Just talk to any parent. It is too easy for children’s curiosity to lead them to the sleazy online square, and every parent now worries whether a child has enough sense to handle a disingenuous text. What is a parent to do—keep them off YouTube for fear of much worse?
2. Try Chamath Palihapitiya. As The Verge reports,
Palihapitiya’s criticisms were aimed not only at Facebook, but the wider online ecosystem. “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works,” he said, referring to online interactions driven by “hearts, likes, thumbs-up.” “No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth. And it’s not an American problem — this is not about Russians ads. This is a global problem.”
I give Greenstein credit for speaking fervently about a topic that he correctly points out is one that we prefer to ignore. I am less inclined to be charitable toward Palihapitiya. Too many f-bombs and too much catering to smug lefties. Apparently, he decided quite a while ago that Facebook is not a good thing, but his views are only cool now. A year ago it became cool to knock social media, after Donald Trump managed to eke out an election victory. Even though it is by no means certain that social media played any role in the eking.
There is a bull market in paranoia these days. I am missing out on it. That is why my portfolio does not include any Bitcoin.
I mentioned to some friends that I was midway through (and enjoying tremendously) one of Johan Norberg’s books recently and it was the first time I’ve ever felt like I was part of a fringe movement. I’ve been struggling to understand widespread pessimism in a sociological context. Have you done much thinking on this?
Just an anecdote … when my son was ten years old I mentioned the website rotten.com (it has a Wikipedia page). He told me that he and his friends had already explored that site … in the school break. Later, while repairing his PC I saw that he had explored pictures of female anatomy, probably also together with his friends. … I remembered similar curiosity from my own youth so I did not panic. And indeed, once the initial curiosity was satisfied, his attention turned to other things.
Rod Dreher’s blog at American Conservative is a rich fund of pessimistic views and moral panics. He’s on to something, but it’s tough to tell when to believe the importance of what he’s found and when to treat his blog entries as something like soft clickbait, middle brow clickbait. His book _Benedict Option_ is worth reading.
Rod Dreher (with help form his informants) does a good job of “turning over rocks” to point out weird trends and patterns that may turn out to matter.
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I am reminded of what economists call (methinks) “existence proof.”
Basically, it’s one thing to prove that something exists. It’s another thing to prove that something is big enough to matter, or powerful enough to be influential.
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If I recall, one of Palihapitiya’s concerns was how quickly social media can disseminate rumors (unfounded) to produce riots, lynching, and what in India might be called “Communal violence.”