The talk also mentions this article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/us/spring-break-gets-tame...

Kids nowadays can't party like we used to - because they need to consider that everything mildly interesting they do will be uploaded to our machine overlords for monetization. Bare breasts probably monetize well, so they were one of the first "casualities" of ubiquitous social media.

I grew up with internet, and had to deal with cyberbullies long before most knew what internet was. I think my inclination to clean up after myself and natural aversion for exposing too many personal details (I.e. didn't sign up for any social media, nor any (local) precursors) helped me steer clear of the worst of this. I'm surprised that so many are so blasé about this, while it's raining stories of cyberbullying, measurable increases in youth depression and lonelyness, identity theft and then regular theft.

I wear a seatbelt, a mask, and I take care of myself online as well. Seems like the facts are clear on all of those.

> Where and when I grew up, your political opinion was irrelevant to your college admission. You didn't have to demonstrate your committment to the polical cause of the moment to apply.

And... is this the case today? Do universities exclude your application or scrutinise your political beliefs?

I have heard from interns that colleges want to see engagement for social justice or diversity causes during the application process.

I have also heard that for research grants you need to show “diversity and inclusion” efforts. One guy I talked to from a Nevada school said these are often won by rich colleges who are almost purely white but know how to talk diversity whereas poorer colleges that are actually way more diverse don’t rate well on the diversity and inclusion scale.

> I have heard from interns that colleges want to see engagement for social justice or diversity causes during the application process.

It's been 15 years since I did the college admissions dance, but I do remember that most of the superstitions about the application process don't apply if you score above a 33 on the ACT (perhaps you'd need a perfect score to have the velvet rope lifted if you're applying for MIT). All the rules of thumb about taking at least three years of a foreign language and balancing between 2–4 extra-curricular activities are for the students who won't be immediately offered merit scholarships.

I believe cases like this pretty much qualify here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28757882

Still a spectacularly better proposition than most of US history, where admission were far more restrictive. Many Ivy League schools did not admit women until the 1960s and 1970s. Weird how we forget this stuff and somehow pretend we're living in the more restrictive era.

Sure but the momentum today goes towards more restrictive norms, contrary to what was happening in the 70s.

I can forgive kids, but it is fully adult humans that engage in this type of cancellation.

This is a typical witch hunt based on insecurity. At least academics should have enough self reflection to question their behavior, but they don't and they are the worst offenders here. And some of them even say they want to display leadership. What a sad joke...

> Where and when I grew up, your political opinion was irrelevant to your college admission

I agree that people should be forgiven for mistakes they made as children, and that the internet should be more anonymous in general, but you lost me there. You sound like a right-wing conspiracy theorist decrying "Cultural Marxism".

Wait where do you have to "demonstrate your committment to the polical cause of the moment" to apply to college

For grad school across fields a statement supporting “equity and inclusion” is becoming the norm. While this does not sound political, the use of the word “equity” vs “equality” is political.

Specifically, equity explicitly entails redistributing resources based on lack of privilege. This is instead of equality, which entails providing everyone with the same resources and opportunity.

Now we are left with question of how to fairly distribute resources. These are centralized decisions made by career bureaucrats. If the distinction was made along economic lines, this would not be all that political. However, lines are commonly drawn along race, gender, and sexual orientation. Now those making these decisions have decide based on belief structures about what groups are the least privilege. These structures are inherently political and a poor proxy for economic status.

And, if people are wondering if these statements are evaluated in a particular way, you can view a typical rubric here:

https://ofew.berkeley.edu/recruitment/contributions-diversit...

Which speaks for itself.

I want to add from anecdotal experience that this conformist ideology spans beyond just university applicants. I have had to declare my views and positions on "equity and inclusion" at job interviews for software development positions here in the Bay Area. I'll call them out; it was DoorDash in SF.

How did they ask that question? How direct are they in determining a candidate's ideology and political leaning?

At Google, a couple years back they swapped out one of the technical interviews for a G&I interview, which is really just a behavioral interview. But the questions come from an approved question bank, with each question tagged with a different attribute it's supposed to probe. One of these tags is DEI, and you're required to ask at least one question tagged DEI when conducting one of these behavioral interviews.

Usually the question does not explicitly call out race or gender, but the grading rubric definitely dings the candidate if TC doesn't reference them in their answer or says anything about political, economic, or regional diversity instead.

The one saving grace of this system is that no one expects any meaningful hiring signal to come out of these interviews unless TC is a total idiot when answering the questions.

Just had two nieces start college last year. Both in Large midwestern state colleges. These were not Ivy League or staunch liberal arts colleges.

Both put a huge emphasis on extracurricular activities which needed to be focused on social justice areas. Both were petrified they didn't have enough activities to get accepted.

In the end, they got accepted to where they wanted to go, but the shift to tow the line for social justice, inclusion and other hot topics of the day has been surprising to me. When I applied in the early aughts, the only thing my classmates were worried about were our SAT/ACT scores. Nobody cared at that point about your political leanings. Seems like today that is a greater focus than ever before.

It's not like there is some peer reviewed study I can cite for you, but in my own anecdotal experience one of my admissions essays needed to be about "what Diversity means to me". I, of course, said it was the greatest thing since sliced bread because I can't help but think a neutral or contrarian viewpoint would instantly get my application rejected. One of my Gen. Ed. requirements was to take a course that was flagged as co-curricular with "Human Diversity". And, the school I went to isn't even considered that liberal.

On the sections for extracurricular activities, volunteering, etc. where you try to make yourself look saintly. Just guessing, but six months volunteering at a homeless shelter for refugees will probably help your admissions more than six months volunteering to catalogue 19th century clogs at a museum.

Coming from country where even behavioural interviews are rarity and only very specific fields have something beyond entrance exam the whole extracurricular activity thing feels extremely strange. Why should that have anything to do with academic performance.