It's interesting, when I first got a cell phone (probably 1998) it took me years to figure out that if you received an unwanted call you could just ignore the call. This wasn't really possible back in the landline days, (most people did not have caller ID) and so it wasn't really a scenario you were trained for.
Obviously this is only a metaphorical comparison, but I do wonder if people are going to figure this out with regard to social media. A lot of people are talking about how to "fix" social media, but almost no one is saying "maybe I'll delete it and just read a book or go for a walk or something."
It all reminds me of the Blaise Pascal quote: "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."
> "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."
In this situation, who's the person unable to sit quietly in a room—the person who is receiving unsolicited artificial videos of her dead father, or the people who are generating artificial videos of a dead man and sending them to his daughter?
In this situation the person sending unsolicited videos more aptly fits, but I think you could argue it's both. Being connected to social media in some sense is a refusal to just sit alone in your room. And when bad things happen to you on social media -- even when blame should strictly be assigned to the people actually taking the action -- there's a sense in which you have failed to "sit quietly in a room alone."
People definitely read the parent comment as blaming Williams' daughter for the actions of others. I agree that the blame rests with the people actually sending the videos, but I think there's another reading of the parent comment: why do we subject ourselves to this? Why don't we just walk away, when it would be very easy to do so? I'm never going to be able to stop the flood of assholes online, and no one commenting on this thread will ever be able to stop it either. What's in my control is whether or not I engage in that system.
I installed a landline in my house, and today my wife told me it was scary. Why?
Because it was ringing. I suggested she pick it up to find out why it was ringing, but apparently that’s not something you do in the age of mobile phones.
Obviously this is only a metaphorical comparison, but I do wonder if people are going to figure this out with regard to social media. A lot of people are talking about how to "fix" social media, but almost no one is saying "maybe I'll delete it and just read a book or go for a walk or something."
It all reminds me of the Blaise Pascal quote: "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."