fleddr

To simplify the reasoning about this dynamic, I call it the duck lip effect.

At what point did "society" ask for duck lips? Where exactly did specifically men ask for it and actively select for it? If anything, they widely reject it. The expectation for duck lips does not exist, it was spontaneously fabricated by female influencers and that puts the idea and "expectation" in young girls' heads.

In other words, for as a long as we richly reward female influencers setting exactly the wrong example and being awful role models, this carries on.

Yes, I was wrong on all accounts. And even though locals will readily confirm and admit to these cultural issues and are equally frustrated by it, it's best to pretend they don't exist.

Because I said it. And obviously my only possible agenda can be rationalize a sense of superiority, it can't possibly because I care.

Recently an organization representing war news reporters was distressed by the rise in female reporters getting killed, 6 more than the year before.

The fact that 85% of killed reporters were men...ah, well.

Men are not doing alright. And our response to it is nothing at all or...do better.

It's amazing how easily you skim over the behavior that women don't marry down.

It's always been a selfish behavior void of love, but I suppose that one can find rationalization in needing stability and protection if one is to start a family.

Now, however, as women match earnings or even out-earn the typical guy, they still won't marry down. Which creates selection criteria of an "impossible man". Acceptably attractive, stable high earner, emotionally advanced (yeah, right).

Meanwhile, men do marry down. And none have an ever increasing list of demands. Just noticing the asymmetry here.

Anyway, men won't emotionally "improve" because that is a strictly female value assessment. We're not broken, we're just different. My girlfriend gives me a daily update of all the ups and downs and gossips in her dealing with colleagues at work. I do not give a shit about any of it, but will pretend to care.

Neither of us are broken, we're different. And that is fine.

Exactly. So boys are hurting and the conclusion is: do better. We'll just add that to the ever growing list that defines Mr Perfect.

Imagine that in this particular article we'd say to teen girls: your mental health issues are imagined, just be sane and normal. Do better.

Wildly unacceptable, but perfectly normal to talk about men that way.

Cherry-picked examples.

I could easily do the same and claim that men are undervalued. They are sacrificed in wars, make up the main portion of the homeless and they do the hardest and dirtiest work to provide the modern infrastructure of the world.

They have no support structure, can't fail and are constantly pissed on in culture and media.

Neither of us is telling the whole story.

"But as far as I can tell, there is no causal evidence between femaleness and social media addiction or suicidal ideation"

And yet the charts look wildly different.

"We" as in a total society or specifically as men do not stack any of these specific expectations on young girls. Young girls do this to each other. The influencers are girls and followed by girls. Instagram is girl territory and all the social gossip around it is girls.

They're not trying to win boys' approval, instead girls' approval.

Social ranking amidst young girls is natural behavior, what changed is that the limits of the physical world that kept it in check were removed, and now we see the fly-wheel effect.

This is the Chinese approach and this is one of few things where I'm not creeped out by it. Enforced max screen time and content is forcefully educational, fun, age-appropriate.

Nobody likes this but the consequences of not taking action are huge.

I get what you're saying but we shouldn't escalate this into a type of prison gang situation, there's significant middle ground.

When the research is becoming clear that these dynamics and these years of a teen life cause so much harm, we can't be so fatalistic to say that giving in is mandatory.

This feels very similar to a manager with late night emails. A type of hostage situation.

I would add that beyond the effects of it crushing one's self-image, it also messes with your world view. Social media presents the world as nothing but doom and gloom whilst in reality it's not that bad.

"I believe that using social media could actually have greater benefits for me, such as being able to record Tiktok dances with my friends"

It was believable until the agenda was revealed :)

See, dinosaur me would insist that young girls should enjoy dancing together. Without a camera and without sharing this with the entire world. I do not even want to think about the legions of creepy old men watching that.

I'm childless so it may come across as arrogant to give any advise.

One thing I learned from observing the teenagers of my friends is that they don't want this either. We're adults and talking and a bunch of kids sit in a row on the couch, playing with their iPads. For hours on end.

And yet they hear everything you say. They're paying attention. And when you show a genuine interest them just by asking a few question, the iPad is quickly ignored.

That's a sign of hope. They want to engage and be engaged in something more meaningful. The iPad fills a void. This artificial divide of the situation between adults and children does not help. Sending them outside does not help either because nobody else is outside.

