[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[Josephus]

I've said it before and I'll continue to say it. Orwell got a lot of things right. But the thing he got wrong is it doesn't take an oppressive state to dumb us down. We did that to ourselves voluntarily by watching social media.

100 per cent.
I see it on social media all the time.
A recent example: In my city, Oshawa, the Rotary Club put out a notice on Facebook (and elsewhere) that for the first time in 20 years they won't be doing the annual RibFest. They cite rising costs, and lower sponsorship.  As a lark, I read the comments. As expected, people were blaming the Feds for this. "If Carney wasn't giving our money to other countries, they'd be able to afford this." And of course "It's because of all the Indian immigrants. They don't do ribfests and we don't want to offend them."

Social media is toxic and it's getting worse. Older people, like you and I, CC, haven't grown up with social media and we know to read mainstream newssites. But there's a whole generation who don't. Who get everything from their social media bubble. And i can't see that changing.

[Jacob]

Do you have a sense of how many of those comments were AI bots posting? Because it's not a given they're actual people, IMO.

[crazy canuck]

I've said it before and I'll continue to say it. Orwell got a lot of things right. But the thing he got wrong is it doesn't take an oppressive state to dumb us down. We did that to ourselves voluntarily by watching social media.

100 per cent.
I see it on social media all the time.
A recent example: In my city, Oshawa, the Rotary Club put out a notice on Facebook (and elsewhere) that for the first time in 20 years they won't be doing the annual RibFest. They cite rising costs, and lower sponsorship.  As a lark, I read the comments. As expected, people were blaming the Feds for this. "If Carney wasn't giving our money to other countries, they'd be able to afford this." And of course "It's because of all the Indian immigrants. They don't do ribfests and we don't want to offend them."

Social media is toxic and it's getting worse. Older people, like you and I, CC, haven't grown up with social media and we know to read mainstream newssites. But there's a whole generation who don't. Who get everything from their social media bubble. And i can't see that changing.

Yeah, I think there is a pretty stark divide between those of us who entered adulthood before the internet age, and those who came after. I think it is because you and I have a number of common references that we know to be true from the time before the internet. In the age of the internet those common points of reference do not exist. But I don't think it is because our generation, and those who are older than us, know not to trust social media.  I watched helplessly as my father entered and then embraced the right wing social media pit that was his facebook group.