3 ms·

Facebook is radicalising your parents

29 points by freddyym 6y ago

sharken 6y ago
I guess Chemtrails lost their appeal. On a slightly more serious note, this has Only in America written all over it.
chillacy 6y ago
> Reed Cooper, a smug blond boy in a Sunday school tie and blazer combo who festoons all his social media with American flags, is already a visual argument for the return of corporal punishment. Inflammatory media pieces are probably part of the problem if we're talking polarization, as enjoyable as it might be to relish in the concept of a "punchable face".
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  I came here to comment on that exact same snippet. I knew the tone of the piece after that intro. This is getting tiresome.
daveslash 6y ago
Just after GHW Bush's passing 2 years ago, I was speaking with a Boomer friend. The conversation quickly spiraled and she was telling me about how GHWB was a pedophile who abused children, then extracted their adrenochrome, and then ate them. He wasn't alone. He did this with his kids (Jeb, GWB,the Clintons, the Reagans, and the Obamas. I was completely caught off guard. This was someone who I had otherwise respected and thought well of - a retiree of the aerospace/defense industry. She then said "I used to never know any of this stuff, but now that I have the internet on my smartphone, my eyes are open." -- That last part has really stuck with me...
vixen99 6y ago
Merriam-Webster. Radicalise? "d : advocating extreme measures to retain or restore a political state of affairs" and their example is "the radical right" Anyone who's followed the news over the summer and read the novel 1984 understands this perfectly.
mixmastamyk 6y ago
This piece makes the short-sighted and common mistake of only finding fault with the "extreme" right. I happen to know quite a few of these folks that obsessively forward ugly politics, it is a real problem. But I know quite a few incredibly smug folks from "extreme" left that do practically the same thing. An example: Many are the kind of folks that complained bitterly that people were going to California beaches early in the Covid crisis, "because science" (that they apparently didn't understand). They were clearly superior to those other folks and forwarded articles with carefully chosen photographs (taken at a 15-degree angle) which made the beach seem much more crowded than it really was. A little applied spatial reasoning could see that the groups were several yards/meters apart or more. The first days the subject came up in the news I said, "no one is getting this sitting alone in the ocean-breeze and sunshine" and was attacked for it. Guess what, a few months later that rule was rescinded, because it didn't make sense. Any apologies over the hysteria and name-calling? Of course not. Another example would be the housing crisis. In every facebook thread regarding a new apartment building lefty nimbys come out of the woodwork to make comments that even an a high-school economics class graduate can see are backwards, regarding cause and effect. I have other examples, but that's enough for now. TL;DR: Lefties don't have a lock on reality, and your piece would be better recognizing that.
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  What’s fascinating about your comment, to me (a leftist, with very minimal social media exposure to right wingers except in comment sections, i.e. I’m a perfect example of the “echo chamber”/“bubble”), is that leftists are notorious (and historically infamous) for internal disagreement, internal conflict, infighting, even comically[1] pathological division. The idea that the things you describe are representative of “lefties” is almost as silly as the notion that “left” is any kind of unifying umbrella at all. That said, yes a political persuasion so large it uses a hemispheric metaphor is likely to have some common threads. Absolutely, there were some people “on the left” who took obviously dishonest photos of beach gatherings and mindlessly regurgitated them. And certainly there are people “on the left” who on principal oppose residential development that would alleviate some housing pressures because the development is overwhelmingly upmarket and contributes to the affordability crisis even as vacancy eases affordability pressure in other ways. But what I see in my “bubble” is that these are both examples of the deep culture of debate on the left; that challenging groupthink is built in; that “reality” isn’t some amorphous thing but actually an area of exploratory interest, where the left internally dissents and people in it gradually reconsider their ideas and assumptions without outside/“other” pressure. Because yes, we get shit wrong, but we actually care about correcting ourselves more than correcting the “other”. Both of the examples you chose are subjects that “the left” has aggressively self policed, because when the actual reality hasn’t matched the instinct, we don’t mind admitting we’re wrong and absorbing that new knowledge. [1]: Edit to explicitly state the Monty Python reference, which I’m sure some will pick up on... “People's Front of Judea”, etc and so on.
ribble 6y ago
LOL
rdtwo 6y ago
Umm faux news and MSNBC are already wildly successful, Facebook just helps

29 points by freddyym 6y ago

I guess Chemtrails lost their appeal. On a slightly more serious note, this has Only in America written all over it.

