What Twitter pile on are you watching right now (3 Viewers)

I actually don't think so.

Its that thing where all of a sudden it becomes apparent that only a small slice of the population are actually on twitter regularly, and an even smaller population give a fuck about anything on it. Its kinda lord of the flies in that sense. Repeal etc defo used it as a base but those were super sustained year long activities with outreach programmes.

Are we all half watching the verstatile pile on. That's pretty grim by all accounts.
 
I wonder is a lot of it down to an overload of information? That there's so much more to parse that people are just picking the bits that suit them? Or has it been eroded by social media? Students are used to arguing with avatars rather than real people. And also are getting locked into echo chambers.

I've just read what I've written and there's an awful lot of cringey buzz words there
Haha, I didn't think it "cringey" at all. I am still trying to work it out myself. I am in my late thirties, and started teaching around mid-twenties, and I have seen a real shift that disturbs me. I am really trying not to generalise, but from having, I suppose, thousands of students over a 13-14 year period, it gives me a weird overview, and in a discipline that seems to invite creative, lateral thinking-English, it's been very strange to experience. The quality of written work generally has gone down, and the way discourse evolves in class, there is such a focus on getting certain grades, and a kind of consumerist attitude about education: if I read a, mix it with b, then the result will be a first class honours, and then I can be on my way. I think growing up we also had access to so much information, but the way we processed it was markedly different, and my main feeling is that we considered the information more closely, rather than a cursory take. We learned things sometimes off by heart, and were kind of forced to give our brains a workout. I completely agree that people are getting locked into echo chambers, and maybe feel overwhelmed by the information coming at them, but it's hard to know how to deal, let's say, with students who already think they have the answers, when they are in an environment that seeks to unstitch what you thought you knew, and allow you the space to explore, without fear of doing something "wrong"-seeking knowledge and understanding surely is one of the things that we all strive for?

Also, and this is my experience, there is a lack of stamina in terms of the work-often students don't want to do the work that goes into heavy research, and finding richer answers, they think it's all contained in the powerful small computer in their pocket. Or they want you to "tell" them the answer. And as you wrote, the arguing with avatars for so long is very problematic-I worry that they don't understand the concept of accountability, and also, that bluffing eventually gets found out. And that it isn't an ideal to want to be a bluffer, or coast by in life, if you want to argue with someone, and debate, and engender some kind of change, the basic rule is to make sure you know what you are talking about, and so many don't, but seem to think the act of disagreement is enough, whereas I believe it is only the beginning. And we learn more from those we disagree with than those we agree with.

I don't know what to do with all of this, and sorry for the mini-essay, but it really worries me. I feel really lucky I got to go to college in the first place, my parents worked so hard to make it so, my Dad had to leave school at 9 to go working-and they have always felt that education is freedom-so I don't take it for granted, and think we should always educate ourselves, inside and outside of the university setting. University isn't the right thing for everyone-but I hope constantly learning is. Maybe this is what I worry about-when did people decide to stop learning? That's just a misty question out into the ether.

Even though this ramble suggests I am sad about the way things are going-I am, but I still see a lot of hope, a lot of people doing good, trying to be balanced, leave the world in a better state than they found it, and I do think there are amazing people in a younger generation trying to push this through-but there is also a weird shift away from critical thinking, and I do have a creeping feeling of dread about the effect of that in time to come, but I will keep trying to fight the good fight. When I meet new students at the beginning of an academic year, I instantly take them to the library haha, I'm THAT person :LOL:.
 
Its that thing where all of a sudden it becomes apparent that only a small slice of the population are actually on twitter regularly, and an even smaller population give a fuck about anything on it. Its kinda lord of the flies in that sense. Repeal etc defo used it as a base but those were super sustained year long activities with outreach programmes.

Are we all half watching the verstatile pile on. That's pretty grim by all accounts.

Yeah, I think that's been really apparent over the last couple of years. If you were to take Twitter, Boards.ie and the Journal comments sections as representative of Irish society and the Irish population then you'd be forgiven for thinking that we're living in some sort of right wing hell hole. But this hasn't been borne out the results of the last few general and referendum elections. OK, I know we have another FF/FG government but at least Aontú and Peter Casey etc. didn't get anywhere. Overall, I think Irish people are fairly sound.
 
Haven't kept up to date with the Versatile thing. Can you summarise for someone not on twitter?

That lady who did the piece about them being racists last year, they came up to her in a car park in dublin and i did some kind of jeering/filming.

