Here’s your thought for the day as we kick off the 4th of July week.
Ah, memories of the great debate over video game violence. One minute, there’s “Say No To Drugs” kicking off every video game screen in arcades across America, and then we head into our homes with Ataris and Nintendos and then come the first-person shooter games, like Doom (the original nemesis) and others like Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty.
But to the point the Twix is making, news outlets, which I’ll say less about here, but social media outlets especially seem to thrive off of misinterpretations and half-truths, taking things out of context and sometimes just posting blatant lies using AI technology. Facebook is one of the worst, consistently posting nonsense generated content that simply is never true, with scintillating headlines like “Kirby Smart is Going to Lose It When He Hears About the Latest Rumor” and you click and it takes you to something that could’ve been authored by a six year old or perhaps a content creator housed in Sri Lanka who knows nothing about Kirby Smart of Georgia football.
To point, we’ve seen over the past couple of weeks in the World Cup that a number of foreign visitors were quite hesitant about coming to the States, but found that the news and social media rumors were quite contrary to their realized experience.
This isn’t anything new. As long as YouTube has been around, it’s been easier to see content from across the globe made by locals that show a very different perspective of life in their countries when compared to what we hear on social media or the news. Also, it wasn’t uncommon to see American travelers heading to foreign lands, only to find the same as our current visitors are finding about the United States.
There’s joy in community and connection, much why many of us come here to read and post comments every day. Gradually, though, we’ve grown more isolationist and suspicious of our fellow man.
So what’s the solution…should we dial it back to the 80s, with only landlines and shutting off the internet, or are we ignoring our civic responsibilities to encourage our kids, and adults, to get out and touch grass and experience life and the world as we know it, instead of believing everything we hear and see in 15 second sound bytes being generated by a person who never travelled outside their hometown or out of their mom’s basement?
Discuss.
Social media really is the devil. I wish it would die in a fire.
I think devils like fire.
No matter what we want change will be forced on us. Just like CFB there is no going back.
For reference if the Uk were a state it’s standard of living in comparison to each US state. Would land it dead last behind Mississippi. Having been there many times I’m not surprised by the reaction in the video.
there are huge parts of Mississippi that are quite nice and welcoming. Great hunting in most of the state, Biloxi gambling, Gulf Shores, riverboat tours & gambling. Yeah, they’re poor, the delta kinda suck, and its hot as 400 hells, but its a pretty state with nice folks….and I love beating MSU and OM.
Moe,
I love Mississippi it’s a great place to visit. Great people and lots of cool stuff to do.
This was not meant to bash Mississippi. Somebody’s got to be in last place. The UK is a little like bammers in that they’re not what they once were.
Using gambling as a selling point? Gambling is a tax on the stupid.
Anon, I can’t tell if you are being snarky or serious with your statement. Honest question here, do you truly believe that gambling is a tax on the stupid? Just looking to have a conversation. I enjoy gambling from time to time. Nothing crazy mind you, but I will sit at a blackjack table or throw a few shekels on a non-UGA game when presented with the opportunity. I tend to believe that gambling, like most things in this life, can be enjoyed responsibly.
You’re pretty much guaranteed to lose money in a casino. So, yes, I think it’s a bad idea to gamble. But if you like to hang out in smoke-filled rooms, drinking and throwing away money, have at it. It is not for me. Hence my opinion that gambling is a tax on the foolish.
A wise man once told me that “casinos are built with the money of fools.”
We’ve known how lucky we are forever, but I’m glad others are experiencing it too…I think. As far as socials, this about all I participate in. My wife and kids are all over it, thankfully not posting too much though. I don’t think it’s healthy but my parents said the same thing about MTV so who knows?
I call it Fakebook for reasons mentioned above. We are older and kids are gone. Do not have fakebook or twitter. You guys are all l communicate with via this platform. Hardly watch so called “news” because you never get as Paul Harvey used to say” the rest of the story”. Talk to friends and family on phone. And l do agree that the devil is in there somewhere! Let’s try to keep our Dawg pack together and you guys are my highlight of the day. Thanks and Go Dawgs!!! Y’all do a fantastic job!!!
