[JanetMM]

Originally Posted by MrFlorida

I don't wear panties, so I wouldn't know...

Then don’t get your boxers in a bunch.

[GypsyRN]

Originally Posted by MartinSE

I think the "root cause" of our problems and all the vitriol is the internet. It is something new, it is sometimes called "information overload". We know everything that is going on everywhere all the time - that is good. The bad is EVERYONE has a bullhorn louder that even Presidents have historically had, which means fringe groups no matter how small and insignificant, that used to just be a "local annoyance" can now have international audiences. Most of them are wrong, but some of them can be very convincing.

This combined with 24/7 news which has to find ways to stretch 1 hours worth of news into a constant stream for 24 hours, competing with every other "news" stream for clicks. That leads to the sensationalistic/vitriolic headlines and stories written to spin a particular point of view or opinion.

And on the news, I don't think the news streams have any particular agenda, I think their motivation is to make money, period. The "agenda" appears because each outlet caters to their audience. Fox doesn't run stories about tree huggers in a positive light, because Fox News audience for the most part are not tree huggers. Same exact thing with CNN/MSNBC - they run stories that their audience will like. It is easy to say Fox or CNN have "agendas" and are brainwashing people that watch them, but I disagree. I think both want to make more money. PERIOD. And they have teams and algorithms that analyze their audience reaction to stories and fine tune their message to maximize their impact (clicks). Just watch the same story run a dozen times in a day and each time with a slightly different headline and a slightly different spin - that happens in real time as they adjust the story to maximize their audience reaction.

On the other hand, the good news is, I think this is all transitory. I think we will learn to handle the "information" overload. I think we will learn to put the wacky-doodles back into a position of irrelevance and I believe we will learn how to be civil again, but it is going to take time. Change is painful, it always is, but eventually "the people" get what they want.

I know these forums can be brutal at times and it can appear to entire world has gone crazy. But when I turn off the screen, walk outside and talk to my neighbors I see a different side of The Villages. My neighbors are friendly, my neighbors talk respectfully, my neighbors are neighborly. More so than any place I have lived in the past 30 or 40 years.

It's the "anonymous" angry people that cause the issues online. Each of us should learn how to deal with the constant flood of (mis)information and emotions and vitriol.

Each of us needs to remember the old saying, "If you can't say something good, say nothing at all".

Whew!!! Take a breath!

[defrey12]

Originally Posted by davem4616

IMHO, for a species that is supposed to be social....we certainly seem to have a difficult time playing together in the sandbox

Thank Washington for perpetuating the divisions…because they know if we quit fighting with each other, they’ll be next on the chopping block. It is not in their interest for us get along.

[La lamy]

I agree!! I find it so sad when people can't accept other point of views. Let's agree to disagree and still be CIVIL IMHO!

[Joe C.]

The reason we can't all get along in the sandbox, is because someone is always crapping in it.

[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by MartinSE

I think the "root cause" of our problems and all the vitriol is the internet. It is something new, it is sometimes called "information overload". We know everything that is going on everywhere all the time - that is good. The bad is EVERYONE has a bullhorn louder that even Presidents have historically had, which means fringe groups no matter how small and insignificant, that used to just be a "local annoyance" can now have international audiences. Most of them are wrong, but some of them can be very convincing.

This combined with 24/7 news which has to find ways to stretch 1 hours worth of news into a constant stream for 24 hours, competing with every other "news" stream for clicks. That leads to the sensationalistic/vitriolic headlines and stories written to spin a particular point of view or opinion.

And on the news, I don't think the news streams have any particular agenda, I think their motivation is to make money, period. The "agenda" appears because each outlet caters to their audience. Fox doesn't run stories about tree huggers in a positive light, because Fox News audience for the most part are not tree huggers. Same exact thing with CNN/MSNBC - they run stories that their audience will like. It is easy to say Fox or CNN have "agendas" and are brainwashing people that watch them, but I disagree. I think both want to make more money. PERIOD. And they have teams and algorithms that analyze their audience reaction to stories and fine tune their message to maximize their impact (clicks). Just watch the same story run a dozen times in a day and each time with a slightly different headline and a slightly different spin - that happens in real time as they adjust the story to maximize their audience reaction.

On the other hand, the good news is, I think this is all transitory. I think we will learn to handle the "information" overload. I think we will learn to put the wacky-doodles back into a position of irrelevance and I believe we will learn how to be civil again, but it is going to take time. Change is painful, it always is, but eventually "the people" get what they want.

I know these forums can be brutal at times and it can appear to entire world has gone crazy. But when I turn off the screen, walk outside and talk to my neighbors I see a different side of The Villages. My neighbors are friendly, my neighbors talk respectfully, my neighbors are neighborly. More so than any place I have lived in the past 30 or 40 years.

