What do you all feel about popular culture, worldview, values?

[Eduardo Lucas]

I do not know if i'm coming from the right supposition, but it seems to me that there is a likely chance of people who are involved or supportive of open-source projects to be a bit on the outside of the majority way of life and visions. I myself strongly dislike TV, instagram, tiktok, popular culture, media, or music, tiresome/harmful/wrong/obsolete views about societal norms, sex, man or woman or whatever gender, wrong definitions of friendships, relationships, political questions, work ethics, to name some things. I think most of these things end up turning people into way more corrupt or "bad" than they could usually be by human biology and evolution, and while they do have benefits and advances into our world, harm it and society in some very significant ways.

Is all of this something others here share in some deal? I simply think most people do not have the chance of seeing things under a different lens, while critically and rationally analyzing how exactly they are, what they do or like, or how they live, may not likely be something that they may even be aware they should do or even reject altogether while claiming it's trying to be the opposite of others for cope or you should just follow whatever others follow or do as because that supposedly makes your psychological state healthier. I mostly see this in most average level educated people in humanities and social studies, having a degree or not.

I do not think they are impaired or limited in their brain capabilities, but more like they grew up and live in a very cartel-like-economics induced cultural-societal environment, no matter which country or how good or bad education is. I think it's quite easy to think about that when we get examples in IT of how people think almost the same, how lies can be spread about browsers, operating systems, hardware, and yet people blindly believe any kind of accusation. Moonchild's post some months ago about how people become tribalistic remembers me a lot of that.

[Sajadi]

All i am going to say is that we are living in quite intolerant times, if you even have only a slightly different opinion than what the "mainstream" today is all about, you are getting treated instantly in a very bad way.

Society was so much more relaxed, open and more inclusive 20+ years ago than compared with today - if you are in support of freedom of speech and freedom of expression today, if you are supporting your nation, culture and law systems or if you dare to support restricted immigration because of valid logical reasoning then that is already enough to make you pictured as a bad person.

So, i do not at all agree with today's mainstream opinion and society - as you already mentioned we are in a tribal kind of society today... where you either are part of the tribe or you are flagged as suspicious or worse - instantly classified as the enemy.

[Mæstro]

I do not own a television and refuse anything with DRM. Popular culture filters to me in scraps through friends, most often to ridicule it. Anime is the only creative genre I enjoy, and even there, my experience is far removed from how most seem to enjoy it: I like making imaginary friends and disregard canon as binding. My music comes from my anime or else inside jokes with friends. I keep no social networking accounts, and the proxies I use have narrow functions: Nitter lets me check for manga artists and maps, Teddit has bandori memes and Invidious brings joy through Balkan irredentist comments.

Social norms are arbitrary and fickle. Most society grounds itself in them, pressure upon all to conform to them, elaborate feint to conceal them and the threat of injury, loss or shame for any deviance. In some nations, the stone is thrown, in others, tied about the neck. Here it is overt, there subtle. Moreover, they think these rules fixed, when history and ethnography show them to vary in place and time. Near-sightedness, violence and swindle have reigned since before the deluge.

Heathen have always dominated the world, and most who say they believe in God are only nominal, or so drunk with society that they read its values into the gospel and thus behave as heathen. The men in ties, as I have come to call them in my private discourse, can keep up their farce for as long as they wish, thinking themselves commanders. They know not what they do. I rest and bide my time, knowing that twenty centuries ago, another kingdom has been set up that will have no end.

[Pentium4User]

All i am going to say is we are living in quite intolerant times, if you have even only a slight different opinion than what the "mainstream" today is all about, you are getting treated in a very bad way instantly.

Society was so much more relaxed, open and more inclusive 20+ years ago than compared with today - if you are today in support of freedom of speech and freedom of expression, support your nation, culture and law system then that is already enough to make you pictured as a bad person.

Full ack. Freedom of speech is being restricted more and more in many countries - also the democratic ones.
Then there is the cancel culture. Very bad.

Also the IT sector is affected - many companies now do politics. Also the free software/open source sector is affected, just check how they think about the Ukraine war. Next step is restricting their software to support their political views.
This is a very dangerous development.

[Sajadi]

Full ack. Freedom of speech is being restricted more and more in many countries - also the democratic ones.
Then there is the cancel culture. Very bad.

Also the IT sector is affected - many companies now do politics. Also the free software/open source sector is affected, just check how they think about the Ukraine war. Next step is restricting their software to support their political views.
This is a very dangerous development.

