Showing posts with label Society. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Society. Show all posts

Monday, September 21, 2020

9/21/20 - Steinbeck, Murrow, and The Social Media Disease

Continuing the Social Dilemma theme, Todd and Brian delve further into the social, psychological, and personal effects of more than a decade of social media, including meeting members of their direct families for the first time directly via Facebook. Also, Todd's argument against monetization, digital reunions and the bizarre new expectation that, somehow, everyone from every epoch of our lives now deserves a seat at our virtual table. We also discuss the failed utopian vision of "informational democracy" and the essential nature of gatekeeper, learning how to both use these platforms as tools and sabotage the Zuckorithm, as well as possible macro and micro solutions. Is this a triage situation? The show closes with a surprise appearance by Edward R. Murrow and why informational anarchy and intellectual autonomy, not climate change, is the crisis of our time. 

 

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Murrow's Text: https://www.rtdna.org/content/edward_r_murrow_s_1958_wires_lights_in_a_box_speech 

Music by Paul Vernon

 

Monday, September 14, 2020

9/14/20 - The Social Dilemma: War of the Virtual Worlds

Todd and Brian discuss The Social Dilemma, the new Netflix documentary probing the exploitative, corrosive, and polarizing effects of social media, both psychologically and socially. Also, the addictive nature of the medium, how it manipulates evolutionary psychology, the potentially dangerous side effects of performance withdrawal and how, once you escape, you become an organic organism in a digital ecosystem. We also tinker with solutions and discuss the horrific dystopia awaiting us if we fail to find them. Hint 1: It's the people. Hint 2: The tube: it's social media and Google!

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Thursday, May 21, 2020

Propaganda or Education; Patriot or Traitor; Riot or Protest?



 In one of many examples of how he knew the herd better than it knows itself, Edward Bernays, the man who took "propaganda" and rebranded it "public relations,"pointed out in the late 20's that whether you perceive something as "propaganda" or "education" depends upon what you've adopted to explain the world for you: your belief system; which god you worship. That's shamefully self-evident and explains why most are, almost literally, physically unable to consume "their" "news."

Whether you would have seen our 18th century mobs as "patriots" or "traitors" depended upon the same thing: chosen identity and an adopted perspective skewed by subjective "faith." Stampeding herd dynamics functioned the same in Boston and Philadelphia as in Paris, Moscow, Havana, and Berlin. The difference between these four and ours is that our founders understood and feared the mob. They attempted to straddle saddling a temporarily useful but snarling and unpredictably dangerous beast with long-term stability and "liberty." 

Friday, March 20, 2020

3/20/20 - Informational Anarchy In A Pandemic

A potentially catastrophic stress test as the healthcare system drowns inside a divided country who chose informational tribalism over preparation. Detachment is essential! And, this isn't just about the elderly, dummy!



ALSO: 

- Media exhaustion & anxiety
- Governmental malpractice
- Trillions in revenues sacrificed to a "hoax?" Really?
- Coronavirus & 9/11
- You can't be in a play and watch it at the same time

--Be sure you're subscribed to an authentic Escaping The Cave feed!

Wednesday, January 15, 2020

1/15/20 - Snakes, Survival, & Sabotage: The Need to Feel Alive

Todd discusses collective human boredom in relation to the need for a sense of purpose, struggle, and the addictive rush of just feeling alive. How a dormant survival instinct comes alive during a crisis and how, absent that, we'll manufacture one just to have something to endure, battle, and survive. Also, some some predictions for the 20's. Book those children's parties now!


Also:
  • An evening with Pablo Escobar's "chemist"
  • A naked man kills a fer-de-lance
  • Men, middle age, and the power plant
  • Healthy anxiety vs. fear
  • This election won't matter
  • The tyrant is in the eye of the beholder
  • The Titan Tragedy
  • Podcasters: they're spammy and slimy.
  • ^They call that foreshadowing
* Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't suck.
* Also check out www.escapingthecave.com and www.christophermedia.net
* Fuck Twitter

Sunday, January 12, 2020

1/12/20: The Great Hack & The Great War of The 21st Century


After rotting in my queue for a couple of months, and one too many recommendations, I finally watched The Great Hack on Netflix. This feature-length documentary is worthwhile as a means to understand how our stolen data is not only being sold, but used to exploit the hole in our psychological firewall to manipulate and "trigger" what they call "persuadables" into a desired response or action. Or, non-action. It's essential if you're more than slightly interested in the subject. But...

Wednesday, July 17, 2019

7/17/19: Guidance Is Internal

Chris & Rich sit in on the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. We discuss the achievement, the courage of those undertaking it, and how subsequent generations were cheated of their signature crowning moment in history.



