TIKTOK AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Due to the recent headlines about TikTok I decided to check it out. Most of what I saw was exceedingly stupid, but otherwise fairly innocuous, so I’ve become more skeptical about the claims of politicians. It is one thing if it in fact is a vehicle to enable the CCP to spy on us, in which case it might then be a threat. They are also tracking and collecting personal information, but so are all the other platforms, and at present they may be having enough trouble keeping track of their own people to bother much with ours. Otherwise, I can’t imagine much use for a collection of dopey videos. There may or may not be something more there, but the only way to find out is to do some serious research instead of shooting first and asking questions later.

 The more salient concern is what negative impact it is having on vulnerable, impressionable young people. But that feature of social media is hardly unique to TikTok, so the Chinese element may be irrelevant, apart from sour grapes from Silicon Valley over the success they have had. Instagram, which began as a place to share photos, has been transformed into a clone of TikTok, with identical short, mindless videos, and there are others, so the phenomenon would persist even if there were no TikTok.

 

Throughout almost all of history there was no “gap” between generations. Even in modern times, the 1960s, and possibly the 1920s were aberrations. Thus, we have the phenomenon of younger people still connecting with music that is five or more decades old.

 

But now there is something that really is different and barely perceptible to most adults. These kids have grown up with an almost integral connection to social media. The rest of us grew up with a variety of experiences and venues such as movies, television, publications, as well as far more interaction with the physical world. For these kids everything, all of it, is online, especially social media, which has resulted in a very different perception of the world around us as well as what matters. If you’re not “there” you basically don’t exist. The paramount path to notoriety now is there, not in other media, which has generated a horde of aspiring “influencers,” as well as outsized significance provided to the insignificant. 

 

If it was simply a different perspective it wouldn’t matter so much, but with a growing realization of how much real harm is being done, it is very consequential, if not critical. 

 

Social media has become a vehicle for boundless narcissism, not just for kids but for adults as well. In this world everybody is a star (which can also effectively mean that nobody is). When someone puts up a video of themselves doing silly, or routine things like exercising, frequently lip-synching with a dreadful soundtrack, they do so in the hopes of gaining recognition, likes, followers, and other forms of positive feedback validating their lives. But what happens to the vulnerable when the feedback is negative? Clearly it can be devastating. 

 

Even adults are not immune to this sort of exposure to the extent that they can bristle at any negative reactions to what they post. Thus, what social media fundamentally gives us, to the extent that we allow it to, is naked, exposed egos. For the young, or those with fragile egos, the consequences can be  catastrophic.

 

Yet much here is not new. Even in the earliest years of the Internet there was negativity via “flame wars.” A quarter of a century ago AOL provided essentially the same material as Facebook but arguably better. Then there was MySpace, where everyone soon had a Page, but with the technology of the time pages rich with graphics and blasting music incessantly, they took forever to load, so the plain, simple interface of Facebook left them in the dust. But both heralded something new- the real you. 

 

Back on AOL virtually everyone had a handle, not many real names were used, personal information wasn’t exposed, and there were few photos. Thus, you really couldn’t know who was and wasn’t real, but at the same time you were reasonably safe. Here may lie the crux of the matter and possibly the easiest solution to the social media conundrum.

 

Banning a service or attempting to control it all is neither viable nor desirable, with the possible exception of platforms. But if people were limited in their personal exposure, many problems would dissipate. Furthermore, under current conditions privacy has been shredded. As long as personal information is out there, or worse even promoted, problems will persist. What we really need to do, for the protection of the public, is simply limit the exposure of personal information, especially on public venues. If this were to come about there would likely be a healthy loss of interest, once “me” or “I” were out of the picture. Life then might hopefully return to normal.  

REFLECTIONS ON THE JANUARY 6TH RIOT AND TRUTH

This morning I saw a dingbat CBS “news” anchor airhead expressing outrage over Tucker Carlson’s January 6th revelations, which of course was echoed by the entire establishment media complex, along with some politicians demanding his show be taken down. But these are the same people who have continuously lied to us, repressed the truth, put an ideological spin on the facts, and have zero credibility left with the public. Even here they lied and distorted, basically charging that his report “lacked context,” and left out a lot of other things that happened, yet they could disprove nothing.

He never claimed that this was the whole truth about January 6, but that it was a part that was deliberately ignored and suppressed by the odious Jan 6th committee. Had they been truthful it would not have been necessary.  Had they not blatantly rigged the committee in a partisan fashion and allowed no representation from the other side, no cross-examination, etc., it would have been different. They even hired one of their collaborators from the ABC to prepare the show for them. It was a a propaganda exercise that needed correction. The media propagandists further threw of deceptions as some sort of evidence that hundreds pleaded guilty to whatever they were being charged with, because they a willfully ignorant about how the federal “justice” system actually works. If you are unfortunate enough to fall into the crosshairs of the US Attorneys you are screwed as the full weight and resources of your own government are turned against you, and you go broke if you litigate, or take a plea which most have to do because the system is so unfair. That is why they have a higher than 98% conviction rate-higher than the Soviet Union in its day. It is not because they are so good at what they do but because the system is rigged. 

Were the actions on that day justified? Of course not, but the distortion and suppression of the truth of the matter, the deliberate withholding of evidence, months of unconstitutional incarceration without any charges, add up to something far worse than the event itself. Those who reject this should honestly ask themselves what their thinking would be if it happened to people they sympathized with. We either have a single standard of justice in this country or we don’t have any justice, and right now the latter is the reality. 

But leaving all that aside, the most disturbing thing about January 6th, which they never investigated or questioned was how and why it was able to occur in the first place. They were only interested in going after Donald Trump, (who admittedly could have conducted himself much better that day), and scoring political propaganda points. 

There is a villain who bears the most responsibility for this event but it isn’t Donald Trump. It is Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi was responsible for police and security in this instance, and despite being given intelligence that there would likely be disturbances she refused to take any precautions or enhance security, even as the Capitol police pleaded for them. You never heard any of that from the sham committee or its media collaborators, along with repeating lies even now about people being killed that day, when in fact there was only one, Ashli Babbitt, a veteran, who was basically murdered by a trigger-happy officer even while she was right next to two other officers. They don’t say her name either. 

On top of that Pelosi then took the unprecedented step of rejecting any members from the minority party and instead handpicked only two renegades who reliably agreed with her party and pre-ordained position. The real purpose of the committee wasn’t even getting Trump, it was covering her tracks.  Is it at all credible that no one even raised these questions? It was a totally dishonest travesty, a show trial worse than anything that has ever occurred in this country, yet not an objective word was said about the warped legal atrocity being perpetrated by the incompetent media, who gleefully cooperated directly with one side in staging these hearings. 

The reality of the riot on January 6 is not at issue here, but rather how it has been handled, how so many outright lies and myths have been sold, how unjust the whole process has been, and worst of all how total incompetents botched the basic security of of the facility. Speaker McCarthy, Tucker Carlson, and Fox are to be commended for their efforts to get at the whole truth despite the vilification from that same media that doesn't want you to know the truth.