She did a video about it on instagram, she looked genuinely shook.
 
Are we all half watching the verstatile pile on. That's pretty grim by all accounts.

I'm not up on it but after seeing a few people's instagram stories featuring the start of Erica Cody's video I found the full thing. Not an isolated incident by the sound of it. Is there a sustained thing against her or is it just their general behaviour and intransigence in the face of being called out
 
Haha, I didn't think it "cringey" at all. I am still trying to work it out myself. I am in my late thirties, and started teaching around mid-twenties, and I have seen a real shift that disturbs me. I am really trying not to generalise, but from having, I suppose, thousands of students over a 13-14 year period,

One of my parents was teacher. They say that they could track the changes in attention span from domestic black and white tv to colour tv, from colour tv to the video game era, and with each more complex console being released. I don't have solutions, I'm just pointing out that the shift has been going on a while.
 
Haven't kept up to date with the Versatile thing. Can you summarise for someone not on twitter?
From my understanding, they have been called out a number of times for being racist and misogynistic-they said their work is "satire", but a lot of people took issue with it-also, it's not funny, which satire presumably at least strives to be, sometimes not, but Jonathan Swift they are not. I actually don't think they comprehend what satire really is. Footage emerged of them in blackface some time ago. And then, later, with the re-emergence of the Black Lives Matter protests they released a statement apologising, but very recently one of them trapped musician Erica Cody (one of their most vocal detractors) in her car in a car park, taking a video, and laughing and jeering-she released a video relaying it all. They were harassing her really, for speaking up. They feel humiliated because they have been called out, and they then want to humiliate and intimidate her for speaking the truth. It's horrible. They are supposed to be supporting Snoop Dogg when he comes here, which seems bizarre. I could be wrong, but feel there is an MCD connection to them, but I do know that one of them-the "main" person went to a private boys school near where I live, and was at this kind of rubbish then. Not that I have an issue with anyone going to a private school, but they fetishise the working class as well-and it's all a bit grimy. On a purely artistic level-their "music" is just so bad, I don't understand why they haven't been shipped off to Inishkea-where no-one can hear them.
 
One of my parents was teacher. They say that they could track the changes in attention span from domestic black and white tv to colour tv, from colour tv to the video game era, and with each more complex console being released. I don't have solutions, I'm just pointing out that the shift has been going on a while.
Yes, I completely agree, maybe it's that I feel the shift is more acute right now, it doesn't feel very incremental. I remember when Charlie Brooker was asked a while ago about the evolution of Black Mirror, and he said that when he first started writing it all those years ago, he felt he was exploring things that were possibly going to happen way into the future, but now he finds he is writing about it all happening now, and he has been taken aback with the acceleration of change. I have no answers, except maybe we find a way to blow up the internet. I was thinking about Lockdown and how that allowed a stillness to enter the world and I must admit, I found it really appealing, but will it remain?
 
Haha, I didn't think it "cringey" at all. I am still trying to work it out myself. I am in my late thirties, and started teaching around mid-twenties, and I have seen a real shift that disturbs me. I am really trying not to generalise, but from having, I suppose, thousands of students over a 13-14 year period, it gives me a weird overview, and in a discipline that seems to invite creative, lateral thinking-English, it's been very strange to experience. The quality of written work generally has gone down, and the way discourse evolves in class, there is such a focus on getting certain grades, and a kind of consumerist attitude about education: if I read a, mix it with b, then the result will be a first class honours, and then I can be on my way. I think growing up we also had access to so much information, but the way we processed it was markedly different, and my main feeling is that we considered the information more closely, rather than a cursory take. We learned things sometimes off by heart, and were kind of forced to give our brains a workout. I completely agree that people are getting locked into echo chambers, and maybe feel overwhelmed by the information coming at them, but it's hard to know how to deal, let's say, with students who already think they have the answers, when they are in an environment that seeks to unstitch what you thought you knew, and allow you the space to explore, without fear of doing something "wrong"-seeking knowledge and understanding surely is one of the things that we all strive for?

Also, and this is my experience, there is a lack of stamina in terms of the work-often students don't want to do the work that goes into heavy research, and finding richer answers, they think it's all contained in the powerful small computer in their pocket. Or they want you to "tell" them the answer. And as you wrote, the arguing with avatars for so long is very problematic-I worry that they don't understand the concept of accountability, and also, that bluffing eventually gets found out. And that it isn't an ideal to want to be a bluffer, or coast by in life, if you want to argue with someone, and debate, and engender some kind of change, the basic rule is to make sure you know what you are talking about, and so many don't, but seem to think the act of disagreement is enough, whereas I believe it is only the beginning. And we learn more from those we disagree with than those we agree with.