Engage with them. They have a bunch of free time on their hands but no meaning to fill it with. You can't stop the draw to the device unless that time is filled with things that makes them forget the device. It doesn't take much. A conversation, a board game, a small game of sports in the park, whatever possible for you.

I would admit though that the situation for girls is not this simple. They will be dragged into a games of thrones style social battle of self-image/worth.

I consider digitization in general to be destroying mental health. Social media, delivery services, dating using an app, virtual working, the list goes on. They create a touchless society where we no longer connect with real people and barely interact with the physical world.

The price of this convenience is very high. Surely this can't be good for us.

The difference between girls and boys are interesting. From my casual experience, I have a lot of friends with teenage boys, a distinct pattern can be seen.

Almost all of them are gamers. That's their main digital channel. Many don't give a shit about social media and some don't even have any account at all. Nothing public anyway, just some basic chat account. As they game, they can at times be toxic and competitive, but that's "part of the game", they don't take it very serious at all.

Likewise, none of them seem to care much about stacking each other by looks, the typical male trait of physical strength, or wealth. Surely, some of this is always present in the background, but it's all in a lax "it is what it is" vibe. Their main issue/challenge seems to be gaming addiction and how this comes at the expense of other aspects of their lives (sleep, school performance, physical exercise, socializing with girls).

Also noteworthy: not politicized. Most don't seem to have much of an opinion on anything. Pure indifference.

The teenage girls are so radically different. They don't game, they're literally self-imaging non-stop. Constantly recording themselves, watching influencer videos, gossiping on chat, stacking and ranking each other. Unlike a gaming addiction (which is fixable), their success or failure is existential.

I would imagine that both tendencies between both and girls have always been there, it's just that they were naturally constrained by the physical world. Social media made it limitless.

Let's admit that HN's culture is that many of us are confidentially wrong, which we cover up with impressive technical jargon. As such, any wrong answer in this AI is in fact correct.

I'm from the Netherlands, one of the most light-polluted areas on the planet and had my first proper dark night only in my 30s.

It was in South Africa. We were driving with a roofed jeep on some plains in search of nocturnal wildlife. Then, the driver stopped and told us to get out. It was freezing and he prepared hot chocolate from the back of the car.

He killed his search light and it got so dark that we could not see our own hands. And then we looked up.

Holy shit. I'm not a melodramatic person but this was the first time in my life that I experienced living on a planet, connected to something far greater. I mean, I knew this to be the case, but I never experienced it. Because I normally live under the clouds and a yellow haze.

I experienced it once more in Colombia where I could see the Milky Way with the naked eye.

It's sad that an experience that should be a given has become so rare. I'm especially frustrated with all the lights that have no purpose. Nobody goes to admire the architecture of your church at 3AM at night. Nor do you have to decorate your backyard so excessively with obnoxious lights whilst you are sleeping.

On Twitter recently a Nigerian business man shared some of his frustrations which I found insightful.

He started a bar. Yet later discovered that his business partner was reselling booze via the back door, pocketing this money for himself. Next, the business man started a transport business. Every driver he hired mysteriously got "robbed", which means they resold the fuel. They are just anecdotes, but if widespread, it must be near impossible to get any development going. It's constantly sabotaged by your peers.

On a TV program, I saw a Nigerian woman complaining how the city fails to maintain drinking water infrastructure, specifically pointing to a broken pipe. It was in this broken state for 13 years and as a result she had to walk an additional 30 mins for her water, every day. It's bad that government is this careless but looking at the broken pipe, I'd say its 1 hour of work to repair for a pro. So maybe crowd fund that pro with some locals and get it done?

One of my friends has a construction company that infrequently does some jobs in Africa. He really wants to do things right so exclusively hires local people and offers them double the usual pay. Guess what happens? They don't show up the next day. Literally living life by the day.

I personally visited Madagascar a few times. All over the country you see structures crumbling. You can tell somebody had the right idea and built something of value, but not even minor cheap repairs are carried out. So it's all falling apart from pure indifference.

Our guide, a local, explained how there was a tree planting project where people are literally paid per tree. Most planted a handful and went home.

