Parents need to take it very seriously and limit the amount of time the child uses the computer...otherwise these behaviors continue into adulthood. If you are socially incompetent then it will hold you back in terms of jobs and so on. Very troublesome is that parents are basically using computers to babysit the kids or to keep them occupied...which only helps to reinforce the lack of social skills they get. How many times do you see a kid in a shopping cart holding a tablet watching some movie or whatever? Very common.
Before I had regular access to technology I spent most of my after-school and recess time staring off into space, pacing around constructing imaginary worlds, and reading YA fiction. I had no interest in my peers, and no idea how to connect with them, years before I ever touched a computer. When I finally did get into the internet, and programming, it was manna from heaven. Now I get to be a productive member of society, staring off into space at my desk and constructing imaginary worlds in the form of software systems for important business purposes. If it weren't for that, I might have wasted away, disintegrated, completely detached from the normal human world.
I dunno. Just because a child has no social life and a lot of screen time, doesn't mean the causality works as you propose. Some of us have a tighter grip on the world of things than the world of people. (It's definitely become more balanced for me, with time).
In my teen years I spent most of my time writing, reading, or walking wherever. Again, I had a few friends, but I was picky and apart from that didn't care to "maintain" the friendships. When I started using the Internet more frequently, I found more passive friendships online that came and went and this was a much better solution for me. It meant I could connect when I wanted to, and instantly end the connection when I wanted to be alone, without much risk.
I probably sound a little more pathological than you, but my point is that some people just are a certain way. Apart from that there are external reasons why kids prefer the Internet to in-person interaction. The Internet as a solution came about for a reason. The world is so populated now that when one walks down the street, your neighbors are unkind or elusive because people cannot keep up with so many relationships at once. Trains are packed, everyone's chattering, everyone's rushing, there are people everywhere but no one is communicating-- there's no time or energy to connect with people. Some guy on the train is crying, but no one is going to comfort him because everyone has so much shit going on. The Internet, in one sense, is a way to reconnect with one's neighbors intimately while keeping a sane distance. If a guy on reddit is telling me he's crying, I instantly attempt to comfort him.
It's a weird thing, for sure. But, personally, I don't see an easy way around it in the short-term.
But today, when I can barely get shit done with all the distractions at my fingertips, I wonder if I could learn the basics before gravitating towards something passive.
It forced me out of necessity to give time to content I never would have bothered with otherwise.
Boredom is so healthy.
Among those: the media, fiction, or interactions that were meaningful to me held more space in my mind. They weren't competing against a sea of trash and new stimulus.
----
Also I did a ton of engineering and robotics extra curricular stuff through the years. Then one year we got broadband and I got Lego Mindstorms. I took it out of the box once. I still feel bad about that gift.
Or you might have found a friend and started a social circle based on common interests. Now you never have to, you get various approximations of that. You can hop onto an MMO and have an approximation of a social circle. You can code until a manager says "good job" and have an approximation of social approval. Hell you can watch porn and get an approximation of sex. You can watch ASMR videos and get an approximation of affection (don't tell me a video of a cute girl with audio that sounds like she's whispering in your ear isn't meant to be an approximation of affection).
It's good to have tech and the things it brings us, but on the other hand they're clearly sucking people into a passive life where they interact with the actual world as little as possible. I've looked back on how socially retarded I am because I ran away from the world using these tools, and I don't like it. And it's only a personal failure to a certain extent. We all know, clear as a bright spring day, that a lot of apps and services are build deliberately to keep you there as long as possible as often as possible.
When people say they wouldn't have it any other way, I'm not sure it's for any reason but they either don't know or can't handle any other way.
I live in both, I can function decently in both, and I still prefer the passive tech life. Pretty sure without tech, I'd still prefer to be distant/alone most of the time, with only occasional contact with other human beings
If people are tempted to escape into a virtual world, it might be because the real world around them sucks.
Not being online-savy would put me at a social disadvantage. I'm in my early 20s. My impression is that it's only more so for younger ones. When people talk of "real-world social skills" they usually mean the ones that made sense during their adulthood.
I spend my time online reading about my interests or talking to other people. In the outside world, the conversations I have are short and often unfulfilling. People are more open online and I really value that kind of open introspection with others. It's difficult to find information about my interests outside of the Internet as well, unless I go to the library which, for me, is at least an hour commute.
