Zaphod
Jedi
I watch a lot of JBP and a theory he came up with recently got me thinking. I get annoyed with the constant attention to what I can say, or what I can't say. I'm approaching 50, and I'll be darned if some brat is going to have any say at all in the language I use or, when and how I use it. Freedom of speech, as far as I'm concerned, is not a random value we just live by in the west, it's a sacrosanct aspect of how the west is responsible for almost the entirety of societal achievement and development for the past 200 years. To interfere with that, is dangerous - and that's not a viewpoint I'm giving up any time soon. Let the bad ideas be incinerated in the crucible of unfettered critical analysis - everyone wins
I first got on the internet in the early to mid-nineties and I remember the culture of that time - you do not expose your identity. You use pseudonyms, even if it's always the same one, you don't go anywhere using your true name. Well, that's all now in reverse and I'm the oddity for still living by that creed. Well known social media sites won't even let you join if they have any reason to even suspect, that you aren't providing your real identity.
Well, this development gives rise to the situation, that the likes of my generation were so determined to protect ourselves against: that things we say online can be used as weapons to our detriment.
It's all moved far beyond that with the fact that everyone is now carrying a camera, and an internet connection in their pocket. For instance, parties are no longer the fun and slightly dangerous engagements that I remember - they are now anodyne and sterile. Where there used to be outrageous events, there is now people filming and photographing nothing happening.
And I'm not surprised at this development. I don't go to parties any more because of Facebook. Facebook has ensured that not only is it highly unlikely that I'm ever going to run in to the interesting people and events any more, that made parties worthwhile in the first place - but also that I can't be that person or create those events either. The focus has changed from engaging with outrage, to recording outrage. It's recorded for the rest of your life, for people to use as a method to critically attack your character at their leisure. I think 'anti-social media' may be a more accurate description since I can't think that there's a better reason to stop engaging than: I don't know what the rules are now, and I don't know what they will be in the future either - what I'm saying and doing is never going away, and I have bills to pay.
But I see this because I'm an old fogey who grew up in a world where none of this was true - where what I did or said at a party was forgotten a week later and it certainly wouldn't destroy my future - and I rail against the dying light of the meaningful and enjoyable social engagement that dynamic provided. But for the up and coming generations, this stifling dynamic is all they've known. They've been on social media since their age was in single figures and know full well the impact of being bullied and destroyed for something they posted online.
So I have to say, I'm reconsidering my position on the younger generations. Maybe I'd be watching every damn thing I say, if I'd grown up in a culture where one badly formed idea could destroy my position - and be brought up 10 years later as a reason I should no longer have a job, or a marriage. And if I am forced to live by that code, well then so is everyone else going to be. Language is policed in the online world, and as the delineation between online and offline grows ever more vague, it's to be expected that this is now extending outside online communities, and in to 'real life'
I think I get it - thanks again to JBP. I get it, but I hate it and I don't have a solution
I first got on the internet in the early to mid-nineties and I remember the culture of that time - you do not expose your identity. You use pseudonyms, even if it's always the same one, you don't go anywhere using your true name. Well, that's all now in reverse and I'm the oddity for still living by that creed. Well known social media sites won't even let you join if they have any reason to even suspect, that you aren't providing your real identity.
Well, this development gives rise to the situation, that the likes of my generation were so determined to protect ourselves against: that things we say online can be used as weapons to our detriment.
It's all moved far beyond that with the fact that everyone is now carrying a camera, and an internet connection in their pocket. For instance, parties are no longer the fun and slightly dangerous engagements that I remember - they are now anodyne and sterile. Where there used to be outrageous events, there is now people filming and photographing nothing happening.
And I'm not surprised at this development. I don't go to parties any more because of Facebook. Facebook has ensured that not only is it highly unlikely that I'm ever going to run in to the interesting people and events any more, that made parties worthwhile in the first place - but also that I can't be that person or create those events either. The focus has changed from engaging with outrage, to recording outrage. It's recorded for the rest of your life, for people to use as a method to critically attack your character at their leisure. I think 'anti-social media' may be a more accurate description since I can't think that there's a better reason to stop engaging than: I don't know what the rules are now, and I don't know what they will be in the future either - what I'm saying and doing is never going away, and I have bills to pay.
But I see this because I'm an old fogey who grew up in a world where none of this was true - where what I did or said at a party was forgotten a week later and it certainly wouldn't destroy my future - and I rail against the dying light of the meaningful and enjoyable social engagement that dynamic provided. But for the up and coming generations, this stifling dynamic is all they've known. They've been on social media since their age was in single figures and know full well the impact of being bullied and destroyed for something they posted online.
So I have to say, I'm reconsidering my position on the younger generations. Maybe I'd be watching every damn thing I say, if I'd grown up in a culture where one badly formed idea could destroy my position - and be brought up 10 years later as a reason I should no longer have a job, or a marriage. And if I am forced to live by that code, well then so is everyone else going to be. Language is policed in the online world, and as the delineation between online and offline grows ever more vague, it's to be expected that this is now extending outside online communities, and in to 'real life'
I think I get it - thanks again to JBP. I get it, but I hate it and I don't have a solution
The vast majority of the men who rule the world are somewhere between 40 - 60. I have read that in this bracket a man should be at his optimum peak around different aspects of his life (that is, assuming he lived life correctly) - experience, career, health and material accumulations should have converged in such a way as to make this 'peak' self-evident. With this view, one can hardly be described as an old fogey at age 49 / 50, at least objectively.
