The crazy thing about that online child safety hearing
Welcome to the age of Congress as photo op.
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3/2 Colchester, CT | Priam Vineyard | (tickets)
Failure and photo ops
That online child safety hearing was something else.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. (pretty sure that “Mo.” stands for Mook), berated Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg until Zuck apologized to hissing parents for awful things their kids endured. A bunch of other grandstanding Senators piled on too.
It’s all kinda crazy when you consider the underlying reality:
Instead of expecting corporations (i.e. robots programmed to maximize revenue for shareholders) to do the right thing, CONGRESS COULD REGULATE SOCIAL MEDIA. Yo Hawley et al, this is YOUR FAULT too.
For over a decade not a single bill seeking to protect children has reached a full vote in the House or Senate. And same for the other toxic stuff spreading due to these social media platforms (polarization, disinformation, monopolies, thinking Taylor/Travis is a psy-op, etc.).
Instead, the big four tech companies get what they pay for via lobbying, advertising, and campaign contributions: They’ve spent an estimated $250 million to kill regulatory bills. That’s about 1/10th of 1 percent of their combined annual profits. Jeesh, what a bargain!
Nonetheless, paid-off, do-nothing, showboating politicians are somehow out here lecturing other people about being incompetent at their jobs. That’s rich (as is everyone involved here). Warmonger Lindsey Graham even told Zuck he has “blood on his hands,” presumably right before he turned to Daddy Halliburton to ask where it wants to start its next war.
It’s no surprise though. We have entered the age of the photo op Congress. Legislators have ceased trying to pass laws. They’re now just klout chasing like the rest of us, except they don’t do it via fit checks or dance routines; instead, they use “gotcha” hearings where they bully interviewees until they are forced to apologize, resign, or otherwise say, “Uncle!”
That playbook worked perfectly with those college Presidents who somehow couldn’t tell Congresswoman Elise Stefanik genocide is bad. (Their real mistake: Thinking they were in a courtroom when they were actually at a press junket).
But I’ll be damned if I’m gonna start cheerleading for coup supporters like Hawley and Stefanik. They’re not heroes, they’re just political shapeshifters gunning for social media sizzle to cover up their own 🤡-like behavior. For example: The endless “we hate the elites” talk from Hawley (Yale Law School 2006, Stanford University 2002) and Stefanik (Harvard University 2006). We need politicians to start wearing sweatshirts with their college on it just so the doublespeak is crystal clear.
In fact, a bunch of politicians who could regulate the tech industry – but don't – yelling at CEOs for not doing something sums up where we’re at these days:
"Shame on you for not doing the thing that we won't do because you give us so much money."
-Congress
Sadly, politicians seem incapable of addressing the most pressing problems in America, even on the rare occasions when something is urgent, overwhelmingly popular, and agreed upon by both parties. “Members of Congress and their staff have lost the instinct and ability to legislate,” according to Steven Pearlstein, Professor of Public Affairs at George Mason University.
Over the past 30 years, the processes and norms that once allowed Congress to discover what the country wanted and needed have so badly eroded that few members can remember how it’s done. Failure has become the expected and accepted outcome. The instinct to turn any issue into a partisan battle, the lack of urgency, the fixation with and fear of social media, the refusal to accept even modest political risk, the reluctance to engage in serious debate and compromise, and the almost complete abdication of power to party leaders — all of these have become deeply ingrained in the life and culture of the Capitol. And it is all made worse by a self-imposed schedule that has members in Washington only three days a week, 30 weeks a year.
They give us angry dog and pony shows in public hearings, while they cash donation checks from Big Tech in private. What we really need is a hearing where Congressmen and Senators are interrogated about why they're incapable of accomplishing anything other than all this lame political kabuki theater.
Paid-off, do-nothing, showboating politicians are somehow out here lecturing other people about being incompetent at their jobs.
Back to the tech companies: What about free speech? Aren’t these just neutral “platforms.” Nick Penniman, co-founder of Issue One, argues, “Social media companies are media companies. Congress should start treating them that way.”
They’re user-content-oriented global media companies that have sucked the blood out of traditional media companies and left democracy reeling and our kids depressed. Facebook’s motto of “move fast and break things” has become the ethos of many in Silicon Valley. Now it’s time to slow down and fix things.
But we know from the last 15 years of social media dodginess that they won’t do it voluntarily. Just like other industries, they’ll have to be forced by laws and regulators to be more responsible.
America’s newspapers didn’t complain that they couldn’t grow because they’d have to hire more fact checkers and editors. They assumed that editorial integrity was one of the many things they would have to expand as they grew.
Move fast and break things? Congrats tech overlords, ya moved fast and broke our minds, kids, and democracy.
