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sunderstands why most people are on social media at all the vast majority of people who use social media follow people they know either from real life or from elsewhere on the web they follow artists musicians comedians they re on social media to chat with people they find funny or interesting while people often talk about politics the goal is not always political persuasion it s keeping their friends informed it s organizing for a demonstration it s explaining an esoteric subject sometimes it s just venting frustration the idea that the main function of being on social media is to influence the national debate is honestly delusional as a general rule if a corporation makes a claim that something simply must be so and that claim just so happens to be in the corporation s financial interest you should not give it the benefit of the doubt the idea that a privately run web service can be let alone actually is the public square is one of those claims it s an excuse to cut back on moderation it s an advertisement to investors it allows journalists to replace actual reporting with descriptions of twitter beefs it allows influencers to convince donors that they are doing significant political activism another common complaint about being on bluesky or blocking right wingers is how will you understand what they think if you don t see their posts this question only makes sense if social media is your sole means of contact with the world the idea that x or even social media in total is the best way to understand the world and participate in politics is just marketing by these companies often repeated by people who benefit from treating the claim as true it s a belief that often makes the entire experience of being on social media worse imagine an actual public square has just opened a physical space nearby people start showing up milling around you see a relative some friends an old coworker and you go say hi and chat people start noticing authors musicians and actors that they like and stop by to see what they re saying people start forming into groups based on interest the film buffs are hanging out over there a bunch of people are sharing their gardening tips down that way tons of different mini communities their members flitting from group to group some people have set up stands showcasing their art for sale or their crochet patterns or their custom jewelry some big brands have set up booths passing out coupons and flyers for their new products most people ignore them or only stop by to see if there s some discount before they go shopping this is how most people use social media this is what most people want from social media this is what facebook and twitter were at the beginning most people are there to be social a small number are there to do business mostly brands and celebrities there are also some there to do politics maybe fundraising for green peace or registering people for the libertarians or organizing a march on city hall at some point the conventional wisdom among the tech bros press and politicians changed two beliefs became prevalent 1 the main purpose of social media is not to be social but to do politics 2 doing politics primarily means expressing your beliefs as loudly as possible in as many places as possible the former while widely believed and treated as if it were true is nonsense it is a self serving lie for the tech bros and dovetails well with the second belief the best way to win at politics is to spend as much time as possible on my platform in addition to being factually wrong these beliefs have a direct negative impact on the majority of the sites users who are there to be social picture the dnd nerds hanging out in our imaginary public square dnd guy 1 i usually play a magic user but i m going to be a thief in the next campaign rando 1 the real thief is in the white house dnd guy 2 huh anyway yeah you ll have a lot of fun that class gets tons of bonus actions rando 2 the only action we should worry about is a general strike this type of behavior has become endemic on facebook and x and it is annoying as hell to anyone on social media trying to be social the immediate impetus for writing this was the latest crashout from mark cuban about bluesky being an echo chamber that will fail because they aren t nice enough to mark cuban he asked how the site could survive with only one demographic ostensibly that one demographic is everyone left of center so nearly half the country the problem is that cuban is on bluesky to do politics not to be social he is there primarily to convince people to support his political positions he believes like many of his class that the purpose of social media is for him and those like him to steer public discourse people are blocking him in large numbers because they find him annoying and banal most of the big conservative centrist accounts that get blocked and lambasted are the same they believe the purpose of a social media site is to do politics and they believe that doing politics means repeating your position over and over most of the criticisms of bluesky start with the assumption that the goal is to be x but liberal or without musk the goal for most users is to be twitter or facebook when they were actually fun to have a social media site where you share your hobbies see cool art chat with interesting folk from around the world mark cuban could have a great time on bluesky if he mostly posted about the mavericks shared photos of his pets or talked to people just for the joy of having a conversation bluesky s strong block feature and community moderation tools along with the primary feed for most users being a simple chronological list of all posts by people you follow makes it extremely easy to avoid the people who are there primarily to do politics at you which makes those people very mad does this limit the total possible growth for bluesky probably the people who only use social media to do politics at the expense of the people trying to be social are finding it tough to dig their roots in maybe hopefully they ll realize this isn t the place for that posted by matt kahn at 2 13 pm 1 comment email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest friday january 21 2022 50 shades of grey an allegorical political reading fifty shades of grey is a marxist allegory covering the development of the protagonist s class consciousness while tearing down one by one all non revolutionary forms or resistance to capitalism generally and in america particularly let s start by looking at the names of our two main characters anastasia steele and christian grey anastasia is her given name which is to say the name her parents chose they gave her the name of a famous royal a class to which they do not and could not ever belong but nevertheless this is how they choose to think of themselves yet the family name is steele the associations between steel and infrastructure and manufacturing are obvious she actually works at a hardware store and we cannot forget that the labor movement in the united states grew in large part from the pittsburgh steel workers her name itself is an example of class unconsciousness identifying with a class to which she cannot belong further it is a class which is not supposed to exist in america and the particular royal was part of the family overthrown in the communist revolution likewise christian s given name presents a false front obvious