I see a lot of parallels in Korean (and other eastern countries) and Indian social expectations.
While Korea has developed economically and has become a modern industrialized country all of it's social mores and expectations are rooted in it's feudal agricultural past.
I think that similar situation will happen in India as well in next 20 years.
Maybe Western modern industrialized, post-industrialized society needs a individualistic culture as well and does not harmonize well with society whose values are derived from the older feudal, gerontocratic agricultural society.
I would also recommend 1st chapter of "Principles Of Computer System Design: An Introduction - Saltzer & Kaashoek" for a more general discussion on complexity in digital system.
One possible outcome of this is humans stop producing freely accessible digital artifacts like text, code lest they get replaced by machines who can mimic them and which controlled by tech moguls.
> I’m wondering if someone can comment on the cultural aspect here. It seems like adding the smiles was intended to discredit the protesters, by somehow suggesting the protest was insincere.
This was to paint them as insincere and implying that protestors are on the payroll of <insert boogeyman here>.
I think the part about "unrealistic goals" is applicable to a lot of spheres of life and exacerbated by the social media. Social media after all inflicts high expectations and pressure to convert your life into a performance on everyone irrespective of profession, culture, age, country.
And ofcourse the Titans of social media - zuckerberg, chamath, tiktok and 1000s of engineers, PMs will not pay for the harm their engineered products have caused because waters have been muddied enough and no true accounting of the harm can happen.
It is kind of like inventing a new synthetic highly addictive drug which is technically legal but very harmful and you can sell it to everyone.
> but to me it seems like a good idea to at least consider the potential negative effects self-expression may have on others, and weight that against the benefits of self-expression.
> All pieces are there, we just need to decide to do it.
Another silver bullet.