Lots of people are learning how to use the Internet productively because as we migrate our time from physical reality to virtual reality, we crave more corresponding meaning.
The real world sucks for me sometimes (y'know, apart from nature walks and the like) because it's not the apple it's the candy. It feels fake, empty, and lifeless.
When instead of candy you get kicked in the nuts by a horse, that's when you need some of that youtube to get your mind off of things.
If children has a higher need to escape reality than in the past then maybe we should ask why that is rather than in vain hope try to make the problem go away by removing the escape method. Like you I find it troublesome that parents use computers to babysit, but I would say the same thing about any form of babysitting mechanism that result in the child not get any social support.
Cue Monty Python sketch
I'm born '86, regular access to technology since the early nineties. I'm a social kind of person, have many friends. Sometimes I just want to lock myself in for an entire weekend and play video games for 16 hours a day. Other times, I'll be having barbecues or going dancing.
And as many here have already stated, the extremes go smoothed over by time.
Post-internet I at least had friends, sure some were in the Netherlands, or Germany, or Australia, or Brazil, or Japan but they were people. Actual people that existed outside of the fantasy novels I would read. People that as an adult, I was able to travel to and visit. I have a job in web development, something that wouldn't even exist without the internet.
I owe essentially 100% of my "successful adult life" to the internet existing. Without it I'd likely be working a minimum wage job at a local fast food chain without a single friend to speak of. Merely existing and reading books.
I blame helicopter parents like my mother far more than I blame access to the internet.
What about the giant scare of strangers that flared up in the 90s? Every stranger is a potential murderer/rapist and you shouldn't speak to them. Children not being allowed to travel outside alone, the rise of "helicopter parenting". Even if you allow your child to go outside it's increasingly unlikely they'll meet another child because other parents don't let their children go outside. When I was younger I remember always seeing parks full of unsupervised kids playing. Most parks I see now are empty. Or maybe a parent watching their kid(s) play on the equipment.
I hear lots of "how much gaming did you do when you were young?" but it isn't the same. Today big game companies engineer the games to be addictive to "win" screen time. Back then I may have sunk a lot of time into Nintendo but it was mostly solo playing or playing with friends/siblings that sat next to you. You tended to help each other out to get past levels, etc.
It's almost like reasonably moderating the content your child consumes will help prevent undesirable behavior.
I'm being a bit gratuitously sarcastic right now but that's really the crux of it. If it's trying to sell your child something or constantly stimulating them in a way the real world can't or it's not teaching your child something you want them to learn, be careful about how they consume it.
I'm nowhere near the age of having kids yet but I'm already thinking about the optimal balance of usage so my kid would be digitally native and not addicted to apps.
Kids are "totipotent" individuals if they grow up as creators, citizen between other citizen they became adult, otherwise they became consumer, easy to steer from employers to politicians but incapable of being citizen.
In contrast, these kids have friends, who actually share some common interest. They choose those friends. And also, probably, more of them. If anything, I'd call that hyper-social.
Respectfully, I've spent a _great deal of time_ with elementary school teachers, and many appear very very willing to diagnose random children, adults, and coworkers as being "a bit autistic", and so on.
In addition, and assuming wildly here, how old is she? If you're the HN average of about 30, and she's about your age, she doesn't really have a cross-generational experience to pull from, even assuming she was making observations free of the very many cognitive biases one would expect in this situation.
My bet would be that if you found a teacher -- from almost any point in history -- and asked them what the kids are like in their time period, they'd tell you about the latest inventions that have made their kids uniquely awful and anti-social. I'll spare you pulling out the 3,000 year-old quotes about how "young people these days don't respect their elders".
If there are some studies that show it, I'd be all for it. Teacher anecdotes are uniquely poor quality samples, in my opinion.
Through all of time we’ve heard this. The current generation is supposedly rubbish in some way the previous generation was not. Instead it’s been the opposite. Each succeeding generation has surpassed the previous in any human quality. I have immense confidence that our collective children will be the same. We are better people than our parents. Our kids will be better than us. No doubt about it.
I'm a millenial, and my partner's parents, stereotypically, are always going off about how lazy, whiny, and unmotivated my generation is. From where I stand it's the complete opposite. I could explain why but, at the risk of starting a debate about millenials, I'll just say that my generation has been working on solutions to problems our parents either didn't have to deal with, or weren't aware of. And that's just the way "generations" work.