connections to the protestant work ethic and the prosperity gospel aside christianity promises a moral system or some spiritual righteousness but his family name is grey shades of grey refers to moral ambiguity not certainty grey is in fact unconcerned with morality christian or otherwise and of course the 50 shades is a pun on 50 states grey is the personification of american capitalism there is also some clever mirroring in the names besides the obvious steel grey pun grey is the traditionally british spelling which if we consider america s heritage as a royal colony would mirror his family name with her given name the plot itself begins with anastasia meeting christian grey for an interview on behalf of her university newspaper this is the first of a long line of examples of non revolutionary means failing to prevent the exploitation of the workers neither education nor journalism saved her grey convinces her to sign a contract to be his submissive sex partner this contract dictates what she can eat where she can go etc etc this may be so on the nose as to not need reiterating but the capitalist convinces the worker to enter a relationship in which the worker is physically and emotionally degraded and has their basic life decisions curtailed throughout the continuing degradation and domination grey insists that this is love and the contract makes them equal partners right over time anastasia begins to doubt this parity and christian co opts means of non revolutionary dissent after the aforementioned failure of education and journalism he woos her by buying her a first edition thomas hardy novel thus co opting art christian breaks the contract without penalty showing the futility of law perhaps the most dense example of this is the dom jeans blue jeans invented by a jewish immigrant for physical laborers during the california gold rush became popular in counter culture and youth movements in the post war era as with much counter culture they were appropriated as a fashion commodity eventually becoming banal and innocuous becoming mom jeans something suburban soccer moms would wear and thence dom jeans even if it takes time counter culture just becomes another commodity for the capitalist class anastasia grows more and more uncomfortable with the relationship the novel ends with the two at an expensive and exclusive restaurant all food in the restaurant is made from locally foraged flora food that was grown on public land with no effort or support from the restaurant is being harvested and commodified a public and private sphere cannot coexist without the latter ransacking the former it is at this meal that anastasia breaks up with christian in the allegory of the sexual relationship she realizes that her devotion was unreciprocated and misplaced their interests were fundamentally different she has developed class consciousness if you find yourself taking the above seriously please direct all comments to e l james posted by matt kahn at 1 39 pm 17 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels 50 shades of grey anastasia steele christian grey class critical theory criticism literature marxism novel saturday july 31 2021 coleman cox hates you and other observations at a recent trip to a thrift store i came across straight talk from coleman cox a 1928 collection of the witty sayings of a coolidge era sales manager though advertising itself as containing more than nine hundred thoughts it really just contains nine hundred variations on you deserve to be poor and get back in the kitchen woman i m exaggerating a bit some of his thoughts are just basic observations that he thinks are funny for some unfathomable reason consider the very first entry in the book a lot of jokes don t age well because the references become obscure or sensibilities change but this joke fails wholly on its merits and the scope of that failure is undiminished over nearly a century it also fails as a useful or even interesting observation some business partners don t get along i want to provide a full unedited page to give you a good sense of how little this man has to say and how proud he seems to be of saying it my first inclination would be to describe cox as the poor man s h l mencken but cox hates the poor his firm belief that wordplay makes wisdom is so unshakeable that he doesn t even try to make sense half the time when he says traffic officers and not employers are the ones who caution young men against speeding up and trying to go ahead of every one who is he complaining about is he reprimanding the employers does he think the young men should behave this way in business and what the hell is his problem in the last entry on the page is he complaining about employees being busy does he distrust the phrase busy as a bee i really can t suss out what he s trying to convey here if you re wondering how this got past an editor you might be shocked to find out there wasn t one coleman s success as a writer came though self publishing small booklets that he would sell to business owners who would then distribute them to their employees as the blurb on the back of the hardcover puts it great executives have distributed millions of mr cox s booklets of advice because they realized these friendly suggestions would help their employees work better and live better fun stuff if you re wondering does coleman cox have anecdotes that only a man completely lacking in imagination could find profound then you re in luck i ve found that people who greatly overestimate their own intelligence or perceptiveness tend to drastically underestimate the same qualities in others does he believe that the meaning is so cleverly conveyed that the reader must go back to grasp it does he believe repeating this common idea about perseverance will so rock his audience that they must pause and read it again once the shock has worn off perhaps i m being mean here after all he s acknowledging that people who get thrown down can come back stronger so maybe that s a sign of empathy well fuck you too coleman and in case anyone noticing the dialect in the above was wondering yes there are racist entries but they re gross in a way that s not funny or interesting so i m not excerpting them here his misogyny gets personally revealing though the first question that comes to my mind is why is cox going to these cabarets he finds so murder inducing i m also not sure who he s planning on murdering in this scenario there s something fascinating in a person who is so lacking in self awareness and empathy everything bad that happens to people is their own damn fault and how dare my employees cause me to lose money this book is at its heart marginalia from the side of the roaring twenties generally omitted when discussing american literature when we talk about the 1920s the focus is almost exclusively on the authors of lost generation algonquin round table or of those who shared similar cultural values but the flipside of the jazz and luxury was the gross exploitation that succeeded the progressive era and the broad adoption of social darwinism and laissez faire by industry and government in this decade it s likely that the number of americans who read coleman cox in 1928 is significantly larger than of those who read ernest hemingway or dorothy parker despite his now complete obscurity well he has no one to blame but himself posted by matt kahn at 2 52 pm 7 comments email this 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