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Stephen Fry Urges Young To Flee 'Dystopian' Social Networks
An anonymous reader writes: English writer, presenter and activist Stephen Fry has urged his fans to abandon social networks, comparing such platforms to 'dystopian' forms of government seen in 1970s sci-fi films such as Logan's Run and Soylent Green. In a 2,600-word essay, the comedian, who had over four million Twitter followers prior to deleting his account in February, also compared the 'surveilled conformity' of social media to the unreal state of society depicted in The Matrix. "Who most wants you to stay on the grid? The advertisers. Your boss. Human Resources. The advertisers. Your parents (irony of ironies -- once they distrusted it, now they need to tag you electronically, share your Facebook photos and message you to death). The advertisers. The government. Your local authority. Your school. Advertisers," he writes. "Well, if you're young and have an ounce of pride, doesn't that list say it all?"
Deleting my account here.
- Anonymous Coward
Social networks are what you make of them. I have not read his essay, but from OP alone it seems to me that there's a distinction to be made here, between "doing it right" and "doing it wrong".
That does raise another reason to avoid social networks: the moralist busybodies looking for something to take offense to so they can feed their own inflated egos. Whether it's an annoying Jesus-freak relative or some hashtag slacktivist, neither are worth interacting with.
Slashdot is a social network.
Social networks are what you make of them. I have not read his essay, ....
Social networks are just noise. It's just people all screaming in the net to have their uninformed two-bit opinions heard and their pathetic little lives recognized.
Social media is just like an addictive drug but worth less.
Stephen Fry is, but his analysis of "social" networks is on the mark.
When things like MySpace first came out, then FB, etc, and I started hearing from people, from institutions, from businesses, schools, everything, that I HAD to have an account on those networks, that struck me as wrong.
Now, ten plus years later, I feel that way even stronger than when FB and the rest first showed up.
When I started seeing access to things like Public Television/Radio stations, etc being FB only I knew something was very wrong.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
If there's any type of person you should listen to, it's this man.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
For the sake of my education, could you explain to me how many people are in your country, how many of those people have high speed internet at home, how many have a phone number of their own (not shared by their household), and how many have an income?
I think you'll find an interesting disparity between the answers to these questions and your assumptions about what is "essential" to "modern life." Often times hype and trends do not equal necessity. Many people don't have a car, long thought to be required for getting a good job, or own a suit, or have a college degree, or any of the other things our silly media outlets proclaim to "know" are necessary from their bubble.
Just two weeks past I met a woman who did not have a debit card. She looked as happy as anyone else working at the company I had to write a check to. Perhaps you should go meet people like them and explain to them why their adult life is missing things essential to the happiness and prosperity you think they don't have.
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Well time is money, one could spend time instead of money. Or is that too much?
Or you could just be a decent person. It doesn't require any money.
That is a good thing. She'll learn independence and self-actualization. We already have plenty of sheep.
Proportional to $60,000 income, the federal debt would be $348,000. That's the sort of ratio that led to the 2008 collapse.
That's better than a median-income Californian buying a median-priced home in California, so I guess that entire (most populous in the country) state is fucked.
Also, the national debt is only about one year of mean income per citizen, so if we were to tax all citizens (why are there so few taxpayers compared to citizens anyway?) -- proportional to their income of course, so as not to burden the already-overburdened -- this would not be an issue at all. Charge every citizen 2% of their income and the debt will go away in one working generation (50 years, i.e. people just starting working when it's implemented would retire just as it was finished). And since we'd do that progressively of course, proportional to their income, only people in the 75th percentile (the mean income is about double the median) would actually pay that 2%, three quarters would pay less (most of them much less), and the slack would be taken up by those who can more than afford it at the very top.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."