I've had a very similar experience with the people I know who are trying to be teachers, though most of the people I deal with are either in or just out of college and this could be attributed to inexperience.
I find it a little troubling that I see people practically seeking examples of unusual social behavior and attributing it to autism. I saw this sort of pseudo-analysis happen a lot with Sheldon in Big Bang Theory. Opinions of the show aside, I don't think it was ever explicitly stated that he had a social disorder.
> One of the striking characteristics of the new mass media - radio, television, and the movies - is that they give the illusion of face-to-face relationship with the performer. [...] The most remote and illustrious men are met as if they were in the circle of one's peers; the same is true of a character in a story who comes to life in these media in an especially vivid and arresting way. We propose to call this seeming face-to-face relationship between spectator and performer a para-social relationship.
They even use your term 'persona' to refer to the individual behind the glass.
> But of particular interest is the creation by these media of a new type of performer: quizmasters, announcers, 'interviewers' in a new 'show-business' world - in brief, a special category of 'personalities' whose existence is a function of the media themselves. [...] Lacking an appropriate name for these performers, we shall call them personae.
http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/short/horton_and...
These could be today's satirists
I've wondered about this for podcasts too. I noticed a scary habit where I would play podcasts when I was feeling lonely. Over time, you feel like you're pals with the hosts and something about the audio format checks the social needs box in your brain, thinking that you're hanging out with another human. I don't want to unconsciously sate my social needs with podcasts so I've been more intentional about my listening.
As for people growing attached to the persona, here's an interesting case: https://youtu.be/VJJ90qpzark?t=458
Once hooked, the kardashians make bank because they can sell their fans laxative teas or hair growth gummy bears on instagram through huge ad endorsements
Yes. I see this kind of shows as social pornography. But meanwhile pornography is seen as something that you see in private and you are kind of ashamed to recognize that you see it publicly. This social pornography is widely accepted and even children watch it with, usually, their mothers.
Society needs to create a taboo about this kind of shows. It maybe OK to watch them on your own if you need it. But not to include children and not to make it the center of your life.
These are just the initial iterations of how influence in a hyper connected society works. What happens next we are yet to see. Naturally most people don't think anything good.
Reality TV produced Trump. People forget it(what passes for news+social media news) also produced Obama. Remember he was hailed as the first social media President. After that every single politician, religious and social figure in every country was suddenly broadcasting their daily activities.
Just another avatar of what Reality TV hit upon.
So now the mechanics exist for an enterprising person to exert influence on a large numbers of people like never before. Across all kinds of geographic/social/cultural boundaries. Traditionally such influence has taken decades for famous people to acquire. So the textbook on how to use that influence has been very thin. The outcomes produced were much more based on pure luck than by design.
With big data and thousands of psychological experiments going on, how to use influence vast numbers if peoples lives, for good, is going to increase.
The ability to interpret rational meaning into the abstract is something that enabled homo sapiens to get where we at today.
You can't just remove that for TV images and expect it not to impact the perception/thinking apparatus as a whole.
If I'm sad I can always watch their videos and feel happy and connected to other people. I like people who create awesome stuff, I can relate to them a lot more than to the people I meet in real life.
I don't think these feelings are invalid. If people watch someone's content, and learn things, and feel connected, and that makes them feel good and happy - I think that's wonderful.
Besides, it's not like real life people are amazing at being real, everyone has a fake persona they're trying to project. What you can't fake is being funny, insightful, educational, likable, charismatic, talented, inspiring, etc. If you're creating something good, people will like you. Nothing wrong with that.
Dismissing real life people as "not amazing at being real" is ironic to me because people have been the way they are since maybe even before the dawn of homo sapiens. That's just what real is. Not everyone is this charismatic, funny, inspiring character. You still welcome them into your life just as they welcome you into their lives.
Why is everything people want has to be government funded? Just go ask people for money directly, like a lot of the abovementioned youtube stars do. Tax man with the gun does not have to be involved with this.
[1] For example the Czech Customs Administration: https://www.celnisprava.cz/en/Pages/default.aspx - note the sentence at the top: "Customs Administration of the Czech Republic is a security force ensuring processes in the field of customs administration and related taxes, as well as other non-fiscal activities in the favor of the state and its citizens. It is subordinated to the Ministry of Finance."
