Thanks for your story. I’m a misfit nerd also, so it resonates with me.
I’m sure its something we can fix at large scale with government-funded mental health care, social programs, funding for community centers, and integrating mental health and social science studies into education, amongst many possible solutions that would get us to a society where everyone can find somewhere to fit in, and everyone has better options than the snake-oil salesmen when they seek help or are angry at a personal situation.
Unfortunately we presently live in the era of the techofeudalists, and eyeballs on ads and keeping users consuming are pretty much all they care about - not only do they not care if the media they promote and put ads alongside happens to be divisive alt-right hate media, they also benefit from the conservative (anti-regulation, small government, anti-tax) parties being pushed to power by these groups. It’s a frustrating feedback loop that we need to break free of, and governments worldwide seem ill-prepared to broach it.
Ugh. For context, I’m currently trying to steer a younger family member out of the alt-right pipeline and angry about how hard it is to beat constant access to thousands of videos / talking points pushed into their feed daily, with the couple hours I see them a week to attempt to ‘deprogram’ them… without trying to come across preachy or put them off learning alternative viewpoints (evidence-based reality). Its a struggle.
Thanks for your story. I’m a misfit nerd also, so it resonates with me.
I’m sure its something we can fix at large scale with government-funded mental health care, social programs, funding for community centers, and integrating mental health and social science studies into education, amongst many possible solutions that would get us to a society where everyone can find somewhere to fit in, and everyone has better options than the snake-oil salesmen when they seek help or are angry at a personal situation.
Unfortunately we presently live in the era of the techofeudalists, and eyeballs on ads and keeping users consuming are pretty much all they care about - not only do they not care if the media they promote and put ads alongside happens to be divisive alt-right hate media, they also benefit from the conservative (anti-regulation, small government, anti-tax) parties being pushed to power by these groups. It’s a frustrating feedback loop that we need to break free of, and governments worldwide seem ill-prepared to broach it.
Ugh. For context, I’m currently trying to steer a younger family member out of the alt-right pipeline and angry about how hard it is to beat constant access to thousands of videos / talking points pushed into their feed daily, with the couple hours I see them a week to attempt to ‘deprogram’ them… without trying to come across preachy or put them off learning alternative viewpoints (evidence-based reality). Its a struggle.