Think About It 118: BRIAN KAREM

 

We fail in the press because more than 90 percent of what you see, read or hear is owned by six companies who are part of the billionaire ruling class.

      We are owned by entertainment companies and are treated as cheap entertainment. We produce pap with snap for various news-information silos. More intent on going viral than informing, we are no longer capable, at least most of the time, to produce vetted factual information for the masses. We hire cheap, uninformed and under-experienced editors to bow to the owners, and hire uninspired and under-experienced reporters to produce stories. We neither grasp nor search for anything other than reactions to press releases and official pronouncements. We fail to understand and are proud to be along the ride to doom.

 

 

Quoted in "The Media learned all the wrong lessons in 2024" [Salon, 28 March 2025]

 

 

 

Use the link below to read the full article posted on the Salon website:

 

 

https://www.salon.com/2025/03/28/the-media-learned-all-the-lessons-from-2024/

 

 

 

 

 

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Think About It 104: TED CHIANG

 

 

Think About It 094: AMANDA MARCOTTE

 

 

Think About It 078: AARON JAMES

 

Think About It 116: AMANDA MARCOTTE

 

The [COVID-19] pandemic didn't convert people to the right, so much as it revealed the reactionary and even fascistic leaning of so many people who insisted they offer 'natural' alternatives to 'medicalized' health care…much of the anti-vaccine rhetoric was centered on the notion that 'fit' people don't 'need' vaccines, because their exercise and diet routines were medicine enough. This built on years, even decades of 'wellness' rhetoric that is openly hostile to the idea that health is a communal concern, instead framing good health as a status symbol signaling one's superiority to the hoi polloi…a lot of self-proclaimed advocates of 'wellness' saw health as strictly an individual concern, often to the point of employing genocidal rhetoric implying the pandemic was cleansing the human race of the less worthy. Despite surface rhetoric decrying 'Big Pharma,' the alt-medicine industry is, if anything, a bigger fan of predatory capitalism. The whole world is awash in scammy supplements and overpriced, ineffective diet plans, none of which is subject to the regulation or research requirements that hem in, however imperfectly, the pharmaceutical industry.

 

'RFK Jr's tour with Jordan Peterson: ' "Make America Healthy Again" shows why "alt medicine" went MAGA ' [Salon, 26 September 2024]

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read the full article by US journalist AMANDA MARCOTTE: 

 

 

https://www.salon.com/2024/09/26/rfk-jrs-tour-with-jordan-peterson-make-america-healthy-again-shows-why-alt-medicine-went-maga/

 

 

 

 

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Think About It 094: AMANDA MARCOTTE

 

 

Think About It 080: DOROTHY ROWE

 

 

Think About It 063: ALICE KOLLER

    

Think About It 107: ANNE HELEN PETERSEN

 

The desire for the cool job that you're passionate about is a particularly modern and bourgeois phenomenon — and, as we'll see, a means of elevating a certain type of labor to the point of desirability that workers will tolerate all forms of exploitation for the 'honor' of performing it.  The rhetoric of 'Do what you love, and you'll never work another day in your life' is a burnout trap.  By cloaking the labor in the language of 'passion,' we're prevented from thinking of what we do as what it is: a job, not the entirety of our lives.

      …The desirability of 'lovable' jobs is part of what makes them so unsustainable: so many people are competing for so few positions that compensation standards can be continuously lowered with little effect.  There's always someone just as passionate to take your place.  Benefits packages can be slashed or nonexistent; freelance rates can be lowered to the point of bare sustenance, especially in the arts.  In many cases, instead of offering a writer money for the content that goes on a website, the writer essentially pays the website in free labor for the opportunity of a byline.  At the same time, employers can raise the minimum qualifications for the job, necessitating more school, another degree, more training — even if that training may or may not be necessary — in order to even be considered.

      In this way, 'cool' jobs and internships become case studies in supply-and-demand: Even if the job itself isn't ultimately fulfilling, or demands so much work at so little pay so as to extinguish whatever passion might exist, the challenge of being the one in a thousand who 'makes it work' renders the job all the more desirable.

 

Can't Even: How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation (2020)

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read a September 2020 article about North American writer and journalist ANNE HELEN PETERSEN and her book Can't Even: How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation:

 

 

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/sep/22/anne-helen-petersen-millennial-burnout-work-life

 

 

 

 

 

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Think About It 069: ANNE HELEN PETERSEN

 

 

Think About It 097: KAREN HO

 

 

Think About It 078: AARON JAMES

   

Think About It 094: AMANDA MARCOTTE

 

For years, there's been an urge in the mainstream media to treat various right-wing ideologies as separate and distinct buckets of thought: the anti-abortion people.  Or the racists.  Or the anti-LGBTQ people.  Or the 'men's rights' people.  Or the people who want the Bible taught in biology classrooms.  But in truth, these groups have always been intertwined and overlapping, to the point where many of these distinctions are without difference.  Turns out the Christian right isn't just sexist and homophobic, but also incredibly racist.  Turns out that white supremacists also have rigid views about 'traditional' gender roles.  The enemy of fascism is never just one group of marginalized people, but anyone who steps outside of their strict ideas about racial, ethnic, religious, and gender hierarchy.

