Not because of some unique effect of social media; race in education has been that kind of culture war centerpiece for a long time; it was more than 25 years ago that a major national controversy erupted because of a single local school board decision on recognizing African American English as a distinct source language that students come with and which impacts teaching of Standard American English.
(It's true that decisions to impose a racist view of American society by the same faction that has pushed anti-CRT policies in the states where they have recently passed anti-CRT laws wouldn't be news, but that's more the same shift of the center on educational content that the anti-CRT movement is part of the response to than anything about social media.)
I know you're being facetious about interns, but issues today go so far beyond this. There's an actual war on in Europe, inflation is the highest it's been since the 70's and the pandemic is still wreaking havoc on global supply chains. There are very real crises to deal with, but there's political hay to be made from culture war divisions.
You'd hope they'd be a better source of news that better serves all political parties. (And avoid those that seem partisan.)
Factual. But provactive in some way, isn't it? That's the point. NPR should play the middle line, after all it's tax money.
https://dailycaller.com/2022/04/21/desantis-examples-critica...
Oh man the second one is at least a little funny. I can certainly say seeing that may have kept a horrifically bored 6th grade me a little more engaged on that paper.
The one about the sexual abuse is too extreme though and def shouldn’t be a casual subject for word problems.
Three decades ago, such a move would have been an eyebrow raising 2 to 5 minute news story on the evening news. Or, mentioned in a tiny column in the newspaper on some page. Most people wouldn't have come into contact with it. Let alone with such vigor that it led to an us v. them dynamic. It would have been a somewhat pointless gesture that would have been quickly forgotten.
Editorial discretion would have pulled to something more "important" such as Presidents pressuring interns into sexual activity.
Today, due to the attentional nature of the internet, the same story is quite attractive. No matter what your stance, you click on it, at least once, because it's bizarre. It's distilled catnip. On HN as well.
People and machines notice that you're clicking on it. So people start talking about it on social media. Which you engage with. And so more of it is served to you by the machines looped in. On and on until you spend an hour or more of your life on a topic you probably wouldn't have touched or known about thirty years ago.
The emotional valence created by the issue is overpowering as compared to the past, and it's self-sustaining. Forever propagating through the intellectual wastelands we're self-curating.
Humans have been dying on pointless hills for thousands of years. But our technology has amplified it to quite an art form.