I tried to help out in ecotourism by explaining how they're drastically undercharging. Make little booklets and sell them. Charge 5 times more for your drinks, they'd still be cheap by western standards.

Nobody cared. It's just baffling, this widespread apathy. Simple and effortless opportunities presented on a silver platter, and it's just met with complete indifference.

There's different ways to frame the issue. You could say they underperform by the standards of global capitalism. Another way to look at it is that some/many reject performance culture altogether.

For sure there are also other factors at play, historical, geopolitical, but a culture that "doesn't even try" is quite self-defeating.

Brutal, but I couldn't agree more.

Sure, by exception it's possible for one to have a deep emotional connection to a piece of art or the artist, but in general I don't think anybody is curious at all beyond it looking good/bad.

As for critique on society by means of art, we're past the age where any of it would be original or shocking. Any critique you might have we can read about on social media every day. It's the norm, nothing out of the ordinary. It's so normalized that even the threat of a total societal collapse fails to impress.

I once found myself in a modern art museum (against my will). We entered a giant empty room with 3 beach chairs in the far corner. In the next room was a wrangled and damaged piece of steel sitting on the floor. In both cases the tour guide questioned us as to what we believe the meaning of these works are.

So now you have a bunch of adults looking at garbage yet complying with the social pressure to pretend that any of this is sane or interesting. You'll fake the genuinely curious but puzzled face, comply with the minimum thinking time to signal that you did some deep soul searching, and make the random guess. Which is correct, because art is whatever it means to YOU.

We were looking at a mirror all along. Life-changing, really. As in, never again.

"In light of both attacks, we notify the maintainers of each affected dataset and recommended several low-overhead defenses."

Such a disappointing ending.

I would think yes. A curious mind plus endless opportunities to distract and entertain yourself creates the night owl. Being introverted may also contribute to the behavior.

It's hard to say who is truly a night owl and for who it's a lifestyle.

I've always considered myself to be a night owl. I struggle to go to bed on time. Yet on some of my lengthy remote travels I learned it's all bullshit.

There, the sun sets at 6PM. There's little artificial light, and nothing much to do, so some 2 hours after dinner people tend to go to bed. So for weeks I went to bed around 9pm and wake up super fresh at 5-6am like some crazy morning person.

Just like that. Zero issues. So no, I'm not a night owl, it's distractions that make me not want to go to bed, it's not that I can't.

I'm not confused, your definition of censorship is just weird and impractical.

Yes, I can write what I want in my personal word editor but quite obviously that's not the topic at hand in a discussion on social networks.

The paywall is a writer option, indeed one can opt-out.

What does that even mean?

"Its the same kind of freedom the copy machine or the home word processor gives."

Thanks for confirming my point, glad you agree.

Really weird that a very obvious choice, Medium, did not make the cut. I'm quite aware of how unpopular it is here on HN, but that's mostly a meme.

It doesn't cost anything and there's no ads. Even linking your domain to it used to be free (sadly no longer true). It has a very decent writing experience and the out of the box design is simple but effective. It has a reasonable amount of customization. It has wide support for apps.

It's part of a network so you get functionality like claps, a comment system, followers, the like. Blogging with a "social network" built-in. It has newsletter support.

I think that's a sweet deal for such low (or even zero) costs. Ultimately I'd think your writing is what the value of your blog is, not the behind-the-scenes technical tinkering. Unless that really is your thing.

Should you be paranoid about Medium going under, there's an export option.

Note that I'm the kind of person that wrote my own blogging software in the early 2000s. Tinkered and managed it that way for well over a decade.

I've given up on it. It's time wasted. Nobody cares about your blog design, it's hard enough for anybody to care about the actual text in today's landscape. Hence, pick your battles, keep it simple.

Project this into the future and all text written past and new will be converted into a bland gray blob catering to any imagined sensitivities, including those still to be invented.

"Updated for a modern audience" as they say, where "modern audience" is 0.01% chronically online unhinged activists.

So be it. Guess which tool is really awesome at spitting out such bland texts? Checkmate, "writers".

Quite the contradiction. Mastodon has more censorship, not less.

My guy, dude...I didn't contradict the idea that the Netherlands has superior transit options compared to the US. I was giving push-back against the idea that the Dutch situation is utopian as if some kind of paradise. It isn't.