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Why is it that every bit of news that comes out of some western country is now some form of shit-headedness? I thought it used to be that parents were responsi
by jalapenos 1y ago
Why is it that every bit of news that comes out of some western country is now some form of shit-headedness?
I thought it used to be that parents were responsible for their kids - that's not even a thing now?
And as if this will make any difference to anything?
I think one day the Chinese will be saying "at least we're not living in the west"
- andersa 1y agoWhat makes you think they're not saying that already?
- jalapenos 1y agoFair, maybe they are
- krona 1y ago> I think one day the Chinese will be saying "at least we're not living in the west" Conversations with highly educated Chinese nationals I've had on this topic at elite universities will often conspicuously include whataboutery on e.g. the number of security cameras in London using statistics from about 2005. Presumably they learn this in school. I'm not saying this is good or bad, just that it's pretty common already.
- jalapenos 1y agoAnd so they should. Like Putin remarking about Assange. Yes, Putin may be a despot who's whacked journalists. But that doesn't make him wrong that persecuting Assange was despot-tier scummy behaviour.
- Zealotux 1y agoWe lost our individual sense of agency long ago, we need a nanny state to take care of us and of our children, hold us by the hand and regulate every single aspect of our lives. We gave the keys to our leaders, now they get to choose what content may be accessed or not.
- lm28469 1y agoYep, it has absolutely nothing to do with the megacorps hiring behavioural experts to make their platforms as addictive as possible... it's all caused by the big mean GoBeRnMenTs Letting kids consume 10 hours straight of AI generated bottom of the barrel 3d animated slop produced in some third world country is not "personal freedom"
- logicchains 1y ago>Letting kids consume 10 hours straight of AI generated bottom of the barrel 3d animated slop Is called bad parenting.
- lm28469 1y agoMost kids would be better off being educated by orangutans at that point The problem is that we have to live with these kids eventually and you can't build a nation on kids watching brain rot from the age of 6 months because their parents were too dumb to know better. Some of the people on that forum would call the switch to compulsory education tyrannic and an abuse of governmental power lmao.
- jalapenos 1y agoTo be fair, orangutans are super chill. If I'd been raised by an orangutan, I wouldn't be upset about it.
- jalapenos 1y agoWhat is this? How about meth, is that not designed as addictive as possible - now parents can throw their hands up in defeat when little Johnny is a meth addict? "Just so addictive, what could I do?!" This world is demented
- lm28469 1y agoHave you ever noticed that meth is illegal ? And that you can't even buy alcohol/cigs before a certain age ? Same for gambling, driving a car, owning a gun, &c. If anything you're making my point really
- encom 1y ago>now This is completely on-brand for Australia. I'm not the slightest bit surprised. To be honest, I don't disagree with the premise: Keep social media away from kids. YouTube is brain rot patient zero. I just don't think it's the governments job.
- jalapenos 1y agoYouTube Shorts certainly are - pretty sure that causes actual brain damage. YouTube proper - there is actual good-quality educational content in there too
- RyanHamilton 1y agoIt's hard for parents to fight against huge corporate interests that hire thousands of phds to grab your child's attention and influence them at every turn. Realistically it's almost impossible for parents to deny their teenager a mobile without ostracising them from their friends.
- jalapenos 1y agoWhat part of parenting is easy again? That's the gig
- foepys 1y agoTry replacing "social media" with "fast food" and think about how hard that would be for parents to control.
- jalapenos 1y agoMy dude, the parents literally have to buy the fast food. If they do not, the fast food is literally not there to eat. What is even going on
- chucksta 1y ago"All these kids walking around with fast food in their pockets" ..nah just doesn't sound right, the most you could get in there is a nugget or two
- msgodel 1y agoMy parents denied me all kinds of things my friends were doing when I was a kid and looking back they were absolutely right to do that. Don't be afraid of that. Sure they made mistakes here and there. The names of Pokemon aren't actually names of demons. Looking where a lot of my friends ended up though I think they got things right on balance.