Forgot to claim the above— Dinolee
Everything is a moral panic until the next moral panic. Erk said: “Just do right,” and it’s universal. A LOT of people get to love on the Dawgs thanks to Social Media so guardrail it, model good behaviour and utterly destroy the fools that burden their souls using it improperly. Starting with the butt chuggin’ charlie sierras that celebrated Chubb’s knee injury.
#GoDaws
I take a different view of this. Social media used properly is a great tool to stay connected to people you may or may not see in person or to find communities of interest. This platform is technically social media where a community of people who have something in common can gather around the virtual water cooler and discuss something of a common interest like Georgia athletics.
Get out and touch some grass. For me, that’s getting on the golf course, taking a morning walk with my dogs or enjoying a dinner & game night with my family (including significant others).
The media companies (including the big social media platforms) are invested in creating division among us. That can be political, racial, socioeconomic, nationality, etc. They designed the algorithms to keep you scrolling.
Social media is like anything else. Done in moderation and with purpose, it’s an asset in connection. Otherwise, it’s just as addictive as Brendan Sorsby’s gambling habit.
While I don’t disagree, I think the social media platforms began as a way to connect people that turned into a way to monetize users…. very much like our love for College Athletics. Football connected not just us with fellow UGA fans but with other fan bases. I never would have met great fans from Missouri without SEC Football. Alas, as the game has become more monetized, I become less connected — much like the social media that is available for consumption.
Having lived in a country that borders France, I can confirm that without any doubt the French are assholes.
I am joking some of my best euro friends are from France… they just aren’t from Paris.
If you took the French out of their mouth and replaced it with Jesup, Waycross, La Grange, or Valdookie, you’d find the same characteristics – family oriented, hard working, loves sports, bitching about gubment and big city folk, and love of hunting. Key differences include, substitute wine for beer, rugby or soccer for college football, and when you go hunting with these jokers, you have to wear a coat and tie… to kill boars/hogs.
So color me not shocked that the europeans find the good that is the USA.
I have a friend who was originally from Montreal so French was his primary language. Later in life, he and his wife bought a little place in the countryside of France, and they would spend several months there every year. I was asking him about the stories of French rudeness. He said for Paris it was spot on, but out of the big cities as you pointed out it was totally different. He put it in perspective for me. He said judging France for the way the Parisians behaved would be like judging the US by how New Yorkers behaved.
Every place has assholes. I’ve been to Paris 3-4 times and never had an issue with the people there. In fact, on our honeymoon, I got on the wrong train heading away from Paris. No issue, we just got off at the next stop to walk around to the other side and catch the train into town. Unfortunately, being Sunday, there were no trains going into town.
A young Frenchman recognized our plight and left his two friends there to take me and my wife to the next station where we could get back to our hotel. Oh, and along the way he stopped at the birthday party he was going to and invited us in. Everyone was very polite. We tried to buy his gas, or a bottle of wine for his efforts but he wouldn’t accept it. To me, having lived in the south and seeing southern hospitality, this was exactly the same thing. So the French are okay by me.
Paris was pretty cool. It wasn’t that the people were assholes as much as they were indifferent but take a couple of Frenchmen and drop them off on Peachtree? They’ll likely get the same treatment.
Go outside!! leave the phone at home. enjoy!!! As I tell my kids, you dont need anymore pictures so leave it!
I have had good luck limiting access to social media and related apps by using a gadget called a Brick at home. When I get home at work, I tap my phone on the Brick device and it disables whatever I want until I untap it when I next leave the house. I have started doing this on the weekends too and it is a useful tool to help unplug from the bullshit.
Social medial is like Bourbon. A little now and then provides enjoyment and pleasure. Too much and it ruins your life. All things in moderation folks (except for abusing Auburn, Tech, Florida-then excess is better).
The twixt is dead on. Not sure how you fix it.