And btw, it’s hilarious how we keep acting like social media is only poisoning the kids. BREAKING: The adults ain’t doing so great, either.
The truth is we’ve all been swallowed up by social media. Even these politicians who are yelling at tech execs are just seeking viral clips for themselves. They scream about social media while trying to surf its waves.
And sure, they managed to get sweaty Zuck to give a non-apology apology (i.e. one that’s all “I’m sorry that happened to you, but I’m not actually taking responsibility for it”). But let’s get real. Zuck would probably set himself on fire like one of those Buddhist monks as long as this keeps happening:
Quickies
🎯 Been working out on the elliptical trainer. My “…”s are almost perfect now.
🎯 I wanna get a vanity license plate that reads, “KTHXBYE.”
🎯 Few things sadder than when an Android user chimes into the group chat with a message that reads, "Loved an image." It’s the text message version of lacking opposable thumbs.
🎯 Our culture really seems to struggle with the idea that just because something is popular does not mean it is great art.
🎯 Kafka's "Metamorphosis," but it's a guy who wakes up one morning and realizes his wife is the algorithm.
🎯 Every time you pull out your phone to film something, you're spending a bit of the present in exchange for an imaginary future (i.e. watching the video) that usually never comes.
🎯 1) Taylor Swift 2) The Super Bowl 3) Donald Trump = Of course there will be dumb posts/articles/theories tying them all together. It's the unification theory of clicks. Software didn't eat the world. The National Enquirer did.
🎯 "Psy op" is "intersectional" for NASCAR fans.
🎯 Kid gave me an "OK Boomer" and I wanna tell 'em I'm actually Gen X but I think that's just gonna come off like a short dude who insists, "Napoleon was actually average height for his era."
🎯 DEFINITELY A STONER WHO CAME UP WITH THIS IDEA:
Comedy
🃏 I post clips of my standup (and more) at Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and YouTube.
🎟️ NYC SHOWS
EVERY TUESDAY | Hot Soup @ Comedy Cellar (FBP)
EVERY WEDNESDAY | Good Eggs @ NY Comedy Club (EV) – discount code: SCRAMBLED
5-spotted
🗯️ So you want to be an artist. Do you have to start a TikTok?
Self-promotion sucks. It is actually very boring and not that fun to produce TikTok videos or to learn email marketing for this purpose. Hardly anyone wants to “build a platform;” we want to just have one. This is what people sign up for now when they go for the American dream — working for yourself and making money doing what you love. The labor of self-promotion or platform-building or audience-growing or whatever our tech overlords want us to call it is uncomfortable; it is by no means guaranteed to be effective; and it is inescapable unless you are very, very lucky.
🗯️ Peter D. Kaufman on how we undervalue things without price tags:
We tend to take every precaution to safeguard our material possessions because we know what they cost. But at the same time we neglect things which are much more precious because they don’t come with price tags attached: The real value of things like our eyesight or relationships or freedom can be hidden to us, because money is not changing hands.
🗯️ Why are some mushrooms magic?
So imagine a snail visits a pile of ground sloth dung back in the Miocene to enjoy a meal of Psilocybe. Its meal includes not just mushroom tissue, but a dose of psilocybin. The snail experiences a gastropod version of a shroom trip. The tripping snail wanders off, traveling a longer distance than it otherwise would with a clear mind. Inside its gut are hard fungal spores that it could not digest. The snail then releases the spores in its own droppings. Thus a mushroom might use snails to expand its range, allowing its species to endure for millions of years.
🗯️ The Ethicist at the NY Times: I Just Learned My Son Is a Webcam Model. Should I Be Troubled?
Pretty much all cultures — and subcultures — have ideas about modesty, privacy and discretion, and so understandings about the contexts where erotic display or simply nudity is appropriate. I’m reminded of the old (and doubtless apocryphal) story told about a group of Oxford dons who were sunbathing nude along a sheltered bend of the River Cherwell reserved for the purpose when a boat filled with women suddenly appeared. All the dons scrambled to drape towels around their waists, save for one, who draped his around his head. When his colleagues asked why, he explained, “I don’t know about you gentlemen, but at Oxford I am known by my face.”
🗯️ Redesigning Cormac McCarthy’s Brutal ‘Blood Meridian.’ [via JK]
I’ll walk you through my design process. I have been doing a lot of Flickr digging lately, finding old photos, textures, type, handwriting, etc to add to my resources folder. I love having a digital archive of things to pull from, my own little toolbox of assets that may one day come in handy. I started out with the photo below, an intense photo of what I believe are a herd of Ankole, a type of long-horned cattle.
Thanks for reading. I appreciate you!
-Matt