Well yes, one could argue that if games like GTA don’t turn people into criminals than these games are also harmless. Imo it’s a bit different in this case, as a more natural instinct (sexuality) is affected.
Sure, games can be beneficial for living out fantasies, but how will it affect your view on women if you frequently consume highly sexist content? The bottom line of my point is that I think this type of content is too easily available nowadays, and especially too much of it.
In my book objectification means presenting women as walking sexual organs, bodies of flesh that one needs to conquer, nothing more. Many of pornographic content nowadays do this. Sexuality is not a problem, sexism is.
Well maybe they are bothered by its sexist content. People all are about free speech when it comes to censorship in media, but not that many talk about how objectification of women is still very common in it.
I’m sure that there are dating sims that are just fine, but let’s be honest here, these platforms are filled with much weirder stuff . Some of them even enter the morally grey areas imo.
Imo the world was the same before in terms of corruption and propaganda, it’s mostly us, the common folks, who changed radically.
There are only binary states and opinions, either you’re a genocide supporter or an antisemite. Internet discussion on politics have gotten too toxic. Covid brought everyone online and we’ve been stuck in echochambers ever since.
I noticed the same general reactions for Framework laptops. Some folks are acting like these smaller companies are trying to force their products on the consumers, but their advertising is completely fine.
However I also find some of the supporters of consumer friendliness unbearable (e.g. Framework or Thinkpad fans).
I get that tribalism is present in many layers of our society and culture (politics, sports, music), but I always found it weirder when people do it for products. The only goal of a company is to maximize their profits, why someone becomes a die hard supporter of them is beyond me.
To summarize, I just wish people would put less emphasis on consumer practices. Buy a product you like and is beneficial for you, but don’t judge others for their choices.
That’s true, getting spoiled by a rich and powerful family creates a whole another breed of human beings.
Initially, I was refering more to the lower classes, where overcoming challenges can thicken the skin. What I wondered was more the effects of babying a child that does not have everything from the start.
Could it be possible to counter it with another ML model that browses your feed?
For example, scraping your feed and presenting to you only the content that corresponds to some pre-defined labels (with a tiny bit of randomness to spice things up).
Although how could the automatic labeling work for videos from the user-end? Hashtags would be the simplest indicators, however also easily misleading.
If only somehow we managed to make social media uncool for the kids, that’s the most sure way they’d stay away from it.
I guess proper education on the real aspects of the social media phenomenon would be the real deal. For example, explaining how/why the companies use their algorithms to keep you in there; influencers only want to sell you a product; why posts/stories don’t reflect reality at all, etc.
But understanding all that would require quite some amount of emotional maturity from both the kids and parents themselves. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the reality at all, there are adults that still can’t see through the cracks..
I’ve been just thinking about the last point you made, on video games being more engaging than most other forms of media.
It’s quite weird how gaming is still looked down on by the general public. While watching movies and TV shows is considered to be “more mature” hobby, even though it requires less engagement. Wonder what the effects of binge watching are on the brain in the long term, especially compared to gaming’s. If we think about it the latter is much more similar to solving puzzles or reading.
Sure, games can be beneficial for living out fantasies, but how will it affect your view on women if you frequently consume highly sexist content? The bottom line of my point is that I think this type of content is too easily available nowadays, and especially too much of it.