- hopelite 1y agoSame here. It was movies and TV for my parents. I have thanked them for it on several occasions when it occurred to me as an adult how affected people are by having not just grown up watching various age inappropriate movies and were trained by TV in general, because their whole world view, their whole mental superstructure is extremely influenced by TV and movies. It has clearly spread across the world to some degree, but I don’t think the average person even realizes just how much the post ~1920 American consciousness is trained on Hollywood, TV, movies. It has become a bit more diffuse lately due to decentralization of TV and movies, but the training on TV also seems to have gotten worse, even if in more covert ways because of the decentralization. You consume your TV drug in isolation and do not even talk about it anymore because everyone is watching different things at different times now. America has gone from the social drinker, the highlight of the party, to the binger I’m downs a bottle of vodka TV a day, alone. Our culture is effectively centered around what is on the real life telescreen, the one that you carry around now, that knows where you are at all times and can listen in on you. Even Orwell could only imagine a world where telescreens were fixed and could be evaded at times, or maybe he just believed that.
- dotancohen 1y agoIn what sense is Australia in the West? And why specifically mention Western? What Eastern or other non-Western countries do you feel are above such scrutiny?
- reddalo 1y agoGiven its close ties to the U.K., Australia has always been considered "the West". Except from a geographical standpoint.
- jalapenos 1y ago[flagged]
- Intermernet 1y agoEast and West on a globe are arbitrary and have always defined ideology, racial history and shared ideology. I personally hate the terminology and I think it's becoming less pertinent and popular in the modern age.
- jalapenos 1y ago[flagged]
- jedimastert 1y ago> I thought it used to be that parents were responsible for their kids - that's not even a thing now? When was this? Before or after child labor laws? Before or after we started making it illegal to beat children? Before or after child marriage laws? Age of consent laws? Standards around education, health, abuse and neglect? Whether or not this is a step too far, it's hard to say that society and or governments stepping into protect children is a recent thing.
- jalapenos 1y agoClassic western narcissism. Parents were sending their kids down the mines just for the lulz, until "society (represented by more moral types like me) and government stepped in". And because of course, in the minority of cases when parents are abusive, some politicians thousands of miles away make the abuse stop, or the amorphous blob called "society", not locals and relatives, magically we assume, when the kids own parents and extended family keep it all under wraps. Pay no attention to those governments blowing other people's kids to bits or anything of course - the trick is to take observation bias and turn it up to eleven, take a big drawn on our own farts, and feel them we're just so good feels.
- hopelite 1y agoMany people are being naive when they assume any of these “protecting the children” efforts happening all around the western world effectively simultaneously are actually about the children. The question is how do you implement “Chinese style censorship and social credit score” without overtly doing it, you do it the same way that all infringements on freedoms and rights have always been implemented all across the West for 100+ years, you invert, reframe it, and implement amidst cheers, and jeers towards anyone who is not also being virtuous through conformance. Some believe the COVID prison-term lockdowns were a test to gauge the reaction and conformity of the actions taken. Maybe it was or maybe it wasn’t, but it may as well have been, because the warriors apparatchiks and wardens of conformity operated nicely to deprive their own human rights as well as those of others. “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” It may as well end with “…tolerate atrocities.”
- lm28469 1y agoSo the GoBeRnMeNt is bad but the megacorps printing money shovelling thousands of hours of fully automated brain rot content to your kids are good because .... freedom ? I still fail to see any logic in these conspiracy theories
- jalapenos 1y agoMy interpretation has always been that they've looked across the sea at the CCP and North Korean regime, and asked, in a whiney tone, "why do they get all the nice things?"
- echelon_musk 1y ago> I thought it used to be that parents were responsible for their kids - that's not even a thing now? Parents have been blaming books, music and video games for decades. Raising children with reading comprehension and critical thinking skills is hard. Equally, from a governments point of view, creating citizens with critical thinking skills is hard. There is probably more chance they will frustrate the regime if they're capable of understanding its corruption. Giving into desires and having children is the easy part. The bodies do all the work for you but after that the 2 decades of work really starts. I'd say it's just an example of "never waste a good crisis". Parents want to complain at someone that essentially the society is too free and their children made mistakes they didn't prepare them for. The government feels pressured and uses the opportunity available to increase control.
- subjectsigma 1y agoWhat are you talking about? This kind of censorship and authoritarian control is peanuts compared to what China does to their citizens.