6 ms·
The march away from language continues. Facial expressions may be a rich form of communication but the kinds of ideas you can communicate with them are severely
by EamonnMR 5y ago
The march away from language continues. Facial expressions may be a rich form of communication but the kinds of ideas you can communicate with them are severely restricted. Literacy was hard won and now it seems like we're letting it go. Then again, maybe I'm just too old to understand.
- edgyquant 5y agoLiteracy will always have its place. Short, meme centered, entertainment isn’t one of them I suppose.
- howaboutnope 5y agoActions, in this case what someone uses their time on and fills their mind with, aren't in a place, they're in place of the other actions one could have taken. And hey, one could say literacy also "had its place" when the church ruled over the illiterate in medieval times, so that itself isn't much of a consolation.
- Syonyk 5y agoMost popular online things exist because the concept of "opportunity cost" (in time, attention, money, whatever) is no longer taught. Apparently it's quite profitable to have endless eyeballs refreshing ads.
- BitwiseFool 5y agoI'm just getting tired of seeing SHOCKED faces everywhere. Clearly, exaggerated faces lead to video views but I'm growing so averse to seeing it.
- nostromo 5y agoThat’s YouTube, not TikTok. You don’t even click on videos on TikTok.
- BitwiseFool 5y agoYeah, I'm just saying in-general. You see plenty of exaggerated expressions in tiktok videos as well.
- n8cpdx 5y agoThat’s primarily a YouTube thing from what I’ve seen. And more recently I’ve seen it on Google News article thumbnails.
- WesleyHale 5y agoI don't use much social media, but Snapchats discovery cards are over run with creators using that face. It's excessively abundant in the channels there. It feels like a forced attempt at viral marketing. "Maybe if we act shocked, they'll be shocked too!"
- BitwiseFool 5y agoMy best guess is, that as humans our brains are especially sensitive to the facial expressions of other people. And, a shocked expression is an incredibly important signal. Looking at someone wide-eyed with an open mouth in front of you implies there is something you really need to pay attention to. Just watch how babies react when you make the same face. I suspect social media just hijacked and metastasized the response.
- tux3 5y agoIs sculpting, or painting, a step in the march away from language, too? Is dancing? What about videos of people dancing is going to hurt literacy. People will consume Apps instead of TV, neither are literature, but one you can participate in. You may be too old to let yourself like new things. Where's the childlike wonder? I don't use The Tik toks either, but let me not lose mine.
- ciconia 5y agoSculpting, painting, dancing etc is creation. Watching other people do it is not.
- 310260 5y agoPeople go to museums to look at art. That's solely consumption that does not require being literate.
- zmk5 5y agoThere is a difference between a museum, which curates culturally significant art from places around the world and at home, to TikTok, a social media app that is for making money.
- OldTimeCoffee 5y agoThe 'culturally significant art' you're talking about was created for money. It's not any different than TikTok, it's just from long ago. TikTok is refined Vine and some of those Vines were worth preserving and spawned careers like ProZD.
- zmk5 5y agoCulturally significant art was created for money in a different way than a global brand like TikTok creates content for money habibi. They are not equivalent no matter how hard you try to fit your square block in the circular hole.
- Retric 5y agoMy niece and nephew both learned to read and write at very young ages due to computer games. Kids being at a 3rd grade reading level at 5 years old suggests literacy has if anything become more important.
- reidjs 5y agoI disagree entirely. There’s still plenty of stuff to read online and plenty of ways to share writing. Short creative clips are just another form of expression.
- svachalek 5y agoIf Facebook was the end game for language then 8-O :-) ;-D
- andrewxdiamond 5y agoIn a way, language has always been the comprise. We only came up with words and writing to cover the gaps with facial expressions and motions. Truly, from the dawn of writing we’ve been dealing with the faults of expressing ourselves via words. The issues have been worth it however, because communicating complicated ideas across time and space was impossible otherwise. Now, video has progressed to the point where it is trivial to use as a storage medium of ideas. We are still in the very early days of “moving pictures,” and with any technology, the first iterations often look like toys. In the far future, we may look back at this very moment as the start of a surge of _better_ communication across all boundaries; time, space, country of origin, species perhaps? This is all baseless speculation of course, but it’s fun to speculate.
- beepbooptheory 5y ago"literacy" itself is not some transhistorical, transcultural "achievement" that is now being lost. we do not live in a civ game, and there is no rubric to compare ourselves against.
- toiletaccount 5y agothese are the drills of the 21st century oil fields. they can stimulate you instantly with personalized content feeds, with no thought or effort required from you. inevitably you'll blow a geyser of ego. like oil wells people will be drained from the inside and uninhabitable on the out. don't mind the placid smiles illuminated by the glow of phone displays when your eyes venture forth from your own pixelscape, it's another oil rig.
- imbnwa 5y agoThing is, most of American culture is only interested in literacy/literature as minimally as possible, and this has been the case since before social media came on the scene. As far as back as I remember, people get defensive/offended if you use too many "big words".