It is all so ironic - The so-much thrown-around buzzword "inclusion" is only valid as long as you are either part of Liberals (classic moderate leftists), "Progressives" or radical activist fringe groups like Antifa/BLM/Anarchists - as long as you are under this leftist umbrella all is fine, diverse and inclusive.

But that inclusion ends if you are for example Apolitical/Centrist/Libertarian/Conservative - the reality is we are living in a highly divisive/disjointed society where only one side (including their very extremist fringe groups) receives fairness while the other side is discriminated in what they are allowed to express or at worst, it is going to be tried to change election laws to remove political fairness for the other side - this non-inclusive treatment includes every aspect may it be society or politics.

This is not diversity, that's not inclusive, its a big fat lie.

[Moonraker]

I do not watch television at all and watch certain tv shows from times gone by on youtube or dailymotion.
The BBC is a corrupt corporation feeding "controlled" news and the presenters have hidden agenda's.

I am what you might call a fuddy duddy in terms of socialising.I tend not to mix too well and am introverted.This might be the result of being an only child perhaps.

Anti-colonialist zombies are offended by anything here in the uk and yet they never say no to what this supposed evil colonialist nation gives them.
This is the mentality of the uk university alumni as a whole.My viewpoint of course is from a personal perspective and is not indicative of universal world values.

Some nations are quite liberal in terms of sex etc..in scandinavia you can go shopping naked.(or is a rumour lol)..here in uk it is "no sex please we're british" nonsense lol...not all of us have stiff upper lips.

I do feel a culture shock is good for the soul..i visited north africa many years ago and it was a refreshing change from the usual environment and can change your world view.

[Mæstro]

If search volume indicates anything, public interest in the Ukraine has waned, even if governments keep buying corpses there. Beside random sites and users in symbolic, but truly hollow stunts, Western search engines punishing Russian Web sites is the most I have seen. Software restrictions are null, as anyone who has played a DRM-cracked game knows. One often thinks current events stronger and more influential than in truth. They can swing one’s thoughts about too lightly.

[RealityRipple]

I think the amygdala gets far too much use.

[Pentium4User]

If search volume indicates anything, public interest in the Ukraine has waned, even if governments keep buying corpses there. Beside random sites and users in symbolic, but truly hollow stunts, Western search engines punishing Russian Web sites is the most I have seen. Software restrictions are null, as anyone who has played a DRM-cracked game knows. One often thinks current events stronger and more influential than in truth. They can swing one’s thoughts about too lightly.

In Germany search engines and provider MUST censor certain websites.
I also heard that some developers made software non-working in Russia

. It isn't widespread yet, and I hope it stays so.

[Mæstro]

We have VPN in Germany. GEMA and Axel Springer are bad jokes.

[Moonchild]

One area where all this anti-russia sentiment has really hit people is in the art corner. Many russian artists (and I assume other freelance, commission-based workers) have a terrible time getting paid for their work due to financial system boycotts. It's just hurting the wrong people, as geopolitics often does.

[Mæstro]

Aye, whenever I think of Russia, I think first of the native anime community, and my first thought when this war broke out was how the great powers’ beggar-my-neighbour would hurt them. There is one Russian artist who draws anime android girls, my favourite subgenre. She has still been drawing regularly, but as far as I know, she does so only as a hobby. I am sure there are many who have been hurt more sharply.

[jobbautista9]

I personally think the Russian invasion is wrong, and Ukraine's sovereignty should be respected. But the indiscriminate cancelling of anything Russian is really bad, and doesn't really do anything meaningful. If you want to convince people to your cause, alienating them shouldn't be one of your options. This is why I'm also skeptical of the sanctions against Russia. The intent is to make the people suffer so that they can blame their government it seems, but it could backfire and be used by the government for its propaganda ("see? The evil West wants to make us suffer").

Anyway, if you thought Russian artists getting cancelled is bad, you haven't heard about Filipino artists getting cancelled simply because the Philippines elected the son of a dictator in May 9. It really boggles me how these (probably mostly Western) virtue signalers think that cancelling their commission orders to their Filipino artists will somehow reverse the election results. Don't get me wrong; I'm definitely no fan of that Marcos Jr. guy. I voted for the left-wing worker candidate Ka Leody de Guzman, and I think the liberal opposition candidate Leni Robredo should've won that election. But if anything, artists here in the Philippines most likely voted for Leni; probably due to Marcos Sr.'s regime cracking down hard on artists back in the 70s and 80s.

