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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2729 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for February 21, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

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  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Am I wrong about the average age here? The joke was that I was afraid this kid would watch a movie and suddenly flip his entire worldview, a premise that was mocked mercilessly when I was growing up, because "everyone knows" that nobody is influenced by just one thing, everything is a confluence of the innumerable stories everyone hears all day every day. That doesn't mean media doesn't have an influence on people, of course it does! But nobody becomes a nihilist after watching fight club one time, just like nobody becomes a libertarian after reading atlas shrugged and nobody becomes a mass shooter after playing doom - there are a thousand other stops along the way there, and if it looks like an immediate turn that is because prior stories predisposed the person to absorb that influence.

I chose the words "a single piece of media reshaped someone's entire worldview." very carefully, to avoid this exact tangent.

So the issue is that inducing anything less than an immediate and total crisis of faith is not enough for the purposes of your joke?

I chose the words "a single piece of media reshaped someone's entire worldview." very carefully, to avoid this exact tangent.

Not carefully enough, it seems, they could use a timeline descriptor since from what I read the pushback you get (mine included) seems to be that a single piece of media can absolutely [re]shape someone's entire worldview, just not immediately.

This seems like a semantic quibble at its core - you yourself admit in your reply "that there are a thousand other stops along the way", I'm not sure what your objection is when people point out that a single piece of media can indeed be the last stop, the straw that breaks the camel's back (which as written would presumably qualify for the purposes of your joke?). I'm not even sure we disagree at all. Maybe the argument is too big brained for me and I embody everything that's wrong with the Motte nowadays.

Yes, it is a semantic quibble.

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