Mass media can obviously be a good thing. However now that powers that be have figured out how to use it to divide us (and make money from us), it will be really hard putting that genie back in the bottle.
People like climbing up their own assholes and they’d like to have company, if possible. They also really resent it if you try to tug their head out into the open to give it a fresh perspective. They become accustomed to the smell and the resentment is real.
Given the types of things that people tolerated or supported in the past, I hesitate to suggest that this is new to humanity.
Think about being dropped into a slave market in New Orleans circa 1796. Then go to a dinner you’re invited to at an estate on St. Charles Avenue. Are these good people? Do you stfu and enjoy the evening? What kind of person are you?
My tendency is to believe that bullshit is just more widely available. Arguably the speed of the head up ass problem is affected by technology. But horrific human behavior is nothing new. If anything, I think the curve tends towards improvement though its a slog because of the assholes. If we ever have a serious major crisis, all that progress will stop and we’ll face real devolution.
What I would appreciate is if everybody took what they heard/saw with a grain of salt and stop to think about what the motivation is behind the messages.
A lot of “information” out there is nothing more than a means to an end for the purveyor: money, power, the status quo.
One big tell: is the info trying to scare you? Another: Did the outlet you’re watching pay off a 787 million dollar settlement for lying?
If so, proceed with caution before swallowing it hook, line and sinker.
I’d suggest listening to sincere voices whose facts have a tendency to check out upon further inspection.
Or, find the answer for yourself from people who might have the training and skills to know.
But everyone can be fact checked and you should go to the trouble if you don’t want to live in a world of shit.
” But horrific human behavior is nothing new. If anything, I think the curve tends towards improvement though its a slog because of the assholes.”
I personally feel we’re becoming more crass as a society. When members of both parties are dropping F-bombs to get their message across, it’s a bad sign in my opinion. As I said, both sides do it, but an egregious example is the WH Communications Director, Steven Chung. This guy regularly uses profanity to communicate, and it’s a sign of cultural decay, IMO.
As one of my friends said, “The movie Idiocracy is a documentary”.
Coarse behavior is far worse than coarse language. I think word choice is by and large superficial.
I’d rather hear:
“All cunts is equal” than “Tis true that the lower orders of society must be kept in line for the protection and security of their betters. Those who speak and act with refinement and come from the privileged bloodlines must be exalted.”
Substance over form, I say. That’s not to say that I think that formality and respect have no place, they do, but sometimes they can mask the truly ugly in society. The antebellum South and Imperial Britain come immediately to mind.
I agree with you that actions are more important than words, but words do matter.
I worked on boats for years, and I still curse like a sailor at times, but in a professional setting, I act differently than I do when hanging with my friends. Is it too much to ask that people in government, whether elected or appointed, show a bit of respect for their position? Shouldn’t they at least try to act professional?
That would be my preference as I indicated above. Never understood why Indiana tolerated Bobby Knight’s antics for as long as they did, as an example.
But, again, I’d rather DO the right thing than SAY anything for the sake of polite society.
To me, proudly and confidently saying painfully dumb shit is a far bigger problem in the world than is vulgarity.
Flat earthers, chem trailers, anti-vaxxers, false flaggers, etc…, etc…. Bullshit has a much higher societal cost than coarse language does IMHO..
One of my best friends uses a flip phone for friends and family (yes, the text messages are exactly what you’re thinking), and a smart phone only because work makes him. And other than a couple close friends, few know the numbers to both. No FB, no twix, no social media. And we all wish we could do that when we’re around him, witness the constant touching of grass, yet do nothing about it.
One of the more funny posts I saw on Twitter before it became X (and irrelevant) was a guy complaining that “used to, you could put the recipe for crack cocain on Twitter and nobody cared.” In short, we all lived through the infancy of social media which has been awesome and terrible at the same time.
Quit all social media several years ago, one of the best things I ever did. I understand that some good things can come from it, but on net it’s a societal and personal negative. The algorithms put in place to monetize traffic virtually ensure that, as the companies running these apps have long since discovered that negative energy is stickiest.