 

'Texas mall mass shooter: A familiar tale of the misogyny-to-fascism pipeline' [Salon, 10 May 2023]

 

 

 

Use the link below to read more articles by North American journalist and author AMANDA MARCOTTE:

https://www.salon.com/writer/amanda_marcotte

 

 

 

 

 

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Think About It 075: KATHERINE S NEWMAN

 

 

Think About It 069: ANNE HELEN PETERSEN

 

 

Think About It 041: MICHIKO KAKUTANI

 

 

Think About It 083: ANNE HELEN PETERSEN

 

To be valuable in American society is to be able to work.  Historically, more work, more toil, more commitment, more loyalty, more grit — all of that could make you more valuable.  That's the very foundation of the American Dream.  But in our current economic moment — often referred to as 'late capitalism,' to evoke how much of the economy is predicated on the buying and selling and leveraging of things that aren't, well, things — hard work only becomes truly valuable when accompanied by existing connections (also known as class status and privilege) or credentials (diplomas, recommendations, resumés).

      Which explains our current 'best practices' for achieving middle-class success:  Build your resumé, get into college, build your resumé, get an internship, build your resumé, make connections on LinkedIn, build your resumé, pay your dues in a soul-sucking low-level position you're told to be grateful for, build your resumé, keep pushing, and eventually you'll end up finding the perfect, stable, fulfilling, well-paying job that'll guarantee a place in the middle class.  Of course, any millennial will tell you that this path is arduous, difficult to find without connections and cultural knowledge, and the stable job at the end isn't guaranteed.

      And yet it's easy to see how parents of all classes would become fanatical about college prep:  If you can just get on the path, that good, stable job is in sight!  To make things better for the next generation, you don't need revolution, or regime change, or raised taxes.  All that's necessary, at least to start, was your kid's college acceptance letter… Instead of raising kids, so many parents, conciously and subconsciously, began raising resumés.

 

Can't Even: How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation (2020)

 

 

 

Use the link below to read a September 2020 article about North American writer and journalist ANNE HELEN PETERSEN and her latest book Can't Even: How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation:

 

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/sep/22/anne-helen-petersen-millennial-burnout-work-life

 

 

 

 

 

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Think About It 069: ANNE HELEN PETERSEN

 

 

Think About It 052: SUSAN CAIN

 

 

Think About It 041: MICHIKO KAKUTANI 

 

Think About It 069: ANNE HELEN PETERSEN

According to Indeed.com, between 2006 and 2013 there was a 2505 percent increase in jobs described using the words 'ninja'; a 810 percent increase in 'rock star,' and a 67 percent increase in 'Jedi.'  At the time of this writing, you can apply for a position as a 'Customer Support Hero' at Autodesk, a 'Nib Ninja' at a Pennsylvania chocolate factory, a 'Wellness Warrior' at a clinic in Utah, and a 'Rockstar Repair Man' for an Orlando, Florida, rental group.  Most of these job ads are for entry level positions with pay at or just above minimum wage, with few or no benefits.  Some are simply freelance gigs marketed as 'earning opportunities.'  The shittier the work, the higher the chances it gets affixed with a 'cool' job title and ad — a means of convincing the applicant that an uncool job is indeed desirable and thus worth accepting the barely liveable wage.

 

Can't Even: How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation (2020)

 

 

Use the link below to read a September 2020 article about North American writer and journalist ANNE HELEN PETERSEN and her latest book Can't Even: How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation:

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/sep/22/anne-helen-petersen-millennial-burnout-work-life

 

 

 

 

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Think About It 059: SARAH MAITLAND

 

Think About It 041: MICHIKO KAKUTANI

 

Think About It 018: NANCY JO SALES

 

Think About It 041: MICHIKO KAKUTANI

According to a 2017 survey by The Washington Post, 47% of Republicans erroneously believe that Trump won the popular vote, 68% believe that millions of illegal immigrants voted in 2016, and more than half of Republicans say they would be okay with postponing the 2020 presidential election until such problems with illegal voting can be fixed.  Another study conducted by political scientists at the University of Chicago showed that 25% of Americans believe that the 2008 [financial] crash was secretly orchestrated by a small cabal of bankers, 19% believe that the US government had a hand in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and 11% even believe a theory made up by the researchers –– that compact fluorescent lightbulbs were part of a government plot to make people more passive and easy to control.

The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump (2018)


 

Use the link to read articles by North American literary and political critic MICHIKO KAKUTANI.  Her latest book The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump was published by Tim Duggan Books in July 2018.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/by/michiko-kakutani

 

 

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Think About It 022: CHRISTOPHER LASCH

 
Think About It 019: JOHN PILGER

 
Think About It 015: NOAM CHOMSKY

Think About It 018: NANCY JO SALES

Mobile dating went mainstream about five years ago; by 2012 it was overtaking online dating.  In February, one study reported there were nearly 100 million people –– perhaps 50 million on Tinder alone — using their phones as a sort of all-day, every-day, handheld singles club, where they might find a sex partner as easily as they’d find a cheap flight to Florida.  'It’s like ordering Seamless,' says Dan, the investment banker, referring to the online food-delivery service.  'But you’re ordering a person.'
      The comparison to online shopping seems an apt one.  Dating apps are the free-market economy come to sex.  The innovation of Tinder was the swipe — the flick of a finger on a picture, no more elaborate profiles necessary and no more fear of rejection; users only know whether they’ve been approved, never when they’ve been discarded.  OkCupid soon adopted the function.  Hinge, which allows for more information about a match’s circle of friends through Facebook, and Happn, which enables GPS tracking to show whether matches have recently 'crossed paths,' use it too.  It’s telling that swiping has been jocularly incorporated into advertisements for various products, a nod to the notion that, online, the act of choosing consumer brands and sex partners has become interchangeable.

'Tinder and the Dawn of the Dating Apocalypse' [Vanity Fair,  6 August 2015]


 

Use the link below to read the full article by North American journalist NANCY JO SALES:

 

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/08/tinder-hook-up-culture-end-of-dating

 

 

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Think About It 011: LEE NUTTER