More Social Media Hate

If triggering emotions is the highest prize, and negative emotions are easier to trigger, how could social media not make you sad? If your consumption of content is tailored by near limitless observations harvested about people like you, how could your universe not collapse into the partial depiction of reality that people like you also enjoy? How could empathy and respect for difference thrive in this environment?

10 Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

BornACrone’s Internet-Winning Comment

From Feminist Current responding to a post on Facebook’s response to “revenge porn”:

“Do not tell me that the men at Facebook couldn’t see this coming.”

THIS IS WHY WE NEED MORE DIVERSITY IN STEM. THIS RIGHT HERE. Any woman who, like myself, was online in the late 80s could see this shit coming a mile away. We could see the potential quite easily for this to be used to stalk, harass, and destroy lives and careers.

Same with black people and other people of color. Any politically active black person in the late 80s had clear memories of the government infiltrating and trying to hamstring and destroy their communities. Between people of color and women of all colors, we could have AND IN MANY CASES DID warn people in online communities of the potential for these kinds of abuses. I and a community of women I knew were screaming about this shit in the early 90s on Usenet for chrissakes!!

Yet the only people around the boardroom tables making the decisions on tech design and security were stupid, clueless white boys who were all so fucking convinced that they were the smartest people in the room. Shut up, stupid girls. We Men Are Making Important Decisions Here.

And now we have technology that is ruining the planet, and all those dumbfucks at Facebook are suddenly waking up TWENTY-FIVE YEARS TOO LATE going, “Uh-oh, mebbe we do a bad fing.”

If women and minorities are excluded from the development of technology, that technology will only ever destroy the fucking world. THAT’S WHY WE NEED TO BE IN STEM, not because some asshole fucking ugly-ass white boy at Google thinks they have to be politically correct and generous toward people of lesser brain power and unfairly take a job away from the pasty-ass scrawny white male fuck who shoulda haddit.

No one notices this about tech. All this fucking handwringing about how Facebook destroyed democracy and NO ONE HAS REALIZED that the exclusion of women and minorities from its design and implementation from the start caused it. Science, technology, religion, art … all of it. Exclude women and minorities, and it all becomes a force for evil and Armageddon.

GodDAMN fucking stupid-ass white boys. Everything that’s wrong with the whole world from environmental degradation and global warming to the destruction of democracy to ebola comes down to them kicking everyone else in the face whenever we try to express an opinion about ANYTHING.

We Need a Seriously Different Paradigm

Ironic ’cause it’s true.
Everyone’s so focused on their freakin’ rights.

The constitution grants me the right to bear arms!

Everyone should want to fuck me!”

“I have the right to buy babies from poor women!”

&etc. &etc.

(& I'm not excepting some "marginalized" people from this critique — newsflash, gay folk, the world does not owe you a wedding cake.)

You’re asking the wrong question, people.

Ask, instead: What am I willing to give up so that other people can have basic safety and a decent life?

How many mass shootings — that is, how many needless deaths of innocent people merely going about their lives — would have to be prevented for you to give up the “security” of your handgun, or the deer rifle you use twice a year?

How many women and children would need to be freed from the economic, sexual and reproductive slavery of pornography, prostitution and surrogacy — how many rapes would need to be prevented — for you to give up your “right” to an orgasm or that naked selfie?

Really, I mean it; give me a number. I’ll wait while you calculate how many other people’s lives your precious rights are worth.

Edited 6/14/2017: I’m so cutting edge Jonah Mix has to copy me. Ha ha, not really; nice work Jonah.