ALSO: 

-Data overload, informational suffocation, and how the compulsive "current events man" is actually less informed.

-Are we "really" evolving?

-Patriotic appreciation vs. copycat anti-Americanism



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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net

Thursday, June 27, 2019

6/27/19: Convulsive Twitch and The Damage Done

Are we representing ourselves accurately via these one dimensional social media avatars? I update the digital detox progress and talk about my over-amplified virtual projection, Toddzilla, destroying meaningful relationships, how the tweet is in the eye of the beholder, missing a funeral for a friend, and maybe a faint glimmer of not-so-Sausage Party Hope.



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*Also check out www.escapingthecave.com and www.christophermedia.net

Friday, June 21, 2019

6/21/19: The Social Media Disease - Distraction Sickness, Electronic Eyes, Thought Shaming

Hi New Zealand! Find yourself logging onto to the LaBrea Twitter Pit or Facebook and suddenly you've lost far more time to it than you intended?  Me too. More on Digitally Enhanced Avatars, Digital Detox as a treatment for a distorted virtual perception/socialization as well as depression, anxiety, cynicism, and generalized anger.

Also,
-The universal nature of both our inner and shared stories
-Propaganda is a story
-What happens when conflicting propagandas collide?
-Social Vengeance Warriors moving beyond "justice" and discrimination into thought control




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*Check out www.christophermedia.net

Monday, June 17, 2019

6/17/19: Pick Your Authoritarian Wisely

Wrapping things up with Chris & Rich, we discuss how public relations is, literally, a euphemism for propaganda, manufacturing opinion, euphemisms and twisting words to fit the propagandist's purpose, informational overload creating political non-entities, and partisanship rotting political, cultural and social institutions.

Also:

-Abandoning basic American principles; Patriotism's vicious backlash
-Social upheaval or an authoritarian police state resulting from the governed revoking their consent
-The Great Utopia is not only impossible, its illusion is held together only by chains
-The ridiculous argument that people are voting "against their own interest"
-Morally self-righteous bigotry and Wokeflakes poking the Crackerbear




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Check out www.christophermedia.net

Friday, May 31, 2019

5/31/19: Propaganda 101: Corrupt Data & Distinguishing Truth From Falsehood

“There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.”  
“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” -Walter Lippmann

Also: The difference between clever & smart and more on the DIKW pyramid and what happens when citizens ignore corrupt data.

- Justin Amash and the criticism from the left.

- Mueller's fumble and the Democrat's ensuing demand that he star in their 2020 reality show/campaign ad.

- To Impeach or not Impeach: just do it or STFU!

- Democrats are politically impotent to stop anything Trump does. How does that "protest vote" look now?



More episodes/subscribe:
My travel archives: www.toddzillaX.com
Also visit: www.christophermedia.net

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Also on Stitcher and Spotify

Thursday, May 23, 2019

5/23/19: The Social Media Disease - Illusion of Knowledge & Democratized Opinion

Technology enables, and social media perpetuates, prioritizing the cheap appearance of knowledge instead of fostering knowledge itself.  Also, how the Internet changes cognition and the abandonment of expertise to the holy opinion: "my ignorance is equal to  your knowledge."

Also: 
-The DIKW pyramid and drowning in data.
-The Id on Parade, the natural state of man, and Leviathan.
-What happens when reasonable voices abandon the public square to mindless mobs of roving avatars?
-When avatars attack
-A classic full-frontal Toddzilla rant salvaged from The Lost Episode about Twitter, and more.






Elias Aboujaode's Virtually You: 
https://www.amazon.com/Virtually-You-Dangerous-Powers-Personality/dp/0393340546

Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: 
https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/0393339750

Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death: 
https://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Business/dp/014303653X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1558613196&sr=1-1


More episodes/subscribe:
My travel archives: www.toddzillaX.com
Also visit: www.christophermedia.net

Subscribe: iTunes and Google Play

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

5/14/19: The Social Media Disease - Virtual Mobs, Conformity, External Truth

Unsophisticated media consumers and the failure to take personal responsibility for our own intellectual maintenance. The surrender of the individual's intellectual autonomy to the conformist mob. How mobs-cells no longer need to leave the couch and are now free to anonymously molest & terrorize the "other" via Twitter, Facebook, and their phones.

Also:
  • Social Media Influencers and how the Media 101 Model applies to them
  • Emerson on independent thought, conformity, and consistency
  • The abandonment of external truth and the path to authoritarianism 




Need more Toddzilla?

1) Seek help.
2) Click the links.
3) Gorge on your way to therapy.

