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So, uh, I feel like this post straddles the line between Friday Fun Thread, because I'm only like, 49% serious about it, but it's definitely culture war worthy, so, you know. Please remember I'm only partially serious. I'm not going to die on this hill, and gun to my head, I don't really think this happened. But... I think it could have.
Could Steven Crowder's Marriage Have Been Targeted by Silicon Valley?
Steven Crowder has gone the route of many youtubers into, IMHO, algorithm triggered insanity. Youtube content creators have been having mental health struggles for almost as long as it's been a job. I saw one youtuber describe it as having a robot boss that refuses to tell you what they want. And you keep throwing effort into their implacable gaping maw, and wait to see if the algorithm rewards you with income. If it does or doesn't, you have no idea either way what you did to please it. But you know you must.
This may have hit it's high water mark when a mentally ill Youtuber went to shoot up Youtube's offices.
So I see lots of content creators lose their damned mind. Something in the algorithm changes, they can't pay their bills anymore, they can't contact any actual human at Youtube about what to do, and gradually or suddenly they begin acting erratically out of desperation and anxiety. Steven Crowder was no different. His deteriorating mental health, paranoia, and controlling behavior are as plain to see as the sun in the sky.
What was different about Crowder was we know that he was specifically targeted by social media companies.
So, if we take as a given that algorithm chasing drives people insane, and that furthermore Steven Crowder was specifically targeted by Silicon Valley, what does that have to do with his marriage?
Well, on a human level, divorce is a social contagion of sorts. Backtracking and caveats aside, the raw numbers go like this
And when you are talking about social media's influence on divorce
But this is all the background radiation from the no-fault divorce atom bomb going off 50 years ago.
Could Silicon Valley, not unlike how they targeted Crowder's business through the algorithm, having also targeted his marriage? Could they have crafted an Iago algorithm and had it target Crowder and his wife: to sow distrust, resentment, and a belief that there are better options out there? Ten years ago Facebook was caught experimenting on user's emotions by adjusting the algorithm they were exposed to.. It's not like they don't have the technology.
Excuse me for fixating on a pet peeve but- hey this is half for fun anyway right?
Social Contagion... is 100% real and also a phrase that I find deeply annoying. Every cultural norm spreads socially. It just feels like a deepity. Or a Motte and Baily. The Baily is that your behavior wasn't rational or that it is problematic, the Motte is that your behavior was learned from other actors.
To be clear in this instance I agree that a high divorce rate is not a good thing. At the very least, I'd like people to be cultivating mutually beneficial, flourishing relationships that do not merit breaking up.
But I still think "It spreads socially." and "Current policy on this issue can be improved and here is how." should be argued separately.
I'm less interested in litigating what to call the social factors of divorce, than establishing as a data point that people can be influenced to divorce, so I can move onto other data points that assume that. It sounds like we agree on that.
I think so. I think its worth questioning how much of the issue is premature marriage to the wrong person and how much is detrimentally weak commitment to the right person. Depending on your priors, you might think that a given divorce is the result of either failure state or a combination. And they merit different sorts of solutions. Better matchmaking, vs better relationship norms and counseling. I'm in the both camp.
...
This reminds me that as a minister I have something of a responsibility to the couples I marry.
It seems I'm reading your linked articles now.
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