Millenials, the Internet, Occupy's failure, and the problem with the "New New Left"

This is a really interesting diary over at Kos. It's not specifically about Occupy, or Millenials per se though it uses them as its thesis bearer/examples.

I quote the following as particularly resonant (a few words will be *bleeped*):

Quote:

Consider this: When you hear the term multi-tasking, how often is it spoken of glowingly, as an ideal goal to be sought with near-religious fervor, vs. being spoken of as the inherent compromise it actually is? Personally, I've never seen it referred to negatively, as something that was hindering the achievement of any desirable goal. And frankly, that fact makes me think that some amazingly effective cultural brainwashing has occurred. Everyone is brought to believe that "multi-tasking" means something akin to "two for the price of one" rather than being what it really is - 1.5 for the price of two, 2 for the price of 4, or 3 for the price of 9, etc. "We're going to force you to do so many things at once that you won't have the necessary attention or energy left to make effective plans, understand what you're doing, or make any sensible moral judgments about it." It's the new form of making workers too tired to attend labor union meetings: Make them too distracted and intellectually occupied to form coherent subversive thoughts and effectively implement them into action.

and

Quote:

So think about that fact in deciding the relative advantages and disadvantages the "New New Left" is going to bring to the table: Extremely vulnerable to electronic-mediated social conditioning and irrational memes that are aesthetically pleasing and self-vindicating to egos, less capable of compassionate restraint because of the abstraction of relationships, and permitted an ever-diminishing share of time and attention to devote to figuring out what is right and doing it rather than letting some tiny fraction of themselves make political decisions on pure impulse and social cues.

http://ift.tt/1HTuNUX

(And yes, I am aware that the Irony Factor of discussing the failures of social-media/Internet culture in an on-line forum is nose-bleed high...)

I'd expand on this by noting something the article doesn't. Another way that the Internet culture is being used by the elites to control our exposure to information and shape our perceived reality: news, particularly the concept of the "citizen-journalist" and the rise of Hyper-localism.

The corporate controlled Big Media interests are increasingly breaking up traditional media providers such as major national newspapers and seconding matters of reportage to everyday citizens who take a short clip with their cell-phones, upload it to You Tube then blog about it on their Facebook page. This devolution of responsibility to a large mass of mostly untrained, under-equipped and unsophisticated individual actors largely or entirely lacks the insider connections of their media forbears to access the "deep data" from inside power structures, the physical resources to travel wherever the search for information may take them, and/or the legal "clout" to fend off counter-attacks from the very persons whose wrongdoings they uncover.

With such reportage left to the sub-bush league, major media sources, particularly newspapers, are being encouraged to change their formats to super-emphasize the fluff and trivia of local news markets. This is euphemistically called "hyper-localism", and it results in "news reportage" that focuses on such vital issues of the day as the Little League schedule, the price of corn-on-the-cob at the Farmer's Market, and the high-school choir recital.

Trans Pacific Partnership is being negotiated in secret? What's that? Corporations still hiding $100s of billions in taxable income overseas? Who cares? There's gonna be a bingo game at the Legion hall on Friday...

Really good documentary about the devolution of news media:

http://ift.tt/1FD0sch (Hours 3 and 4 are the most relevant)

This is something we all need to keep in mind as mass culture continues its descent into triviality and our attention is stretched out further and further by competition between the latest Kim Kardashian pics and what the frak ever the latest Hollywood social scandal might be...

Edited by Loss Leader:

Edited for Rule 4. Do not post long quotes from copyrighted and otherwise-available material.

via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1HTuLME