Does anyone else find it odd that we call technology designed for no other reason than to manufacture the desire to buy shit we don't need, "entertainment."
@LeftistLawyer I find it odd that media awareness with a goal of instilling resistance to marketing isn't a standard and required part of basic childhood education in a world so swamped with marketing in so many forms. Yet we don't even seem to have a language for such a concept, try googling such phrases as "education resistance to marketing" and you get 100% pages by the ad industry on how to overcome resistance - not strategies to instill and encourage it.
I stopped watching TV over a decade ago (didnt know TV is still functioning somehow).
EG: Fighting against the Youtube programming trying to shove it's adverts for stuff I cant buy is... a fight for my freedom to watch videos about pretty owls, without seeing obnoxious content about stuff I cant afford anyways.
Brainwashing indeed, and I'm still trying to cleanse myself from that rotten soap I was forced to digest. More bubbles to pop.
@violetmadder@GreenRoc@LeftistLawyer the problem with this is that ads are the real program, and the entertainment is there to keep you busy watching between ads
I don't even HAVE any money. I can't afford a damn thing. It doesn't matter how many car ads they try to force me to sit through, I AM NOT GOING TO BUY A SINGLE ONE OF THESE WRETCHED THINGS.
All that data mining, supposedly to "target" the advertising, and they still have no clue what I'd want even if I could afford it. What good does it do, eating up bandwidth just to torment me? I can't fathom any of this.
@violetmadder@GreenRoc@LeftistLawyer doesn’t matter, you are the product being sold to those companies paying for the advertising and the program.
The fact that you’re watching and can be somewhat qualified as an individual within a certain age group, social class, with certain interest (…) is what is being sold.
@LeftistLawyer@GreenRoc@violetmadder then you get into how cheap the shit can be manufactured, if they could enslave aliens on another planet, they’d do it…
@violetmadder Ever since 'algorhythms' were introduced, them robot programs almost never got my intersts correct, and often, misgendered me too. I get ads as if I'm some fraternity jock, beer, Viagra, sports... and I'm a 46 year old woman with zero interests in sports or getting drunk.
I think video is actually toxic. I think it's reasonable to keep children away from a TV, for much of their childhood. Dole it out as if it were an ADDICTIVE DRUG, because that is exactly what it is and the threat it bears.
I would steer kids to read, but also I would have to be more involved in their ongoing lives. They should DO things, and that's an uphill struggle in a society that has us all watching TV screens 18 hours per day.
There should be the outdoors and places to explore. Cityscapes are oppressive.
I would teach kids to strictly control their awareness so as to themselves limit their usage of PCs/cellphones. To be discriminating about what they spend their time consuming.
@ecsd
It depends on the child actually. A lot of kids/people learn better through video or audio than reading. What is the most important is what they watch or listen to. Reading is also good for a whole host of reasons, but what they read is also very important. @LeftistLawyer
The one thing schools need to do immediately is expose TV for what it is (in our society): the suborned means of PUSHING SHIT on people. Crap products, crap politicians, crap news.
It's delivered on "TVs", however obtained. [Jesus, when's the last time anyone went to a MOVIE THEATER, the last two things I ever saw were Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Matrix, "loooooooong ago".]
It's all on a laptop screen. I never understood the compulsion to have a 52" monitor. If you need that kind of "enclosure", then you want Virtual Reality, and I won't touch any of that shit coming from any billionaire.
I might write "the chronicles of a bingewatcher", but I think it would boring. All the shit does is keep me company [human voices], the stories by now are all useless.
[Bingewatching also shows you how little imagination actually emerges from "Hollywood".]
Last newest things I've obtained were "Foundation" season one and seven episodes of "Upload" S2. No pressure to stay current because the stories aren't compelling any longer. MOTSOS, same old shit. [I've slammed "Discovery" pretty hard as Kurtzman-bation.]
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I threw out my actual HDTV on 6 Sep 2009. Thank you, God, I have not seen a TV advertisement since then. WOT A RELIEF. Oh, yeah, I read 450 books to fill in the time.
@ecsd
No idea either about the 52' monitor. Maybe they want a private cinema experience?
Try documentaries (though maybe not made in the US, they lean a bit too much towards the drama in my opinion) and Korean TV shows. Also there are a lot of educational channels in YouTube and other video platforms or learning platforms like Coursera, edX etc. :) @LeftistLawyer
One of my unexplored opinions is that Western society (Capitalist society?) tends to reduce parent/child interaction, that "child care" is considered a burden to be outsourced or otherwise avoided.
What is the purpose of being alive? No purpose. Capitalist society wants to steal your attention away onto the consumption of something, comparatively, dealing with children is less interesting than whether your favorite TV character is stabbed in the next moment.
But, children are OUR future, and the present must permanently be dedicated to perfecting ourselves. If your life's work was to do well for your children, then you (and they) are winners at life. How big your house, how fat your bank account, irrelevant. How smart, how knowledgeable, how capable, how happy your children are, that's what matters, and really, NOTHING ELSE MATTERS. Enjoy your happiness on the margin.
