YouTube link here. Genuinely don’t know what you’ll see.
So, someone’s internet is borked this week, and so Zoom keeps cutting out and coming back. So what you’ve got is a bunch of chunks of podcast. You’ll have to trust me that you’re not missing anything, it’s all there. So this week it’s videogames, YouTube, and the dangers of news. Enjoy!
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I have to say, I had so many questions after my Mom told me that story. I have no idea where the neighbors got the idea that the Mayor of Boston said that white people aren’t allowed to walk the streets of Boston. For one thing, as Tony said, Boston is one of the whitest major cities in the U.S. And also, the idea that a non-white politician would be making threats to white people just makes no sense. I guess in the wacky world of Florida politics, people of color have immense power and are doing scary things to the poor powerless white folks? (Actually, when I think about it in that way it sounds like a lot of the other false beliefs floating around at the moment where marginalized people get represented as the scary people threatening the mainstream–The War on Christmas!!)
And then the other bizarre thing to me is that my Mom’s neighbors said this to a person who is clearly not white. I mean, if you look at me you could easily think that I’m only white, but that is not the case with my Mom who clearly looks Asian.
Is it that when they know someone well, that person loses their “Otherness” and so becomes white in their eyes? Do they think of Asian people as being white? If so, that doesn’t seem to explain their reaction to Mayor Wu (who, like my Mom, is Chinese-American)? I just don’t know…
Good discussion, btw. I think the point about phones being transportable and making the news available all the time is a good one.
Yeah, the story is pretty bizarre… but the debate question, at least, is still interesting.
It gets into a weird “slippery slope” thing, of course. All the resources we use for our news are tools. It’s not the tools fault if you don’t vet your sources, or spend too much time checking the news, minute to minute. If you want to, you can do that sort of thing on a variety of devices or media sources.
If, however, certain devices and sources greatly facilitate unhealthy behaviors like this, and might even be (at least in part) DESIGNED to illicit these behaviors, whose fault is it?
It’s basically the same thing as cigarettes or alcohol. If someone abuses those things, is it their personal responsibility? Or is the blame and responsibility on the part of the tobacco companies, the alcohol marketing campaigns?
And I suppose, as always, the answer is both, to a degree.