I'm only partly surprised that there isn't a SFV platform that's called Soma. The name would likely be lost on the vast majority of it's users; it's the drug used to keep people docile in Brave New World. We live in a dystopia, and we're too brain addled to realize it.
"Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I'm so glad I'm a Beta."
Believe it or not, Marxist theorist Guy Debord predicted all of this in his book Society of the Spectacle. He wrote it in 1976 and was one of the first and perhaps only theorists to identify the deeply problematic 'simulation' issue with media. The core idea is that living vicariously through television, movies, and magazines alienates people from each other and nature. He committed suicide in 1994, before the emergence of the modern internet. We can only guess what he would have thought of SFV.
Also to add -watching a full TV show or movie is fine, great even as a social activity. SFV is uniquely solipsistic and alone. It's also not even full stories with lessons, like a kid might get from an episode of Spongebob or Bluey.
"The alienation of the spectator to the profit of the contemplated abject (which is the result of his own unconscious activity) is expressed in the following way: the more he contemplates, the less he lives; the more he accepts recognizing himself in the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own existence and his own desire. The externality of the spectacle in relation to the active man appears in that his own gestures are no longer his but those of another who represents them to him. This is why the spectator does not feel at home anywhere, because the spectacle is everywhere."
In Deboard's view, the fact that the media is primarily used to promote a consumer lifestyle is the problem. He may have liked the democratic aspects of the internet and the person-to-person aspects of it if he had lived to see it.
I agree. SFV is brain poison. I limit to under 15 minutes a day and make sure it stops at least an hour before bed time. I have been reading physical books instead.
"Embrace video"
I'd rather take up smoking, JFC.
I'm only partly surprised that there isn't a SFV platform that's called Soma. The name would likely be lost on the vast majority of it's users; it's the drug used to keep people docile in Brave New World. We live in a dystopia, and we're too brain addled to realize it.
"Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I'm so glad I'm a Beta."
Believe it or not, Marxist theorist Guy Debord predicted all of this in his book Society of the Spectacle. He wrote it in 1976 and was one of the first and perhaps only theorists to identify the deeply problematic 'simulation' issue with media. The core idea is that living vicariously through television, movies, and magazines alienates people from each other and nature. He committed suicide in 1994, before the emergence of the modern internet. We can only guess what he would have thought of SFV.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm
Also to add -watching a full TV show or movie is fine, great even as a social activity. SFV is uniquely solipsistic and alone. It's also not even full stories with lessons, like a kid might get from an episode of Spongebob or Bluey.
Debord would not agree:
"The alienation of the spectator to the profit of the contemplated abject (which is the result of his own unconscious activity) is expressed in the following way: the more he contemplates, the less he lives; the more he accepts recognizing himself in the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own existence and his own desire. The externality of the spectacle in relation to the active man appears in that his own gestures are no longer his but those of another who represents them to him. This is why the spectator does not feel at home anywhere, because the spectacle is everywhere."
In Deboard's view, the fact that the media is primarily used to promote a consumer lifestyle is the problem. He may have liked the democratic aspects of the internet and the person-to-person aspects of it if he had lived to see it.
I agree. SFV is brain poison. I limit to under 15 minutes a day and make sure it stops at least an hour before bed time. I have been reading physical books instead.