Sarah Valentine

I see logic isn’t in your repertoire. Byebye.

Uh no, they wound up like that by having double standards.

This assumes everyone works with the same healthy boundaries to know when they are reasonable.

No, it holds everyone to that same standard and if they don’t meet that standard, they get blocked.

It’s disturbing to me how you can think of no other thing for me to mean than that I want to either murder criminals or let them commit murder. This discussion is over.

I get you: tell yourself they’re “just animals” so you can cage them without a guilty conscious.

Actually, no. Quite the opposite. Treat them like people who have chosen to abrogate their responsibility as humans in order to fulfill animal impulses. I’m definitely not okay with putting people in cages. Irresponsible or not, they’re still people.

It sounds like you’re both missing the core concept here: Freedom is responsibility. Responsibility for one’s self and actions. If someone is refusing to take responsibility for themselves, they are lacking self control and are not free in the first place. They are beholden to animal impulses. You get me? By not taking responsibility for their actions they are disqualifying themselves from freedom regardless of whether they’re physically arrested and incarcerated. We need to stop pretending that everyone just has freedom as an intrinsic quality instead of it being a right to which they are entitled.

The industry is not a monolith. It’s up to individuals and individual organizations to use TV for whatever purpose they choose. People like Mr. Rogers chose to turn television into an instrument to teach children about life and how to live it, about themselves and others, how we’re different and alike. To look at that and still be mad because every other individual or organization that ever went on air didn’t do the same thing is just mind-blowingly out of touch with reality.

Whatever fight you’re looking for, I’m not interested.

Shit, I’m still waiting for you to make a valid point. Get blocked then, I guess.

people had been developing good values for thousands of years, without degrading their attention spans or other mental functions

Okay, so? That doesn’t prove TV doesn’t help with that. We got along wiping our asses with sticks just fine before toilet paper, I’m sure.

in the 75 or so years of its history I really don’t see any evidence that the industry is working toward putting it to any better use.

I literally just explained how, and you agreed with it. Are you sure you’re having the conversation you think you are?

Sounds like a society that exists only because it tramples the rights of others. Nah, fuck that.

That may be true, but TV also brought me Star Trek TNG, Captain Planet, Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, and many others that instilled values in me that are core to who I am today. Let’s not let perfection be the enemy of progress and keep working to put our tools to better use.

Where’s the structural societal incentive to “do so much good”, and why would we need it?

That’s a great question. There are some college courses that can help you answer that. The short answer is “because in terms of the flourishing of an entire species, cooperation trumps competition, but it’s a recent evolution and doesn’t come naturally to everyone”. If we are to flourish and advance instead of strangling ourselves in the crib, we need to stop tolerating the kinds of selfish behaviors that prove detrimental to every society that permits them.

people do not know how to act properly

They do, in communities where rules exist and are enforced. Anonymity may lead some people to feel more emboldened to act out, but when handled properly I believe the vast majority of them will just settle down and either learn how to participate in good faith or find somewhere else to be. The bad behavior patterns we see in some places are, in my opinion, the result of insufficient social norms and enforcement thereof. This is also a situation capitalists will foster, because it drives engagement and inflates content.

Unless we can force people to act with civility - which implies people being fairly conscious of the consequences of their words and actions

So you already understand that this is a problem that only exists in places where bad actors are given license to continue acting out.

Social media has the power to do so much good: connecting people across the globe, enabling the sharing of information across language barriers and in circumvention of government censorship, and more. But because the world is run by greedy power-hungry pigs, we can’t have social media without it being exploited to the furthest extent possible in the name of profit. The mental health of the public is not even a secondary concern - it is completely disregarded in favor of squeezing further growth out of a saturated market for a service that should be both simple and free.

They could let us customize the MCs appearance like in Mass Effect. I just can’t get into a story where I’m playing as a symbol of hypermasculinity.

I don’t have a religion, I have a God. Only Godless people need religion. Shit on religion all you like, but if you try and say the golden rule is that old eye for an eye bullshit I’m just going to lump you in with the rest of the assholes throughout history who justified doing as they please by claiming some divine ideal.

I checked your “history” and it looks like this.

Byebye.

I asked them not to misquote my God to justify their desire for violence. Stuff this melodrama.

That concept is my God.

No it can’t, because moral lessons are for controlling your own behavior, not for forcing onto other people. Do better.

The golden rule is “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Do as you please, just don’t pretend my God said it was okay.