they are consumer goods like any other.

you can cook a meal at home and travel locally. but few are interested in this because it is not a 'display of wealth', the way your week in Bali is or your tiktok dining blog.

my siblings managed to keep their kids away from smartphones until 4th grade. And even that was a struggle.

sadly it just falls into the camp of 'everyone else is doing it'. and if your kid isn't they will be socially ostracized.

Yeah. Sadly any community org that started out great I have been a part of always lets money get in the way... and then it all becomes about 'image' and social conformity and such.

I recently left a community garden group I helped build because they won some grant and decided they needed to get more grants and more money and the best way to do that was to become a group that 'helps marginalized peoples' and hence... if you are white you should leave because you aren't helping our 'brand'. They changed all the photos on the social media/website to women and minorities, despite the fact 70% of the people doing the actual work were white male folks... but since that doesn't fit the 'brand' they need to get more money... it's just a self-defeating process and what was a inclusive group is now exclusive. Despite the flat irony that the racial makeup of our group was spot on with the that of the city (70% white) it's not decided that no, your skin color is what matters.

Greed ruins everything.

right, calling people pigs and bastards isn't dehumanizing... lol

OK, let's just make a drug to solve the problem then, no? would you take the pill?

depends on how wealthy their parents were.

the internet also lets propagandists and propaganda consumers find each other in speed, volume, and frequency, in a way that unprecedented.

and the sad fact that is many many many people spend most of their waking hours consuming internet content these days. at least, anyone under 40. The only people I know who watch TV or read papers are all over 50. Hell, just finding anyone under 40 who reads a magazine or some other long-format type of information is incredibly rare. Why read The Economist when you can just subscribe to their tiktok feed?

speak for yourself, i see so much of it in my former 'leftist' friends. especially the 'woke' ones who think anyone who doesn't have enough BLM stickers is a facist.

least to say when i said BLM signs are slacktivism, they went ape-shit on me. lol

algorithms could help people. they could, for example, help you find relaly cool obscure stuff on netflix/spotify that you might like. They worked like this for awhile and ti was great!

But that doesn't make money. the algorithm that shoves netflix's latest trash content does, so that is why it shows up in every suggestion an takes up so my screen space. the vast majority of my spotify 'feed' is podcast trash i have never or never ever will listen to, and i can no longer use it to find some obscure band playing weird music like I did 8 years ago.

Because the 1st wave of people on the internet were nerds and geeks. People driven by hope and optimist to make the world a better place and using the internet to do things they were already inclined to do... learn and share. You had to read, and write and things were generally long form interactions. Chat rooms required that you write sentences and paragraphs. It was also largely hosted by universities and other non-profit interests. The philosophy of Open Source and Freesoftware was rampant in the 2000s, and then declined as the big 5 took over the internet.

Now the internet is driven by corporate greed and the exploitation of the LCD's lazy monkey-brain interactions. EVerything now is a blurb, a meme, a click, a reaction emoji. A 8 min youtube video is 'too hard' now for the average internet user.

Some?

I'd argue it's most. Granted, people's level of delusion varies, but esp among the younger kids who are tik-tok addicts, there is a marked decline in their ability to realize there is a world outside of their experience and what they are being told on tik-tok.

What baffles me is the intolerance of disagreement. When I was in college the main thing I learned was the limits of what I know, how much I don't know, and to tolerate others POV and to investigate the facts and see beyond biased narratives and recognize those biases...

Today it seems all people learn is 'i am right, because i feel i am right, and nobody can tell me otherwise'. and people are more and more extreme in their views and more willing to dehumanize others for the smallest of disagreements. IRL and on the internet.

My views are liberal, but I'm open to conservative ideas. This was not controversial in the 2000s, and most of the early 2010s, but post Trump/tiktok, even my own former friends on the left have whole-heartedly adopted the 'I am a victim and my feelings are all that matters' mentality, and just live in these social media hug boxes where every little think they do is a HUGE achievement, and any mistake they make is never their fault. Meanwhile, they bitch and bitch about how unfair and unhappy their lives are if only rich white guys would just give them their money it would all be better. They have zero interest in building anything inclusive or meaningful in their communities, unless you define community as 'only people who look, speak, and think exactly like I do'. Everything is a catchphrase, and no subtling is allowed. 'ACAB'... well I have family who are cops.... sorry if I'm not on board with the mentality that ACAB, but I 100% recognize the need for police reform... but that viewpoint is 'toxic' now. You can't recognize cops as people.

It's truly dark. I've also seen it firsthand with people i've know for several years now, watching them slowly become angry nutbags whose joy in life is enforcing social confomrity into whatever fiefdom they are a part of. And I am just sort of peacing out now, because I no longer want to be involved in communities and groups full of narcissistic twits and angry miserable people whose only joy in life is shitting on others who are different than them.

Very few highly educated folks are poor, in fact, majority come from money.

"More than three-quarters of medical students came from families in the top two quintiles of family income"

https://www.aamc.org/media/9596/download

I am from a family in the 3rd quartile, nobody ever said I could grow up to be a Doctor. Most told me to 'go to state school and get a shitty office job and be happy with it'. In my college all the kids studying to be med students were driving used BMWs/Mercedes and paying several grand extra a year for parking, new dorms, and the like.

I lived like a pauper from 18-33 trying to give myself a good financial baseline.

Most of my peers just made fun of me for being 'cheap' and saying no to expensive vacations, fancy cars, and living by myself.

Now I'm living by myself and comfortable and I can afford some luxuries, they are 'struggling' and all i hear is that it's 'because of your white male privilege'. F them. They grew up being greedy pigs and now they are paying the consequences and I'm living well.