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Category: Mental health

An odd social media meltdown, mental health collapse and the perils of trusting anything on social media

An odd social media meltdown, mental health collapse and the perils of trusting anything on social media

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BethAnn McLaughlin invented @Sciencing_Bi, a Hopi anthropologist who died of COVID-19. Source: #MeTooSTEM founder admits to creating Twitter persona who “died” of COVID-19 | Ars Technica There have been a lot of activist accounts that convinced and persuaded many and became the source of media reports – because unverified social media is among the most reliable sources used by professional media outlets. In this case, the entire social media persona was 100% fake. Now that it is known who did…

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“Doomscrolling Is Slowly Eroding Your Mental Health”

“Doomscrolling Is Slowly Eroding Your Mental Health”

In the midst of an ineptly managed pandemic and ineptly managed civil unrest and economic fiasco people try to make sense of it by reading everything they can. Scrolling through post and news story after news story is called “doomscrolling” and it destroys your mental health. Sadly, much of the bull shit is not from random social media posts but from actual experts who spew nonsense.

“The Market for Depressing Predictions Is Booming”

“The Market for Depressing Predictions Is Booming”

The media focuses on doom and gloom based frequently on rampant speculation. No one “reports” anymore. Instead, they prognosticate and speculate about the future with made up gloom and doom, most of which makes no logical sense. The reason for the gloom and doom is due to an odd bit of psychology. Negative information always takes precedence over positive information – it is a basic survival mechanism to pay attention to bad things. The media know this. And strangely enough, news consumers seek out more bad news to validate their feelings of anxiety.

Climate communications: Professor of Atmospheric Science decries “Promoters of Climate Anxiety”

Climate communications: Professor of Atmospheric Science decries “Promoters of Climate Anxiety”

A professor of atmospheric sciences weighs in on the exaggerated, hyperbolic click-bait inducing media news stories and the negative impact they are having on mental health as many suffer severe climate anxiety. Many such stories are not merely exaggerated but false, which has led to the bizarre situation where a majority of younger voters in the U.S. believe humanity will be extinct within ten years. There is no scientific justification for these beliefs, illustrating how climate communications has gone off the rails.

Journalism: How to turn Thanksgiving into an opportunity for political discussions

Journalism: How to turn Thanksgiving into an opportunity for political discussions

I never knew – according to journalists we are expected to argue about inequality and victimization at the Thanksgiving holiday. Journalists have even prepared a handy guide detailing how to support the journalists’ own agenda! Who knew (besides journalists) that we are supposed to turn Thanksgiving into an opportunity for propaganda messaging?

Updated: Apparently this entire genre is a coordinated pseudo-news event intended to be shared on social media and get around Facebook’s algorithms that try to limit some news article distribution. It’s based on the pseudo-news event approach of creating a fake “us versus them” narrative. It is, in fact, 21st century click-bait and nothing more.

Propaganda method: Recycle old stories that are years out of date-“The American Dream Is Killing Us”

Propaganda method: Recycle old stories that are years out of date-“The American Dream Is Killing Us”

Recycling an old opinion column by an author who focuses on persuading you that life is miserable, not fair and getting worse – is an interesting twist on propaganda. The date – its old -is not presented until a footnote at the very end of the very long column; the column was written during the recovery from The Great Recession, immediately after significant economic turmoil. This is the media’s usual focus on negativity by an author who makes his living on negativity.

School privacy: All your life is belong to us

School privacy: All your life is belong to us

School districts are subscribing to Gaggle, a service that provides total surveillance of students, scanning their email, their Microsoft Office 365 documents, their photos – even their social media accounts. Software analyzes their text and attempts (with a high false positive rate) to determine misbehavior, threatening behavior or suicidal tendencies. Regardless every thing students do is placed under constant 24×7 electronic surveillance.