Let's experiment: For one year, news stories will not mention anything about the demographics of the people they describe. E.g., "Last night, a person hit another person on the head, unprovoked." Those immersed in identity politics will be confused and angered by these stories.
Parents are pushing back against smartphones for their children, as described by Olivia Reingold, in "The Parents Saying No to Smartphones in her article at The Free Press: ‘How you help them learn to be present, in a task or with a relationship, is one of the top challenges of our generation. Part of that is going to be saying no.’
Nicholas Kardaras specializes in treating young adults aged 17 to 25 with screen addictions at the Omega Recovery treatment center in Austin, Texas. Kardaras says the first hurdle is often convincing patients they’re actually addicted.The above article links to Ronald Riggio's 2022 article on social contagion: "Social Contagion: How Others Secretly Control Your Behavior: We are often unaware of how others can influence us." Here's an excerpt:
“They don’t realize that they have a problem even though they’re on their device for 18 hours a day and flunking out of school because most addicts don’t see their addiction as a problem when they’re in the middle of it,” he tells me.
Kardaras says his patients are often convinced they’re dealing with other issues, like Tourette syndrome or borderline personality disorder, which they’re introduced to through “psychiatrically unwell influencers” on social media.
He said he knows these patients are actually suffering from “social contagion” instead, because the treatment—forbidding access to cell phones and the internet for a short period of time—is usually the cure, which “shouldn’t really happen with genuine borderline personality disorder or genuine gender dysphoria.”
Paradoxically, Kardaras says that almost all of his young patients were raised by “helicopter parents,” many of whom did their best to keep their kids away from smartphones or heavily monitored their internet use.
“A lot of the young people I’ve worked with will say, ‘I don't feel a sense of control in my life,’ ” he says. “They feel like they’re being smothered and being told what to do all the time. But if they take out their phone, and maybe go on a gaming platform, then they feel like they’re conquering fantasy worlds. They feel a sense of empowerment and control.”
Social contagion is the subtle and sometimes unwitting spread of emotions or behaviors from one individual to others.
Emotional contagion is the spread of emotions through crowds and is the reason why a movie seems funnier if we are in a crowded theater as opposed to watching it alone–our mood is influenced by those laughing around us. The same process would cause a stampeding wave of fear if someone were to suddenly yell “Fire!” in the crowded theater.
A study by Friedman and Riggio (1981) found that emotionally expressive individuals–persons who displayed high instances of nonverbal cues of emotion (primarily facial expressions)–were able to “infect” the emotions/moods of others in the room without any verbal interaction. Subsequent research found that certain individuals are more prone to emotional contagion processes (Doherty, 1997).
Reggio's article did not specifically mention transgender ideology, but he does provide a taxonomy of social contagion includes: "Deliberate Self-Harm. Such as “epidemics” of self-cutting, eating disorders, and suicides." Consider also Abigail Shrier's writings on transgender ideology and social contagion, for which she was viciously attack, even though transgender ideology would clearly be a prime candidate for social contagion.
Excerpt of Megyn Kelly's interview of the three hosts of The Fifth Column Podcast (which I follow and recommend). Two topics here: A) The refusal of some key advocates for social justice" to debate their views publicly, and B) Acknowledgment that several of the participants to this discussion initially fell for the Trump-Russia propaganda.
Jeffrey Sachs:
I had a chat with a longtime friend and actually a classmate of mine from Harvard from decades ago, who was a senior reporter at one of the most important newspapers. I said, "You know what? I think the US did it." And he said, "Of course, the US did it. Who else?" And I said, Hmm, maybe your paper could mention something like that, but just today said "The Russians did it." He said, "Come on, Jeff, come on!" I said, "Are you kidding? Could we have a serious discussion of this?" And he said to me, "You know, the editors not so interested in that."
This is a friend from decades. I said, "You know, when I was young, I turned to your newspaper, because of Watergate, because of the Pentagon Papers. And I loved it. And he said to me, "That paper is so dead and gone, Jeff, you have to understand that."
This a really talented guy. A lead journalist and he's telling me the paper that I love is dead and gone.
If you asked me why, I really cannot figure it out why your paper doesn't want to beat the government over the head when it tells ridiculous stories like "Nord Stream was was was blown up by six people on a boat," like they tried for one day. Okay, come on. This was this was put out by serious media because it was almost a joke from the intelligence agency. Why these media are so in line with official narratives? I don't fully understand. I know all the theories, money, advertising, power and many other things. But the truth is, it's dreadful compared to what it was 40 years ago. Dreadful. And it's gotten a lot worse.
Matt Orfalea offers a new collection of the many stages of the Covid-19 messaging campaign, including a collective roar against “asking questions” or “doing your own research.”
Matt Taibbi follows up with this article: "Looking Back on the Sadism of the Covid-19 Shaming Campaign: As Matt Orfalea's new video shows, Apologies are due for the media campaign against "the unvaccinated," which unveiled open cruelty as public policy strategy." An excerpt:
I got the shot and never advised people not to get vaccinated. I couldn’t imagine an area where I was less qualified to give advice. But this is the point: the same people Orf shows picking up torches and railing with bloodcurdling certainty against “the unvaccinated” are nearly all people who knew as little as me, and whose beliefs about the vaccine were at best secondhand.
You’re disgusted at those who “do their own research”? What do you think journalism is? None of us do lab experiments. The job is always an imperfect effort to figure out which sources are most trustworthy, and because even the most credentialed often screw up, we always need to leave room for consensus proving wrong.
In this case one didn’t need a microbiology degree to recognize something about Covid-19 messaging was off. From flip-flops about masks (an “evolving situation,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said) to unwillingness to be frank in discussing natural immunity or risks to children, even casual news-readers saw confusion in the ranks of senior officials. Later, a series of reversals on key questions — first about whether the vaccine prevented contraction, then about whether it prevented transmission — left even people who wanted to follow official advice unsure of what to do.
I hope Matt’s video survives as a warning. There is still a lot of investigation to be done, in particular about the origins of the pandemic — certain segments of the national audience may still be in for a shock or two there — but as Matt shows, we already see a cautionary tale about faulty information being used to gin up real hatred.