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?"

Comments

But

[irrational_design]

But, but, but... without social media how can I create a fake version of myself to make all of my "friends" envious so they Like me?

Re:But

[lgw]

Today's young are already crippled by more debt than they can ever pay off in their life times

The US national debt is over $160,000 per taxpayer. Great gift to our kids to go with their college loans. Unfunded liabilities are over $850,000 per taxpayer, so just over a million total. I'm sure today's youth will get right on paying that while I'm in retirement. (And yet, suggest on /. that maybe we could spend a bit less and someone will reply asking "why don't you move to Somalia", as if the extremes were our only choices.)

Another fun stat: the total value of all assets in America is slightly less than the total of various government debts and unfunded liabilities. This will inevitably end in "but though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy," which is actually good news for those under crippling personal debt, as enough inflation fixes that problem.

Re:But

[Pfhorrest]

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.

Additional reading

[sinij]

Many prominent security researchers already spoke out against it. Including Bruce Schneier on his blog and in his recent 'Data and Goliath' book. No affiliation.

Not just social networks

[fustakrakich]

Try living without a credit card and you will be interrogated and detained every time you come back through customs. Absence of information is very suspicious. Obviously we are hiding something.

Smart Phones and Schools

[irrational_design]

This reminds me of a related issue. Apparently every teenager, except for my daughter, has a smart phone. This is assumed to such an extent that the high school teachers regularly incorporate their use into their lessons. At first they don't believe my daughter when they ask her why she isn't participating and she informs them that she doesn't have a phone (a few have actually sent her to the office for lying to them about not having a phone). Once she convinces them that she really doesn't have a phone they regularly berate her for messing up their lesson plans. I've complained to the school authorities, who assure me that a phone is not required, but to no avail. It is astonishing to me that the teachers can't comprehend that a teenager might not have a smart phone.

Re:Smart Phones and Schools

[TodPunk]

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.

Re:Smart Phones and Schools

[Anonymous Coward]

The school here made Facebook mandatory and they add more homework after what I considered bedtime. They also introduced the (mandatory) ability to upload the homework to the teacher. All this totally screwed my ability to filter/block to ensure a good night's sleep. On top of that, they made bringing a laptop to school mandatory as well as a net connection at home. Smartphones aren't used for teaching, but not owning one is justified reason for bullying according to some teachers.

Back when I went to school, we used this thing called books and notebooks were made out of paper. You gave the assignments to the teacher at the start of the lecture and at the end, the teacher wrote the homework on the blackboard. After the teacher left, the homework would not be changed. There were no requirements to bring anything other than pencils and erasers. It was a wonderful setup as you could plan what you would do in the time where you were not at school and it would not suddenly be changed because some teacher decided to give homework for Monday at 7 PM on a Sunday. Using those crude learning tools, I learned enough math and physics and stuff to become an engineer. You know, I actually had to learn math and calculus using pen and paper, not some app where I would be lost without it.

And don't get me started with Common Core. Common Core math seems to be designed to avoid understanding the underlying math.

I don't know who...

[Sir_Eptishous]

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.

a 2,600-word essay in 2016?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

someone wrote a 2,600-word essay in 2016 and expects people to read it? can't he do an infographic?

Stephen Fry == Awesomeness

[kheldan]

If there's any type of person you should listen to, it's this man.

Common Sense

[tom229]

This should be common sense to anyone over the age of 20. Social media does not help you, at least not how it's currently designed. To have one or two American, for-profit, companies have complete power and control over the entire worlds digital social existence is staggeringly irresponsible. I don't think Orwell could even have dreamt up a more efficient tool for control, manipulation, and corruption.

Re:Social networks are a tool

[fishb0ne]

I suppose I should have provided this context to begin with. I use Facebook. None of what Stephen talks about applies to me. I use Facebook to strictly keep in touch with close friends and family. I don't click on ads, I don't click on videos, I don't post pictures of my breakfast, lunch, dinner. I don't have my profile publicly available. I am extremely strict with whom is on my list of friends and what I share. Social media platforms are tools and they can easily be misused. Their misuse is the issue, not their existence.

Re:No mor Frist Psots

[LWATCDR]

And yet I see no reason to not be on facebook after reading it.
I do not know what the problem is. My political views have not been changed by Facebook. I admit it makes me disappointed at the views of some of my friends. Advertisers? Yea look at my feed and you will see I like computers and motorcycles. I really do not mind seeing ads for those things.
HR? Yea I am an old married guy that goes to dinner with my wife.
What do I get out of it? I get to see pictures of my friends kids and I get to keep in touch with friends that live far away from me.
I get on Facebook maybe once or twice a week and post a lot less than that since my life is go to work and go home most of the time.

Re:No mor Frist Psots

[KGIII]

> The importance of "not being seen" so to speak.

I hate to say it but I think it's fast approaching the time where those who make the effort, those who consider the importance of not being seen, actually start to stand out more because of their lack of presence and activities.

I'm not in a position where I particularly give a shit about it. However, I could see it being problematic, down the road, if you appear to be a recluse. Surely, you must be a deviant or hiding something! (I'm guessing that's what people will think.) It is seemingly more and more abnormal for people to not have a web presence of some type, that's identifiable by name.

It's nice to just be able to say, "Screw off." I'm not so sure that most can do that. I read stories about people who claim that they've been turned down for jobs for lack of a social media presence but so far nobody has actually convinced me that this is true. They've not given me any reason to think they're using it as anything other than a crutch to blame their not getting hired. It's not like it's a protected class but none of them have indicated that they were told, directly, that they were not getting the job due to a lack of social media presence. (I'm not big on accepting things without some evidence.)

At some point, the question is going to (likely) be for some people; "Do I put up a bit of fake/light content to at least appear to be active in social media and at least try to maintain some control over what data then gets added?" Your point about the extended network, however invalid it should be, is also very valid. I imagine that we're all within one or two people from knowing some pretty poorly behaved people. Hell, some of us might even *be* the poorly behaved person. I've seen a few people here identify as felons and I'm a recovering drug addict and alcoholic.

You know...

That does make me think... If you didn't like someone then it'd be easy to create a fake social media account for some particularly bad person (though not one too famous) and then insert yourself into a number of their friends lists on multiple sites and through multiple ways - enough to make it appear that there's a connection even though there is none and there may be no such person. Slashdot, for example, enables me to add you to my friends list and there's jack shit you can do about that.

As an aside, and a petty aside at that, I consider it a badge of honor when someone adds me to their foes list for what they felt was a meaningful reason. I can usually tell which post(s) it was that I'll have made that encouraged them to do so. I'm often quite proud of holding those views and I'm quite comfortable holding those views up to scrutiny. If they're unable to find flaws and have to resort to, "Well then I just don't like you!" Then it means I'm on the right track.

I'm not exceptional, by any means, but I am one of those people who holds their views up to inspection and is willing to change their mind when they're presented with new information. I'll even *gasp* admit when I'm mistaken but I'll also so that I'm sorry if I am sorry. So yes, yes it *does* strike me as a badge of honor when I click that notification and see someone's added me to their foe list. I'm not sure what I'm winning but I'm winning something! Oddly, quite a few of 'em end up removing me from their foes list. That was really strange when I first saw that happen but it has happened quite a few times. Sometimes I wonder if they're just not able to understand what I write? I'm too verbose and not very articulate. It's actually something I sort of work on.