Tag: Social Media

Inspiration Miscellany

Media Manipulation

Responsible drinking means having a designate driver, knowing your limits, having a wingman, being aware of peer pressure, and maybe even just not drinking. Responsible consumption of media means having some awareness of how stories come to be written, how public relation firms work, how twitter bots function, and maybe even just not participating in social media. The Media Manipulation Casebook is a “digital research platform linking together theory, methods, and practice for mapping media manipulation and disinformation campaigns.” Curious as to why suddenly certain state legislatures are up in arms over critical race theory? Curious how social media is used to suppress voting? No, the “media” is not the enemy, but it does help to know a bit how influence campaigns work.

The Lab Leak Hypothesis

Case in point, what are we to make of the sudden reemergence in the media of the “lab leak hypothesis”? This is the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a lab in Wuhan, and was accidentally leaked. In weighing through information, it is important to remember that certain institutions, people, organizations, etc. have a vested interest in controlling the narrative. Here is the Media Manipulation Casebook reminding us that an exiled Chinese billionaire and Steve Bannon were pushing this narrative in early 2020, even as Donald Trump was telling us that he had already brought the case numbers to zero and that it was no worse than the flu. Here is a brief overview of Mike Pompeo’s efforts to shop the lab leak theory to conservative media outlets. Not that anyone should trust the CCP either. Here is a reminder that the CCP arrested journalists who reported on the Covid outbreak in Wuhan, and that the Chinese government silenced doctors who originally raised the alarm. The CCP also took important viral databases offline, and manipulated social media to portray the government’s response in a positive light. And, of course, like the Trump presidency back in the day, the CCP has every incentive to claim that problems are someone else’s fault…others such as the U.S. military. But we all just need more data, and getting data takes time. Nature has a good, objective rundown of the situation.

Bridges

In a different, but still catastrophic vein, do you ever wonder why bridges don’t collapse? Here is a great video explaining why 1) we need bridge inspectors and 2) why when in a crack shows up in a steel beam, bridges immediately get shut down.  I’m no engineer, but the Practical Engineering’s videos make me appreciate that they are out there. Now if only there were some way to raise and spend money to fix bridges like this. Hmmm.

Chinese cooking & Fahrenheit superiority

And on a lighter level, here are two more YouTube streams for everyone. During last year’s lockdown, I was already making bread, so I decided “to learn up” on Chinese cooking. All I knew was bland, soggy stir-fry. Enter “Chinese Cooking Demystified.” This channel is great. Bite sized (ha) videos, and clear presentations from a couple that love food and how it speaks to local culture. Here is “stir frying 101” making pork and chili, and here is my now go-to way of frying eggplant. On a radically different tack, I’ve always enjoyed a good rant, and here is a video explaining in clear detail why Fahrenheit is superior to Celsius. It is, of course, as anyone who is objective and clear-headed already knows. Sure its origins are wonky, and owe more to the convenience of calibrating early thermometers. But superiority has many beginnings, and science is filled with happenstance.

Some Music I’ve Been Listening To

Hymn to Freedom (live), Oscar Peterson with link in case YouTube breaks embeds
ElRon (live), Soulive with link in case YouTube breaks embeds
I am the Highway (live), Audio Slave with link in case YouTube breaks embeds
For Real, Mallrat with link in case YouTube breaks embeds

It’s not that I’m a luddite

It’s not that I’m a luddite. I mean, how can I be with a new blog that is hosted on some computer (or computers) humming away in god knows where? Words brought to you by wires, protocols, and billions of switches clicking away in just the right patterns. Global supply chains of designers, programmers, drivers, and factory workers. It’s more an issue of agency or complacency or simple curiousity.

You see, I left Facebook a few years ago in a fit of disgust. Disgust with the habits of communication that the social media ecosystem seemed to reinforce. Disgust with myself for falling into outrage-neediness cycles. Disgust with Facebook for so clearly representing a form of digital strip mining. It’s called “data mining” for a reason, and just as every unfettered extraction enterprise seems to leave behind swaths of barrenness, it’s no wonder that unregulated data mining might do the same thing. Only the “environmental impact” is harder to pinpoint when it comes to social media…or when it comes to a digital environment in which “free” really hides a quid pro quo in which a service is provided in return for the personal. That data is the coal seam, the oil field, the undeveloped land, and apps and web sites and devices are the drills, the explosives, and the ever more efficient tools for extracting the limited resource of a user’s living.

“NewmontTours_MNApril2016_AB-29” by MinesCERSE is licensed under CC BY 2.0 . Cropped from original

The gut feeling I had when I dropped Facebook, and began to examine my use of digital tools and media in general, was mainly that we were all being played for chumps. We did not own what we were posting on social media sites. We might delete photos and posts, but Facebook didn’t. We might forget the multitude of clicks made during a nostalgia-fueled binge of vicarious “lives,” but the swarm of apps surrounding us didn’t. Like the pens of a factory farm, the data was sorted, packed and fed onto the conveyor belts – the end result not much different from the cellophane covered cut of meat we find in the grocery store.

That was my gut feeling, at any rate, and admittedly, I’m not going to presume that it applies to everyone. It could simply be a generational thing, or an age-related thing. Motivations change with age, and my two twenty-something daughters seem to have a much more utilitarian and healthily cavalier attitude towards digital technology.

Let’s stick with the metaphor of a feedlot. It’s not that I’m opposed to eating meat, it’s more that I am uncomfortable with the dominant system that produces meat. An attitude towards living creatures framed by the cells of a spreadsheet, units of efficiency, and narrow metrics of productivity.  And that unease extends to the cognitive, behavioral, and moral habits that develop when one exists within such a system. As a psychologist who studies habit formation and adaptive behavior, I’m well aware of how beliefs and behaviors are shaped by the environment. How stated values can be at odds with behavior, and how habits can sneak up on us.

But there are other approaches, and this blog is an attempt to establish my own approach. If I’m going to post photos for the benefit of family and friends, I want it done on my own terms (to the degree that this is possible on a “world wide web”). If I’m going to spend time thinking through an idea, I want to have and to take the time to fumble around until something emerges that feels right. No fishing for “likes” or “thumbs” or “hitting the subscribe button.” No “branding” or zingers that are supposed to “prove” my superiority over another. The attempt is to create a space that is mine and which I will choose to share with others.

Let’s see where this goes.