David Craig, on October 20th, 2023Friday blog
I’ll just leave this up for one day as it’s not adding a great deal to the sum total of human knowledge.
I’ve just got back from a week on the Côte d’Azur. In the flat I was renting they had Netflix on the TV and my partner started watching a series called “Emily in Paris”.
Wikipedia explains “Emily in Paris follows Emily Cooper, an American from Chicago with a Master’s degree in communications, who moves to Paris for a new job opportunity. She is tasked with bringing an American point of view and social media presence to a venerable French marketing firm. Cultures clash as she adjusts to the challenges of life in Paris while juggling her career, new friendships, and active love life.”
I realise this is just a TV programme and not reality. But I watched a few episodes as I found the behaviour of the main characters interesting. They were all obsessed with posting stuff about their lives on social media and then checking their phones every few minuites to see how many ‘likes’ each post got. Most posts seemed to be of the main person with a group of friends having a wonderful time, grinning like maniacs while whooping/shrieking/screaming with delight about how fantastic and glamorous their clothes, their friends, the places they visit and their lives were.
For this generation social status doesn’t seem to come from educational attainment or professional achievement or profundity of thought or sporting success. Instead social status seems to be mainly based on the number of exciting posts one can make on social media and the number of ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ one can accumulate.
Searching on the Internet, I came across a serious medical study titled: ‘In Search of Likes: Longitudinal Associations Between Adolescents’ Digital Status Seeking and Health-Risk Behaviors’.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29517936/
The abstract starts: This study introduces a new construct-digital status seeking-which reflects a set of behaviors made possible by the social media environment. Digital status seeking is defined as the investment of significant effort into the accumulation of online indicators of peer status and approval. The concurrent validity of this construct was examined, as well as the longitudinal implications of digital status-seeking for adolescents’ engagement in health-risk behaviors.
Research by one company into school-leavers’ most sought-after jobs suggested that becoming a social media influencer, an app developer or a video games developer are now the most popular dream jobs among school leavers.
There is no truth anymore. There is little search for knowledge and self-improvement. It’s only about me-me-me-me-me!
There seems to be a whole new world out there as the younger generation dedicates their lives to the pursuit of ‘likes’ in the Age of Inanity
Category: 
Will the novelty wear off as they mature? I would like to think so but I am not at all sure. The way things are going ‘phones will probably be banned to save on electricity as we go towards Net Zero.
The importance of the collective group identity seems particularly strong with young women. Allegiance, safety and compliance are entry requirements. The like culture maybe being an extension reinforcing compliance like it used to be in the playground.
Its very childish and sadly a lot remain childlike into adulthood. A female world is probably going to prioritise compliance, safety and allegiance whilst rejecting individual achievement. Which sadly leads us to equality of outcome rather than meritocracy and progress / adam smith will have to take a pause for a bit while we work this all through.
It may not add to knowledge but it says everything about the human race. You were discussing the lies we are fed a few days ago. We live a life based on lies rather than reality and this goes back millennia in my view. I was born an atheist and stayed that way. Those who believe in a god will not agree with me. I have tended to believe that religion is fairly harmless, but now I realise the foundation of western culture is based on the lie that there is a god and it means we live in a fantasy world divorced from reality. Now it is changing for non-believers, instead of the lies from the churches, mosques and synagogues, we get lies spread by technology. It is all about control, from control by the religious authorities to control by technology. The knowledge is there, we don’t want to accept it as demonstrated by the belief in a climate crisis
I was watching a Netflix documentary about David Beckham last night, and I have never watched a football match in my life. It covered him being sent off in the world cup and the public reaction. I was astonished at the response which I had not followed before. This was the most important issue at the time. It is no wonder that lies appeal to people. Bread and circuses are all that matter to them.
I look forward to the day their use of mobile phones is restricted in order to save the planet. They’ll go into melt down. It’s all so unbelievably shallow and yet defines their existence.