I don't know what to do with all of this, and sorry for the mini-essay, but it really worries me. I feel really lucky I got to go to college in the first place, my parents worked so hard to make it so, my Dad had to leave school at 9 to go working-and they have always felt that education is freedom-so I don't take it for granted, and think we should always educate ourselves, inside and outside of the university setting. University isn't the right thing for everyone-but I hope constantly learning is. Maybe this is what I worry about-when did people decide to stop learning? That's just a misty question out into the ether.

Even though this ramble suggests I am sad about the way things are going-I am, but I still see a lot of hope, a lot of people doing good, trying to be balanced, leave the world in a better state than they found it, and I do think there are amazing people in a younger generation trying to push this through-but there is also a weird shift away from critical thinking, and I do have a creeping feeling of dread about the effect of that in time to come, but I will keep trying to fight the good fight. When I meet new students at the beginning of an academic year, I instantly take them to the library haha, I'm THAT person :LOL:.

Actually I think you hit the nail on the head there when you said that young people go to their phones to find out the answer to everything. That's what they've grown up with. It's what my own kids are growing up with. Like, for example, my kids will just randomly ask how many blades of grass are there in the world? Then straight away, they're asking me to type it into google.

The consumerist attitude to education is an interesting thing. I remember reading an article that someone linked in here before about millenial burn out. In it, they talked about how this attitude to parenting seemed to take hold over the last 20 or 30 years that every activity in a kids life had to serve some purpose towards making them well rounded adults. You can see it a lot with some middle class parents where they have their kids in a million different after school activities (violin, language lessons, theatre). None of it seems to be based on the kid actually enjoying the activity, more that every waking moment of the kids life is geared towards some sort of self improvement, rather than just letting them be kids. So you're probably meeting these kids in their teens and twenties and their University education is another tick on the reward chart towards 'The Prize'. It could be argued that they don't feel like they have time for critical thinking and that by dealing in certainties, they can get the job done quicker.

The article was really interesting because it was saying that these kids can't maintain this pace constantly. And that when they get to their 30s, they get burnt out and disillusioned from always being constantly 'on' and having to achieve something constantly as opposed to just 'being'.
 
On a purely artistic level-their "music" is just so bad, I don't understand why they haven't been shipped off to Inishkea-where no-one can hear them.
FWIW - on a purely musical level, I think Versatile are fantastic. I like Mango and Kojaque well enough, but Versatile make me jump out of my seat. NWA were scumbags too, I suppose

edit: Also I think a lot of their stuff is genuinely funny. "Everyone being all sound and nice/You know that's making me sad" ... "When did Dublin get so bad?/It's too long since I've been stabbed". Of course some of it makes me cringe, but that doesn't make the funny stuff less funny
 
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From my understanding, they have been called out a number of times for being racist and misogynistic-they said their work is "satire", but a lot of people took issue with it-also, it's not funny, which satire presumably at least strives to be, sometimes not, but Jonathan Swift they are not. I actually don't think they comprehend what satire really is. Footage emerged of them in blackface some time ago. And then, later, with the re-emergence of the Black Lives Matter protests they released a statement apologising, but very recently one of them trapped musician Erica Cody (one of their most vocal detractors) in her car in a car park, taking a video, and laughing and jeering-she released a video relaying it all. They were harassing her really, for speaking up. They feel humiliated because they have been called out, and they then want to humiliate and intimidate her for speaking the truth. It's horrible. They are supposed to be supporting Snoop Dogg when he comes here, which seems bizarre. I could be wrong, but feel there is an MCD connection to them, but I do know that one of them-the "main" person went to a private boys school near where I live, and was at this kind of rubbish then. Not that I have an issue with anyone going to a private school, but they fetishise the working class as well-and it's all a bit grimy. On a purely artistic level-their "music" is just so bad, I don't understand why they haven't been shipped off to Inishkea-where no-one can hear them.

They sound like absolute arseholes. Like you're saying, nothing wrong with going to private school. But generally a prick like that will act however he want because he knows there will always be someone to bail him out. Also, this is probably the first time he's had to face any sort of consequences for his behaviour, and even worse by a (shock! horror!) woman, so he's acting like an overgrown toddler.
 

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