More episodes/subscribe:
My travel archives: www.toddzillaX.com
Also visit: www.christophermedia.net

Subscribe: iTunes and Google Play

Thursday, May 9, 2019

5/9/19: The Elephantitis Pandemic; Winter Is Here

Haidt's elephant and how it relates to our constitutional crisis, rising authoritarianism, and our likely dystopian future. "Evolution didn't end with opposable thumbs."
  • The thin veneer of civilization
  • Self-dehumanization
  • Extremists v. Moderate
  • The Social Media Disease



Need more Toddzilla?

1) Seek help.
2) Click the links.
3) Listen on your way to therapy.

More episodes/subscribe:
My travel archives: www.toddzillaX.com
Also visit: www.christophermedia.net

Subscribe: iTunes and Google Play

Tuesday, May 7, 2019

5/7/19: Political Orphans & Constitutional Hospice

Parties, their power-first representatives and constituents, fundamentalist ideologues, extremists, etc. are failing everyone. Government institutions are melting down and the faith of the governed along with it.

Hey! What could go wrong?!?




Need more Toddzilla?

1) Seek help.
2) Click the links.
33 Listen on your way to therapy.

More episodes/subscribe:
My travel archives: www.toddzillaX.com
Also visit: www.christophermedia.net

Subscribe: iTunes and Google Play

Saturday, May 4, 2019

5/4/19: The Boomerang Effect: "Hold My Beer"

Confused as to why your self-righteous demands aren't being met? Behold! 
  • Narratives, mythology, religion, and how they bind us together
  • Making Enemies of Allies
  • Haidt's Elephant
  • Surrendering to the Grand Design of Ideological Religions
  • Intellectual refinement and allowing yourself (and others) to make mistakes and change your mind
  • The abandonment of External Truth and Reason
  • Totalitarian and authoritarian creep
  • No Hitler references!



Need more Toddzilla?

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3) Listen on your way to therapy.

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Monday, April 29, 2019

Media 101 - It's The People

Escaping The Cave returns! 

Are you wondering why every source of "news" and information sucks? It's because everyone from MSNBC to NPR to FOX to Alex Jones to Social Media "Influencers" operate according to the same for-profit model: drawing eyeballs to their product to sell someone else's.



Need more Toddzilla? 

1) Seek help. 
2) Click below. 
3) Listen on your way to therapy.

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*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net

Saturday, March 24, 2018

3/24/18: The Social Media Disease - Cyber Space Monkeys

First Social Media Disease antibiotic treatment. Starting with an X-Pod flashback to 2014, Todd discusses Cambridge Analytica before turning to more recent effects of our collective addiction to social media on society and how a bilateral abandonment of a commitment to basic common facts--in favor of tasty propaganda--is having a dehumanizing effect and rapidly eroding the social contract. Also: cyber space monkeys, avatars showing off for each other in the Matrix, and the digital-organic hybrid: meme belching cyborgs.




Need more Toddzilla? First, seek help. Second, click the links below. Third, listen on your way to therapy.

I was a guest on two Christopher Media shows this week:

Politics, society, social media: Unregimented - http://christophermedia.net/229-its-still-all-about-trump/

Baseball! And other unfortunate things: Sporgy- http://christophermedia.net/093-03-22-18/


More episodes/subscribe: www.escapingthecave.com
My travel archives: www.toddzillaX.com
Also visit: www.christophermedia.net

Monday, March 12, 2018

3/12/18: Hitchhiking and Philosophy

The final episode of the Friar Chris Series begins with a discussion about the differences between bicycle touring and backpacking then moves on to deeper topics, including (@ 15:45) my experience volunteering on the Gulf Coast in the immediate aftermath of Katrina and the corrosive and corrupting effects of tribalism and dogma in the Disaster Relief Industrial Complex. We then move on to (mostly) explore the fundamental ideas behind why he and I chose hitchhiking and what we learned and experienced while traveling the country as “disposable” vagabonds loitering out on the fringe. 



SPOILER ALERTSausage Party Hope lies within!

More episodes/subscribe: www.escapingthecave.com
My travel archives: www.toddzillaX.com

Cheat Sheet follows:

Monday, March 5, 2018

3/5/18: Friar Chris - Walking Savannah to Seattle

In this politics-free second of three, I sit down again with Chris Dyson for a chat about his walk from Savannah, Georgia to Seattle which included enduring a turbulent breakup on the side of US 287 in northern Colorado, getting lost in rural Wyoming, and anecdotes and observations about some of the fascinating people he met along the way. Deeper topics include self-generated baseless fear, choosing existential isolation in the name of personal security, internal narratives, religion & spirituality, restless escapism, travel and aging, and more.

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