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Self-segregation: how a personalized world is dividing Americans
Guardian UK ^ | 13 January 2017 | Danah Boyd

Posted on 01/13/2017 11:43:23 AM PST by Lorianne

Most people aren’t looking to self-segregate, but the abundance of choice made possible by technology, alongside military privatization, makes it too easy ___

It’s a fact: while Americans have countless tools with which to connect with one another, we are also watching fragmentation, polarization, and de-diversification happen en masse. The American public is self-segregating, tearing at the social fabric of the country.

Many in the tech world imagined that the internet would connect people in unprecedented ways, allow for divisions to be bridged and wounds to heal – a Kumbaya dream of sorts. Today, those same dreamers find it quite unsettling to watch as the tools that were designed to bring people together are used by people to magnify divisions and undermine social solidarity.

These tools were built in a bubble, and that bubble has burst.

Nowhere is this more acute than with Facebook. Naive as hell, Mark Zuckerberg dreamed he could build the tools that would connect people at unprecedented scale, both domestically and internationally. He still clings to that hope while facing increasing attacks about the role that Facebook is playing in magnifying social divisions. Although critics love to paint him as only motivated by money, he genuinely wants to make the world a better place and sees Facebook as a tool to connect people, not empower them to self-segregate.


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: 2016issues; facebook; psychology
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To: Responsibility2nd

I shall read the article.

I will reread your last paragraph when I am done reading the article


21 posted on 01/13/2017 12:45:42 PM PST by dp0622 (The only thing an upper crust conservative hates more than a liberal is a middle class conservative)
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To: Responsibility2nd

When a soldier is in combat, she must trust her fellow soldiers with her life...

Bro, this article by the guardian is a piece of ####.

They are lamenting the lack of diversity in the military. Who gives a ####?

When a woman can drag a 200 pound guy off the battlefield, then we’re getting somewhere.

As for the lost opportunities because of private sector hiring, bro, it’s the guardian.

This article is the biggest bunch of BS i’ve read in a while.

Diversification first instead of ability first has Destroyed the military.

I’m SICK of the ####ing word diversification.


22 posted on 01/13/2017 12:52:46 PM PST by dp0622 (The only thing an upper crust conservative hates more than a liberal is a middle class conservative)
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To: dp0622

Good luck on that. Let me know if you find the author is on target. Or all over the map.

And lol on the paragraph about “she” being a good soldier...

I suppose if I spent 5 or 10 more minutes - I might find some meaning to this drivel. But then that would be 10 minutes of my life I’d never get back


23 posted on 01/13/2017 12:54:46 PM PST by Responsibility2nd
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To: Responsibility2nd; dp0622

lolol

Look at our post times. EXACTLY the same time.

And I knew you’d reach your conclusion.

lolol


24 posted on 01/13/2017 12:56:28 PM PST by Responsibility2nd
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To: Responsibility2nd

If the program prompts me to click the excerpt button I do (otherwise it won’t post). If not, I usually don’t and instead type in the word SNIP at the end of the excerpt.

However, I think the Guardian is required to be excerpted here ... so I would have gotten that prompt and would have checked the excerpt button. I’d be surprised if it is not on the to-be-excerpted list. I’ll have to wait to post another article from the Guardian to be sure if that is the case.


25 posted on 01/13/2017 1:01:32 PM PST by Lorianne
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To: dp0622
My "factual history" posts are always calm, pithy, and worth the read. :-)

I easily could have gone through every major and minor city, citing all of the of the self imposed/organized segregation of peoples ( The Irish & Italians in Boston, the Canadians in New Hampshire, the Chinese in San Francisco, various sections of different cities that segregated Christian from Jews, also segregating Catholics from Protestants, etc., etc., etc.! ), but kept it pretty simple.

FRmail for you....

26 posted on 01/13/2017 1:05:01 PM PST by nopardons
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To: dp0622

Their idea of “diversity” is that though everyone in a society THINKS ALIKE; thinks they way THEY want everyone to. It’s “ORWELLSPEAK” !


27 posted on 01/13/2017 1:13:55 PM PST by nopardons
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To: Teflonic
It is a GOOD segregation though as it is not based on race or gender or economic circumstances - it is purely ideological!

People regard ideological self-segregation as legitimate so they don't bother acknowledging it, but other forms of segregation occur that people don't notice or want to admit.

If ideological segregations were made in real life by say having each state and it’s residents align with an ideology then those with unworkable ideologies would quickly fail and be identified as something to be eliminated

Or we get states so internally homogenous and so violently opposed to other states that the result is civil war. There's much to be said for the unideological people who aren't so intent on combat with people who think differently from themselves.

... hence the liberal whining.