> Reed Cooper, a smug blond boy in a Sunday school tie and blazer combo who festoons all his social media with American flags, is already a visual argument for the return of corporal punishment. Inflammatory media pieces are probably part of the problem if we're talking polarization, as enjoyable as it might be to relish in the concept of a "punchable face".

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
I came here to comment on that exact same snippet. I knew the tone of the piece after that intro. This is getting tiresome.

daveslash 6y ago

Just after GHW Bush's passing 2 years ago, I was speaking with a Boomer friend. The conversation quickly spiraled and she was telling me about how GHWB was a pedophile who abused children, then extracted their adrenochrome, and then ate them. He wasn't alone. He did this with his kids (Jeb, GWB,the Clintons, the Reagans, and the Obamas. I was completely caught off guard. This was someone who I had otherwise respected and thought well of - a retiree of the aerospace/defense industry. She then said "I used to never know any of this stuff, but now that I have the internet on my smartphone, my eyes are open." -- That last part has really stuck with me...

vixen99 6y ago

Merriam-Webster. Radicalise? "d : advocating extreme measures to retain or restore a political state of affairs" and their example is "the radical right" Anyone who's followed the news over the summer and read the novel 1984 understands this perfectly.

mixmastamyk 6y ago

This piece makes the short-sighted and common mistake of only finding fault with the "extreme" right. I happen to know quite a few of these folks that obsessively forward ugly politics, it is a real problem. But I know quite a few incredibly smug folks from "extreme" left that do practically the same thing. An example: Many are the kind of folks that complained bitterly that people were going to California beaches early in the Covid crisis, "because science" (that they apparently didn't understand). They were clearly superior to those other folks and forwarded articles with carefully chosen photographs (taken at a 15-degree angle) which made the beach seem much more crowded than it really was. A little applied spatial reasoning could see that the groups were several yards/meters apart or more. The first days the subject came up in the news I said, "no one is getting this sitting alone in the ocean-breeze and sunshine" and was attacked for it. Guess what, a few months later that rule was rescinded, because it didn't make sense. Any apologies over the hysteria and name-calling? Of course not. Another example would be the housing crisis. In every facebook thread regarding a new apartment building lefty nimbys come out of the woodwork to make comments that even an a high-school economics class graduate can see are backwards, regarding cause and effect. I have other examples, but that's enough for now. TL;DR: Lefties don't have a lock on reality, and your piece would be better recognizing that.

eyelidlessness 6y ago
What’s fascinating about your comment, to me (a leftist, with very minimal social media exposure to right wingers except in comment sections, i.e. I’m a perfect example of the “echo chamber”/“bubble”), is that leftists are notorious (and historically infamous) for internal disagreement, internal conflict, infighting, even comically[1] pathological division. The idea that the things you describe are representative of “lefties” is almost as silly as the notion that “left” is any kind of unifying umbrella at all. That said, yes a political persuasion so large it uses a hemispheric metaphor is likely to have some common threads. Absolutely, there were some people “on the left” who took obviously dishonest photos of beach gatherings and mindlessly regurgitated them. And certainly there are people “on the left” who on principal oppose residential development that would alleviate some housing pressures because the development is overwhelmingly upmarket and contributes to the affordability crisis even as vacancy eases affordability pressure in other ways. But what I see in my “bubble” is that these are both examples of the deep culture of debate on the left; that challenging groupthink is built in; that “reality” isn’t some amorphous thing but actually an area of exploratory interest, where the left internally dissents and people in it gradually reconsider their ideas and assumptions without outside/“other” pressure. Because yes, we get shit wrong, but we actually care about correcting ourselves more than correcting the “other”. Both of the examples you chose are subjects that “the left” has aggressively self policed, because when the actual reality hasn’t matched the instinct, we don’t mind admitting we’re wrong and absorbing that new knowledge. [1]: Edit to explicitly state the Monty Python reference, which I’m sure some will pick up on... “People's Front of Judea”, etc and so on.

ribble 6y ago

LOL

rdtwo 6y ago

Umm faux news and MSNBC are already wildly successful, Facebook just helps