Government funded art doesn't make it pure art, it makes it art that serves the political aims of the bureaucrats charged with doling out the money.
Almost no two people have the same taste in art, and what they're willing to pay for.
I doubt you'd be living in a world that doesn't have art you like if the government didn't fund it.
Virtually all governments all over the world have various arts funding schemes that covers music.
That being said I have no strong opinion either way on if that's a good thing or if the music funded this wouldn't have been funded some other way if those schemes hadn't existed
What country are you in? Definitely if you're in the US or Europe there are plenty of places you can apply for government funding if you're a composer.
Also if the government is funding the concert hall and that funding lets the concert hall put on work by and pay a composer, at what point does it stop being government funding?
> at what point does it stop being government funding?
It's a good question, and I replied to that in another comment.
http://www.playbill.com/article/national-endowment-of-the-ar...
https://www.musicofremembrance.org/news/national-endowment-a...
If you specifically want an example of a grant being awarded to a composer for the purposes of composing a new piece, see here:
https://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwclassical/article/Chicago-P...
"The Chicago Philharmonic Society has been named the recipient of a $10,000 Art Works grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The award will support a collaboration between The Chicago Philharmonic Society, composer Augusta Read Thomas, and Chicago-based percussion ensemble Third Coast Percussion for the creation and performance of a new work for percussion quartet and orchestra. The premiere will be presented in fall 2017 as part of the Chicago Philharmonic's 2017-2018 symphonic season."
No, but if really I wanted to find one I'd probably start by looking here: https://www.arts.gov/ and then continue looking at smaller and more local arts grants. Also I'm sure that at some point some part of the government has commissioned new music for some project or event, although it's quite possible that that music has never been released on a CD.
But again it's all down to how you draw the line. Are you asking if there are composers on the federal payroll or if a composer has ever won a government grant and uses the money for that grant to pay his rent while continuing to compose?
Sure, but it's no less pure than art funded by a private benefactor or patron.
(not "government funded" in the grant sense, but the old UK unemployment benefit worked a lot more like a basic income)
And more importantly what do you mean by funded? If the local council offer free or subsidized rehearsal space to local up and coming bands, is the album they created there "government funded"?
I'd say government funding is when the government pays money to a specific artist to produce art. Like when a record company decides to pay a band to produce an album, or a publisher decides to give an advance to an author to write a book.
[1] http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/news/media-centre/media-r...
[2] https://www.theindustryobserver.com.au/labor-promises-28m-fo...
The other personalities, do not specifically cater to this. They're more interested in creating a following and creating something that keeps people coming back for more.
>Trained and ordained as a minister, Rogers was displeased with the way television addressed children. He began to write and perform local Pittsburgh-area shows for youth. In 1968, Eastern Educational Television Network began nationwide distribution of Rogers's new show on WQED. Over the course of three decades, Rogers became a television icon of children's entertainment and education.
>Rogers advocated various public causes. In the Betamax case, the U.S. Supreme Court cited Rogers's prior testimony before a lower court in favor of fair-use television show recording (now called time shifting). Rogers also testified before a U.S. Senate committee to advocate for government funding of children's television.
What contributes to "actual" well being of the follower is another matter entirely.
Though in the age of big data, despite all the pessimism we are surrounded by, it is possible more and more for the celeb class to influence "actual" well being (in terms of mental health/purpose/financial stability etc) of their followers.
The next George Lucas or Stan Lee could push psychological buttons in ways no one ever has before.
[0]- https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-mexico-man-dead-aft...
IRL he seems to be awkward around other people, soft (nice), and obviously a bit depressed.
Afaik your IRL description is one he gave about himself, where he also explained that he initially used YouTube to get past his "awkward around other people" issue.
In that context, I find it hard to believe that people could consistently play a "fake-persona" without that ever influencing their normal mannerisms, particularly when they have to summon this "fake-persona" on a near-daily basis.
I follow him around a lot, and as you said, you cannot hide personality traits forever. E.g. he definitely is not misogynstic, but he plays that card often during Meme Review or his other weekly formats to cater to his Reddit audience. I honestly believe he speaks for his real self in his social commentary videos.
I don't think it's really a "card" he consciously plays, it's much more a reflection of the culture he lives in and caters to, as a gamer.
