of good books on this. There are many other cases where mindfulness is not going to be enough, and therapy will be required.
  • Isomorpheus 6y ago
    This would seem to be the hyper-individualist response. Our environment/context influences our behavior. Saying, "well, technically any given person could ignore their environment/context and act however is optimal!" isn't very helpful. This article is acknowledging the environmental/systemic/contextual reality
    • crazygringo 6y ago
      Did you read the same article I did? All the advice in the article is about what you can do as an individual, for yourself. And I'm critiquing that advice as essentially sophomoric. I don't know what you're inventing "hyper-individualist" out of, and the article doesn't give any advice on any "environmental/systemic/contextual reality".
      • wallacoloo 6y ago
        “hyper-indivisualist” (atomization) surely refers to this part of the article: > The project of atomization is the great illusory emancipatory freedom layered over an ever-constraining normality, atomization allows only for greater normality to be imposed on an individual level, away from families, groups and communes which will potentially have a sturdy and stable enough leader to disrupt the process of modernity. Noe that I think about it, I seem to agree with you: it does seem suspect that the solutions to problems induced by atomization would not involve collaboration.
• albertTJames 6y ago
  Phony bulshit. Younger generation are much more aware, generally savy, And actively engaged than mine was 20years ago. Internet has not lobotomized us, it has changed the scale and speed at wich the narrative change, and it has levelled the field of knowledge in many direct and indirect ways.
  • ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    What evidence is there of this? Has the youth vote made any difference in the electorate? No. More of the "youth" are spending time on fortnite and instagram than educating themselves on the internet.
    • albertTJames 6y ago
      think again https://www.statista.com/statistics/189582/age-of-us-video-game-players-since-2010/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/189582/age-of-us-video-g...
      • ntsplnkv2 6y ago
        The source doesn't explain how the data is acquired and really doesn't make any argument, it seems like astroturfing. Not spending money on garbage statistics, sorry. Also what does gaming have to do with any of this? People who are older play sports too - so what?
• amiga_500 6y ago
  Enjoyed this article from the same blog, about dropping out: https://www.meta-nomad.net/category/collapse/ https://www.meta-nomad.net/category/collapse/
• darepublic 6y ago
  I guess I have been spared by never garnering many likes, hence I could not develop the social media addiction