Our brains can’t tell the difference, but that’s not what I said. What I said is that it can be turned off. Social media cyberbullying comes along with entanglements that keep you on the site. For a shock video, I think the suburban dad has a point. To be clear, if someone came up to me and said they had really struggled with what they’d seen in a shock video as a kid and that it was really messing with them, I wouldn’t dismiss that or make fun of them or something. It’s just that the opposite has been my experience and the experience of those who I’m close to.
My friend (we're friends now, and that makes you middle-aged by association):
I hope it didn't seem like I was advancing premises that you never proposed outright. I was derived that premise on my own. I take full ownership of the words that you put in my mouth by the virtue of what you did say being thought-provoking.
And I ask you, if our brains can't tell the difference then what does turning it off actually achieve? If your self esteem or your sheer will to live is broken offline, going online does not solve this problem on its own. I'm speaking unconditionally and not in a way that can be made subject to circumstance.
If you feel ugly, or feel like dying, or feel anything, in a way that resonates with you at the very core of your being (and I know, I know, who's to say a supernatural "core of being" exists right?) then it's a wrap for you. It's going to take about as much effort to redeem yourself as it would if you were physically harmed in the street.
At the end, I don't think that what I'm saying is spectacular for anyone who has basic qualities of self-awareness and empathy (and I'm not saying that you're not one of them) or psychology (of which I am no savant and would even follow your lead to some extent if you have any trails to offer).
The point of contention is a matter of belief—ideologically and morally—and the depths that we're willing to go to scrutinize what gives us pleasure and why. In a way I think that this runs counterintuitive to the notions of "civil liberty" that pervade modern thought and any attempt to distinguish right from wrong on a scale greater than the individual makes the powder-wigged patriot in us quiver in our britches.
Our brains can’t tell the difference, but that’s not what I said. What I said is that it can be turned off. Social media cyberbullying comes along with entanglements that keep you on the site. For a shock video, I think the suburban dad has a point. To be clear, if someone came up to me and said they had really struggled with what they’d seen in a shock video as a kid and that it was really messing with them, I wouldn’t dismiss that or make fun of them or something. It’s just that the opposite has been my experience and the experience of those who I’m close to.