PLGRM

Hank Green spends 20 minutes helpfully unpacking Facebook and our response to it. There’s some YouTubey inside baseball stuff at the beginning, but skip to the 2 minute mark and you’re off to the races. Here are his time stamps:

2:00 So… Facebook is scary
3:56 We’re babies
6:58 Ok, but what is Facebook?
10:43 What should we do?
16:10 Platforms don’t just host!
19:02 Facebook is regulating society
19:40 The end

The thing that spoke to me was his exploration on our feelings of “righteous superiority” as a result of our social media activity. I teach a book professionally that tells me to “consider others as better than ourselves.” What results from social media is almost always the exact opposite. I’m trying to take hope in Green’s point that the technology is new and we’re still babies at this, but it’s hard not to feel discouraged about it.