[athenian200]

Popular culture - I liked older forms of it from back in the 1980s or so. A lot of my favorite songs from that period were in the Billboard Top 100 for instance. But as time goes on from that point it seems like the things I like are more and more niche. My tastes are sort of a weird combination of a continuation of older 80s/70s popular culture, combined with the tastes of more niche subcultures associated with nerdy things. Philosophers, computer programmers, anime nerds, writers, just various kinds of tribes that exist just a bit outside of the modern mainstream. It's like back in the 1980s or 1970s, there was some good stuff in the mainstream. But there was a point where popular culture seemed to go entirely the wrong way. It started slowly in the 1990s with grunge music, but didn't get really bad until Rap and Hip-Hop started becoming popular in the 2000s and later. At least that's how it was where I lived.

Worldview - Just read John Locke's second treatise on government (the first one attacking the concept of Divine Right of Kings isn't that relevant these days), and also read Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations." It would be safe to say that my core worldview is rooted in ideas that became popular among English intellectuals in the 17th/18th century, and I have a lot of things in common with them... like a fascination with Greek and Roman culture and philosophy, an interest in learning dead languages like Latin or ancient Greek, etc. The parallels between George Washington and the ancient Roman Cincinnatus aren't a coincidence... many of the founding fathers looked to the classical world for examples and inspiration for how to live their lives. But overall, my worldview is basically the kind of worldview people invoke without thinking about it when they talk about a social contract, the importance of Rule of Law, respect for private property, limited government, etc. I think many people share at least some elements of it, but they might not be completely aware of where these ideas come from or how important they are.

Values - I guess one consequence of my values is that I take history and precedent very seriously. I tend to think contracts are very binding and meaningful, think Rule of Law must be upheld, see respect for private property as essential to maintaining the social order, etc.

[somdcomputerguy]

Then there is the cancel culture. Very bad.

[Moonraker]

Society here in the uk has certainly changed for the worse.Throughout the pandemic the british public did exactly the opposite to what they were advised because apparently everyone knew better than the govt advisors.

"Don't congregate in large groups"..guess what happened...london parks and indeed parks nationally were full because joe public knows better and can outwit the virus.

Not willing to sacrifice for the sake of all others.!!..sod the govt we do as we please..after all the coveted NHS has our ass...this was the issue as our hospitals became ran over from ignorant joe public who would not do as advised.

I often wonder how the hell we ever won a world war and defeated an invasion because this society is not the same as in 1940.We had values to defend and little england was worth defending but sadly now we live in a society who doesn't give a hoot about anyone but themselves and this became abundantly clear in the past 3 years.

[Mæstro]

Am I the only optimist here? I think the society with values to avoid war is better than the values to win war. (I wish we would all keep our Peace Pact commitments.) Disarmament has been moving forwards since 1990. With any luck, we are witnessing the last war between states in Europe. Men have been working less in the industrial countries while keeping their material comfort. It is far easier to discover new things and meet others with whom one shares values, whether aesthetic or social, wherever they are in the world. It is easier to be left in peace and to pursue one’s passions as one sees fit. We are far safer against loss or harm than we ever were.

With popular culture, I cannot think of any art before 1990 that I enjoy, in that I find it appealing and fun, and scarcely anything from the 1990s. I like neither realistic nor abstract art, and I find live-action film boring. As I have said elsewhere, the artistic style in anime I like was embryonic in the ’nineties. The XX^th century offers good academic material, but it is a cultural wasteland in my opinion.

[Moonraker]

What would optimists be without a good sprinkling of pessimism. pessimists are needed to make optimists feel good about themselves.
Actually this is quite indicative of our society as a whole where nobody listens to each other because they feel they are always right..Gives them that warm fuzzy feeling of self satisfaction..
Just as bad as armchair activists putting the world to rights from the comfort of the comfy chair and tea and scones.

Not sure about world society as a whole but here in the uk we seem to have become more self absorbed with a i am always right and screw the govt mentality.
What chance does ANY govt have with people of this stature and composure.?

[Mæstro]

I see this as a rather good thing. My chief interests are that strife can settle without bloodshed or its threat, and that all are safe against harm and in the place to do as they will. If two men will not listen to each another, they can go their own way, each self contented. The comfy chair is comfy. What is wrong with warm, fuzzy feelings?

[Moonraker]

In an ideal world yes..Unfortunately diplomacy does not work and indeed involves 2 people not listening to each other.

nothing wrong with a comfy chair..quite appealing in middle age.
As for warm fuzzy feelings,i am nearly 50 so don't get those anymore.