{"id":16793,"date":"2021-10-06T00:16:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-06T00:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=16793"},"modified":"2021-10-05T20:16:51","modified_gmt":"2021-10-05T20:16:51","slug":"mark-an-easy-target","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2021\/10\/06\/mark-an-easy-target\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark, An Easy Target"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Eric Valentine<\/em><\/p>\n

ATTN: This just in. We have found the source of all the world\u2019s problems, or at least the reason your teenage daughter has an eating disorder and your 20-something felon son is on suicide watch. It\u2019s not the Russians\u2019 fault or even the Chinese. And Satan had no hand in this peril, either. Instead, all eyes are on the real public enemy number one, a Jewish, coastal-elite, college-dropout recluse named Mark Zuckerberg.<\/p>\n

Last month, The Wall Street Journal\u2014thanks to an anonymous whistleblower who actually did the majority of the work\u2014published a series of articles that revealed Facebook knew about the harm its products were causing its users, such as teenage girls who said that Instagram made them feel worse about themselves, teenage boys who said that social media made them feel suicidal, and all voting-age adults who said they now can\u2019t stand their creepy uncle and overtly racist aunt.<\/p>\n

The data from Facebook\u2019s scientifically devised, peer-reviewed study\u2026 woops, sorry, wrong study\u2026 The data from Facebook\u2019s own surveys reveal that the social media giant\u2019s apps, like Instagram, have a profound negative effect on mental health, especially that of teenage girls. So profound, a U.S. Senate subcommittee held a televised, political ad campaign in which lawmakers\u2026 woops, sorry, wrong TV appearance\u2026 So profound, a U.S. Senate subcommittee held a hearing last week in which lawmakers described the disclosures as a \u201cbombshell.\u201d Although, at least one aide to a senator\u2014who spoke on condition of anonymity\u2014said that description was referring to Payton, that hot new student intern from Des Moines.<\/p>\n

Other things that impact teenage mental health, in no particular order, include, but are not limited to:<\/p>\n

Other teenagers<\/p>\n

Hormones<\/p>\n

Bad parents<\/p>\n

Good parents<\/p>\n

Siblings<\/p>\n

Drugs (both the abused and prescribed versions)<\/p>\n

Mondays<\/p>\n

Tests<\/p>\n

Looking at them crooked<\/p>\n

All forms of physical and\/or sexual abuse<\/p>\n

Their favorite football team losing \u2026 again<\/p>\n

The realization that they just aren\u2019t a very good person<\/p>\n

The realization that they are literally the best person they will ever meet because humans are a rather broken species and even if climate change is total b.s. our species is doomed because the Sun is going to explode in 4 billion to 10 billion years \u2026 and they won\u2019t even be around to post about it on Instagram<\/p>\n

In all honesty now, when I read the actual statistics from the Facebook surveys, I thought the percentage of people whose views of themself were negatively impacted by social media would be higher. Please don\u2019t misconstrue that as me giving a pass to social-media providers. The problem is a real one, and the problem should not be used by those providers to stimulate profits. But as real as the problem is, it\u2019s also even older. And the ineffective \u201csolutions\u201d we\u2019ve seen before from Congress are so troubling they\u2019ll make one feel bad about their country.<\/p>\n

From banning \u201cCatcher in the Rye\u201d to putting labels on Heavy Metal albums, we\u2019ve seen this play out before. We find an enemy, punish them, and then realize we are our own enemy; and that a J.D. Salinger novel didn\u2019t make someone a little too socialist and Ozzy Osbourne wasn\u2019t responsible for anyone\u2019s suicidal thoughts \u2026 because everyone knows now that was entirely Marilyn Manson\u2019s fault.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, on Monday this week, Facebook and Instagram both went down for roughly six hours. The data is only anecdotal at this point, but according to the rumor mill \u2026 Becky in accounting \u2026 the entire planet drank a Coke, taught itself to sing, and lived in perfect harmony. But I\u2019m still not going to be complicit in my uncle\u2019s creepiness and my aunt\u2019s racism by re-friending them once the system comes back online. And I\u2019ve learned my lesson on using social media to invite Becky to any party this Halloween.<\/p>\n

Before leaking thousands of company documents, the latest and most litigious whistleblower, Frances Haugen, said that although the public already understands there are negative impacts from social media, the public doesn\u2019t understand just how bad it is and how little Facebook actually cares. Haugen said: \u201cIf people just hate Facebook more because of what I\u2019ve done, then I\u2019ve failed. I believe in truth and reconciliation\u2014we need to admit reality. The first step of that is documentation.\u201d<\/p>\n

I disagree. Documentation is just a red-tape delusion in the algorithm\u2019s aftermath, a verification of what we already knew. The first step is not to admit reality but, rather, take part in it by \u201cswiping left\u201d on social media and hitting right-click, then delete.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Eric Valentine ATTN: This just in. We have found the source of all the world\u2019s problems, or at least the reason your teenage daughter has an eating disorder and your 20-something felon son is on suicide watch. It\u2019s not the Russians\u2019 fault or even the Chinese. And Satan had no hand in this peril, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16793"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16795,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16793\/revisions\/16795"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}