Adults (of our time now) should find it rewarding to be able to abandon the rat race and spend more time with their children. I am wandering afield, I am thinking of the abandonment of Capitalism for Socialism, where the purpose of life is to LIVE AND ENJOY IT, as opposed to fighting with all and anon to scale pyramids of wealth and power.
I would replace TV with adults reading to children when they are younger, and then discussing with them books they have read when older. See that this revises the ADULT'S life contents as well as the CHILD'S. THIS society pays attention to itself; THIS society produces far more of value to humans than any society developed around commodities.
... it's a book's worth of discussion, and I'm usually never in the mood. sigh
I tend to think a child who can't learn well by reading is special needs; in our society I would first try to determine what the child's environment was, that reading was made less accessible. That is, there may be children who "can't learn well" by reading, but not so many, the remainder need remedial work but can get "back on track".
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"What they watch". THAT video is "toxic", well, vinegar is toxic if it's concentrated enough, but we drink copious amounts of the stuff anyway. That video is /addictive/ and that it tends to turn off parts of the brain, I would make that an overt warning, and try to find a harmless way to demonstrate it.
And THEN we FIX THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM by having classes regarding consumption of media. SHOW how TV was used to stupify generations of people; show how it turns off the critical faculties; show how it GULLS people, and teach SPOTTING BULLSHIT. They don't do this much in school, teaching critical reasoning skills, defensive tactics for consumers. One WONDERFUL course is how to spot psychological manipulation coming at you: vote for Jones (for you) to be a patriot; is that true? Do I /want/ to be a patriot? Do a paper on how X film tried to manipulate you.
Anything with a screen, below. Not just cellphones.
Watch a movie from time to time; but it shouldn't be any sort of draw or attraction per se. Do some Coke, fine; but Don't Get Addicted.
@ecsd
Not necessarily. I leaned way better through video and audio than I ever did reading school books (maybe the books were bad). I leaned more from documentaries than I ever did from school. Nowadays I remember what I learned from video and audio better than the things I learned at school. Some people simply learn better through methods other than memorisation.
@ecsd
And I am an avid reader myself, so it is not that I dislike books. I am just saying that reading has its place, but only reading and nothing else is not a good idea either.
And for the record I have a PhD in Physics, so no special needs. Btw I was born, raised and living in the EU.
And I am going to take issue with you simply labeling a child as special needs just because they do not fit your idea of "normal". Being normal is overrated anyway. It's nothing to brag about. @LeftistLawyer
"Special Needs" is not a negative statement. It's an objective statement. It describes a condition. I conjecture that a literal inability to learn by reading constitutes a special need, insofar as that child has to be educated differently from "the average". It's not a value judgement.
I believe I've already said in this thread: it's not about "reading and doing nothing else." Kids need the outdoors and kids need to play. I would just mark "consuming video" as not much recreation. (Largely invalid.)
@ecsd
I am glad to hear that it was not a judgement value.
In my opinion the current educational system needs change and using media together with books should be part of it. It will make it easier for a lot of people who are less inclined towards learning through reading to learn.
A sizable part of my recreation growing up was watching educational videos, so I would disagree with that. Even watching cartoons can teach kids values such as helping others and doing good. @LeftistLawyer
I don't think it is a large percentage of children who are "less inclined to learning through reading." Guessing based on nothing more than observation, I would peg it as fewer than 5% who are actually unable or averse.
I think it's a spectrum, thus would range from totally averse to totally avid, which can be measured by a number in the range [0,1].
There is "how you learned" which might not match "how you would learn best." There's no replaying a life to see which possible avenues were optimal.
It is true that reading is a solitary activity, so I could see where that could pall. But [we're discussing this presuming] we've developed "the system" to balance learning with living, and also learned to cater to the individual's specific needs.
My principal point is that we should teach children to be aware of how they're spending their time, to be "wary" of having it sucked away. From my own life I would phrase it as reminding the child to remain aware of their own activity -- "what am I doing now?" -- to recognize the tendency of video to "keep people in thrall."
Specifically, to avoid the /addiction/. What's the "first thing" you do after getting home from work? Turn on the TV? We should be on the defense against being programmed in that way.
So that after an hour watching TV, the automatic instinct should not be, "oh, let's keep watching, hour after hour."
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TV / internet have entered, replacing human interaction with interaction with nonliving things. The concept of "Community" is being eroded. Everyone's indoors watching TV. So God bless "block parties".
"A revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having." -- V, from 'V for Vendetta'.
@LeftistLawyer Stopped watching TV around 15 years ago except for the local football code in winter.
Then I read the quote; "Your television is the Oppressor's voice in your home."
I'll never go back. At best, it's insultingly puerile. At worst, it's a propaganda machine.
@LeftistLawyer On my first mushroom trip there was a golf tournament on, playing on a little black and white portable. I was utterly transfixed, but then I was equally transfixed by the cupboard doors in the kitchen one time when tripping.
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