Not all use of misogynistic language has misogynistic intent, particularly not when it's been an established part of the sub-culture. And in that context, this recent need to "enforce PCness", particularly in gaming culture [0], DID trigger a massive reactionary backlash that most of the industry and especially the mainstream seems still to be ignoring.
Gaming has always been about freedom and creativity, just hinting at intent to censorship [1] is enough to cause a, usually very loud, reaction. Right now the industry as a whole is running into a wall it won't be breaking through, instead it's paying the price by losing customers en mass. Take a look at recent EA, Ubisoft, Activision stock development and you will see exactly what I mean.
Other factors play into that as well, like over monetization of products which are often of very shallow quality. Case in point: Fallout 76
Or simply misreading what your customers actually want: Blizzard with Diablo immortal.
All these issues have brought the community to a breaking point, and now the most visible and biggest industry players are feeling the brunt of it.
[0] https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/14/17572060/rainbow-six-siege...
[1] https://www.polygon.com/2018/11/21/18106429/rainbow-six-sieg...
"He's not racist, he just says racist stuff often" "He's not a serial killer, he just murders people often"
It's not a great excuse, really.
But I guess intent doesn't matter, it's all about the optics, right?
It's kinda amazing how ESRB 18+ games can have players commit the cruelest and bloodiest violence, but as soon as somebody says a slur, that's suddenly "crossing a line".
Generally against fictional entities inside a computer.
> but as soon as somebody says a slur
Generally to or about a real person. That's why there's a difference.
I know Jenna and Julien have had people show up to their previous address, it seemed like mostly parents driving/flying their kids across the country to show up at their rental house to meet them...
I follow some vloggers that I find entertaining as well as have listened to podcasts for a decade now. I will readily admit I have more of a perceived familiarity with a lot of these people than I do with people I know in the real world for example:
- Adam Carolla and crew, 5 days a week times many years. I know about Adam's kids, his nanny, his wife, his business endeavors, his high school antics, his childhood, falling out with his friends, his genital warts test...
- A guy in Germany named Pierre who does a couple of few vlogs a week on his YouTube that I've supported via patreon and am Facebook friends with now
- Jenna and Julien, I've basically been watching both of their channels the entirety of their relationship
- The hosts of Geek Radio Daily, which I'm friends with on facebook. I've been listening to them a decade, I've been writing and calling in to the podcast the entirety of that time, I occasionally shoot memes to Flynn and we've been playing Words With Friends for several years, yet he and his wife know virtually nothing about me and I feel like they are old very good friends as I've been listening to them sometimes daily, sometimes weekly, for a decade.
- Mike Luoma, I discovered him on podibooks a decade or so ago. Listened to him narrate his stories. Found his podcast. Listened to it. Hired him to do an intro to my podcast that lasted a few episodes. Been friends on Facebook for years, have introduced him to other podcasters, will be on his 500th episode in a couple of weeks, I feel like I know so much about Mike yet I bet he knows virtually nothing about me.
It's certainly an interesting world we are building. Celebrity worship has been a thing as long as there have been celebrities but never before have we had such levels of exposure to given individuals. Such access to their lives through their video or audio, through their social media, through their patron-only content.
I find it fascinating and addictive but I absolutely recognize there is real danger in a society that is moving towards this sort of exchange, especially for individuals that do turn to obsessive behavior and even idol-worship.
Radio has similar properties, which is one of the reasons it is such a popular medium for certain types of demagoguery. Modern TV is different, but many people had similar feelings of attachment to soap opera characters, etc.
Just like Mister Roger's Neighborhood in the 1970s.
Are you saying that if art pleases people so much they're willing to pay money to experience it, that makes it not art?
In the past brand prestige protected the media from this to happen. A backslash on a TV will make all advertisers to flee.
YouTube does not suffer from this. They host radical, xenophobic, and misogynistic content without consequences. Because they label themselves as a tech company, a middleman that has no responsibility on their own content. But are they? Meanwhile we buy what YouTube advertisements show they have no reason to stop.
When you optimize society to generate money instead of generate value you get to this weird situation.
Another thought: If the content creator chooses to optimize the money-making persona, it eventually leads to sensationalized content to generate the maximum possible number of views. I think there is some sadness in that: no matter what form of art, so much of it is influenced (disrupted?) by money -- it almost seems inevitable.