Maybe there’s two types of people in the world: those people who favor humans over ideology, and those people who favor ideology over humans. I favor humans over ideology, but right now, the ideologues are winning, and they’re creating a stage for constant artificial high dramas where everybody’s either a magnificent hero or a sickening villain, even though we know that’s not true about our fellow humans. What’s true is that we are clever and stupid; what’s true is that we’re grey areas. The great thing about social media was how it gave a voice to voiceless people, but we’re now creating a surveillance society, where the smartest way to survive is to go back to being voiceless.
Let’s not do that (via).
What a challenging TED Talk. I especially loved the contrast between what social media’s intention, to connect us all through our faults and mistakes, and the reality of what it has become. Namely, a stage to celebrate our false perfection and a spear to hunt people. So we can hang them with their shameful secrets.
As Ronson says, let’s not do that.
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