Well, yes, she's making a liberal complaint, but is it really so different from the conservative complaint that we don't know our neighbors anymore, interact with them, or have much in common with them?

People are always going to self-segregate into groups of similar people. That can't be prevented, and there's something a little totalitarian about suggesting that it should.

Still, it's a noteworthy development that technologies designed to "bring people closer together" only succeed in putting different kinds of people further apart. Probably that was inevitable, but it could be troubling, given how hard it is to keep countries from tearing themselves apart.

28 posted on 01/13/2017 1:32:09 PM PST by x
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To: Lorianne

Progressives are the worst at understanding their own selection bias and confirmation bias.


29 posted on 01/13/2017 2:04:51 PM PST by Vince Ferrer
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To: x
Thanks for your interesting insights. I didn't consider conflict as a result of segregated ideologies, I would think it would just highlight poor ideas.

Ideas and ways of thought that aren't economically or socially viable should be singled out and eliminated because the rest of us are all forced to carry it. That would include those that are irrationally violent as well, those states would become like mad max zones in my state segregation scenario haha.

30 posted on 01/13/2017 2:12:51 PM PST by Teflonic (tt)
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To: Lorianne

That people self segregate based on interests is not new or dangerous. The old joke about the most segregated time in America is Sunday morning didn’t prevent people from working together on Monday.
The greater problem is liberal elitism, that THEY and only they are smart, rational, educated, moral, and those who disagree are stupid, crazy, phobic/haters, uneducated (laden with the presumption that all good people convert when told about liberal values), immoral.
It lets them deny the opposing side any rational basis of an argument while simultaneously smearing them with one of many insults to one’s intelligence, point of view, etc.
And hate speech rules are de facto censorship of non-liberals, since non-liberals are labeled “haters”, so hate speech = anything liberals hate or say is based on hate.
Reinforcing this is the moral dogmatism of liberals attacking anyone who expresses a contrary view or questions their official narrative. Literal liberal hate mobs screaming at people, destroying property, trying to get people fired from work (weaponization of poverty), doxxing of people and harassing one’s relatives. These are fascist tactics, and liberals engage in them because they think they are fighting for a moral cause. That’s how they could call themselves social justice warriors and mean it. That they are following in the steps of the violent mobs of the French Revolution to Chinese Cultural Revolution is unknown to them, which is why their liberal professors didn’t teach them history in the first place.
It is liberals who have said that they are holier and smarter than everyone else, oh, those stupid / evil masses should convert ... and if they don’t, to heck with them. Minimize or demonize works most of the time, until there are so many disaffected that the election went the conservatives’ way.
Now you have people in such an ideological bubble that they can seriously write about being terrified of a working class plumber who obviously either didn’t care about the person’s affiliation enough to work for them in the first place ... while liberals are trying to have everyone who doesn’t meet their ideological checklist ousted from any position of authority, status or prominence.


31 posted on 01/13/2017 2:39:13 PM PST by tbw2
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To: C210N

I would actually recommend Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart” instead.


32 posted on 01/13/2017 2:39:40 PM PST by tbw2
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To: mrmeyer

I used social media to screen job applicants.

If they’re stupid to refrain from being idiots under their real name they were too dumb to work for us.


33 posted on 01/13/2017 2:40:47 PM PST by Rebelbase (ABC/NBC/CBS/MSNBC/PBS/CNN/FOX are THE LEGACY MEDIA)
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To: x

The problem is liberal elites living in tight little enclaves and almost no experience with even middle class people, much less working class people.
They have their values, shop at different stores, eat different foods, and have a political and ethical system that demonizes the middle class’ traditional American and Judeo-Christian values while mocking but officially pitying the working class.


34 posted on 01/13/2017 2:42:28 PM PST by tbw2
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To: Responsibility2nd

I’m easy to figure out :)

You just enticed me to read it to get my blood pressure up!! :)


35 posted on 01/13/2017 8:14:17 PM PST by dp0622 (The only thing an upper crust conservative hates more than a liberal is a middle class conservative)
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To: nopardons

You know your country well :)

There’s still some residual among the Italians and Irish in that area but I would assume not nearly as much anymore.


36 posted on 01/13/2017 8:16:26 PM PST by dp0622 (The only thing an upper crust conservative hates more than a liberal is a middle class conservative)
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To: nopardons

YEP!


37 posted on 01/13/2017 8:16:42 PM PST by dp0622 (The only thing an upper crust conservative hates more than a liberal is a middle class conservative)
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To: Lorianne
"Most people aren’t looking to self-segregate..."

Take a look at the home stands at any high school football game...

38 posted on 01/14/2017 10:07:08 AM PST by TXnMA ( If it ain't broke, for da*ned sure -- don't ask the government to fix it!)
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