Your description of
“scintillating headlines like “Kirby Smart is Going to Lose It When He Hears About the Latest Rumor” and you click and it takes you to something that could’ve been authored by a six year old”
immediately makes me think of the shit from dawnofthedawg. Their daily traumatic / dramatic / ecstatic clickbait headlines take exaggeration to another (humorous) level.
Nothing gets more clicks than posts that force a choice of “good vs bad”. WWE has made a bunch of money for years splitting the audience into sides.
Great analogy. Pretty scary too, if you think about it.
Your “just say no” part of this post reminds me of a chat with my mom over a few beers a couple months ago. As a GenX’er who lived through all of the 80’s just say no hype, RAD, etc., I still laugh when my mom, a retired librarian in her late 70’s, overheard me talk about trouble sleeping. She didn’t bat an eye and told me I needed to find a good gummy, then goes on to explain how she has one she takes half of an hour before bed, then a fourth of another kind right before going to bed. I’m like, when did my mom turn into Dr. Feelgood of the family???
Need for core elements of life (sleep, calm, pain reliever) is a hell of a counter-argument to a government-backed ethos.
She’s not wrong…
I just spent two weeks in Alaska. My phone worked intermittently during the trip and I never opened my laptop from the time we left Atlanta until one of our last days when we got back to Anchorage and the Air BnB didn’t have a live television/cable available. I took the laptop to stream some World Cup games on the bigger screen. It was wonderful … no need to check on socials and the like. Heck, I barely checked email. I was present in the moments of all that truly stunning.
As an aside … both things about the World Cup could be true. Hotels bookings are down, as are Air BnB nights. I do think that many soccer fans from around the globe were hesitant about coming to N America. Not all of that was political or related to Homeland Security policies. Unlike previous World Cup in smaller host nations, these games have been spread out. Soccer fans like to “camp” out in a location, party until the game and party after the game. It makes it difficult if you are Bosnia Herzegovina with games in the group stage in Toronto, LA and Seattle over the course of 12 days. England played in Dallas, Boston and NYC. That is a lot of travel and not everyone can afford to fly. Train travel between cities is long, expensive and difficult. Not everyone is going to rent a car and drive across the country.
However, of the people that did come – many have been amazed about our country. I am really glad that Atlanta and the SE has left a positive image on them.
Finally, I believe the World Cup has put a spotlight on the enormous amount of diversity in our country. Who knew that 250-500k people of Cape Verdean descent lived in Boston? Atlanta had a watch party for the DR of the Congo fans who could not attend the game the other night. The fan contingents for so many participants are highlighting that diaspora from so many nations.
I hope the good vibes continue through the business end of the tournament. Hopefully, the USA can survive in their bracket for a few to several more rounds.
Anti vaxxers really Derek, There are lots of studies that show those Vaccines were not safe….you really are a piece of Liberal Misinformation
So true!
https://abcnews.com/Health/military-services-requiring-recruits-flu-shots-air-force/story?id=134126794
Sad!! The anti-vaxxing was so lit! Why stop the stopping you wokester libtards with your flu jabs!?!
If we put the really smrt people in charge we can get our polio, leprosy, measles, and whooping cough back as God intended.
Clearly it is you who are the solution. May your wisdom and genius rain down upon us like the Black Plague.
You can’t even make a comment without showing your Political bias…that is %^$#
Does anyone find it ironic that what Derek is criticizing in others actually describes him perfectly?
Good one. Well supported.
We don’t have to concern ourselves with where your head’s stuck do we?
Just look at your own posts. You will then realize where your head is stuck. Won’t we?
How do you mean?
Your question is really a fascinating one and I think it also answers itself in the same way it was framed. I think if you go back to the 1999 Sunscreen Song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeDDs61AlBo to get a viewpoint that maybe things don’t change as much as we think and the truth varies depending on your point of view (or at what age you are seeing it).
So the solution is to realize we haven’t gotten so far away from how things were 40 years ago as much as we have gotten older and believe things are so much different than they really were.