It's the "anonymous" angry people that cause the issues online. Each of us should learn how to deal with the constant flood of (mis)information and emotions and vitriol.

Each of us needs to remember the old saying, "If you can't say something good, say nothing at all".

I am not that optimistic. Social polarization was NOT caused by more information, but rather by software on social media that drives people to more and more extremes in an attempt to KEEP them on their site longer.....and thus making more money for the individual site......but less of a healthy information environment for the PERSON that is using the platform. Therefore greedy and unpatriotic. And Congress allowed this to happen and now we have something like a runaway train, which can't now be stopped. As I said .....I am not THAT optimistic. Wish I could be! And to think that this will just "smooth over" and end up back to normal (and when was normal, the 50s, the 80s, early 2,000s?)? I don't think that is likely. In fact, the whole situation could easily get worse!

[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by Madelaine Amee

Excellent piece. Of course I like it because it follows my personal thinking. Probably, in a very short time someone is going to reply and blow your post apart, and hang a very vitriolic name on you.

I tried to "blow it apart" as you say, but I did not need to call anyone any "names" because the post in question was a perfectly good opinion. I just had a different opinion. No harm, no foul.

[Kenswing]

Originally Posted by MartinSE

I think the "root cause" of our problems and all the vitriol is the internet. It is something new, it is sometimes called "information overload". We know everything that is going on everywhere all the time - that is good. The bad is EVERYONE has a bullhorn louder that even Presidents have historically had, which means fringe groups no matter how small and insignificant, that used to just be a "local annoyance" can now have international audiences. Most of them are wrong, but some of them can be very convincing.

This combined with 24/7 news which has to find ways to stretch 1 hours worth of news into a constant stream for 24 hours, competing with every other "news" stream for clicks. That leads to the sensationalistic/vitriolic headlines and stories written to spin a particular point of view or opinion.

And on the news, I don't think the news streams have any particular agenda, I think their motivation is to make money, period. The "agenda" appears because each outlet caters to their audience. Fox doesn't run stories about tree huggers in a positive light, because Fox News audience for the most part are not tree huggers. Same exact thing with CNN/MSNBC - they run stories that their audience will like. It is easy to say Fox or CNN have "agendas" and are brainwashing people that watch them, but I disagree. I think both want to make more money. PERIOD. And they have teams and algorithms that analyze their audience reaction to stories and fine tune their message to maximize their impact (clicks). Just watch the same story run a dozen times in a day and each time with a slightly different headline and a slightly different spin - that happens in real time as they adjust the story to maximize their audience reaction.

On the other hand, the good news is, I think this is all transitory. I think we will learn to handle the "information" overload. I think we will learn to put the wacky-doodles back into a position of irrelevance and I believe we will learn how to be civil again, but it is going to take time. Change is painful, it always is, but eventually "the people" get what they want.

I know these forums can be brutal at times and it can appear to entire world has gone crazy. But when I turn off the screen, walk outside and talk to my neighbors I see a different side of The Villages. My neighbors are friendly, my neighbors talk respectfully, my neighbors are neighborly. More so than any place I have lived in the past 30 or 40 years.

It's the "anonymous" angry people that cause the issues online. Each of us should learn how to deal with the constant flood of (mis)information and emotions and vitriol.

Each of us needs to remember the old saying, "If you can't say something good, say nothing at all".

Hmmm.. What was your previous username?

[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by MartinSE

Totally agree. I do think most people start with single wage earner as "the good old days", and then sort of see the rest through rose colored glasses.

Personally, I think having to have two (or more) wage earners today is very common and very stressful. I have no recommendations on how to fix that, but, I think the BIG change is that after the depression people worked hard to ensure their children had a better life than they did. Then slowly just keeping up require two wages earners. That much stress - how to feed my family, how to pay for my children medicine, etc, etc, leads to depression and anxiety and that leads to anger and violence.

These used to be a saying, war can only occur in a country where the people feel they have nothing left to lose. We are approaching a minority feeling they have nothing left to lose.

I agree with the last paragraph, but the reasons that it evolved this way are SIMPLE. Basically, in 1950 the US had somewhere around 150 million people. Today it is 350 million. For many reasons, today there is virtually no middle class. In 1950 for various reasons, there was a large and growing middle class - life was great on a comparative basis where you could equalize scientific and medical improvements down through the decades. Which is difficult to visualize!
.......Today we have the super-rich (like Bezos), the rich (top 20%), the medium poor (about 60%, and the super-poor (about 19%).
........" nothing left to lose"........that could explain the increases in speeding, auto accidental deaths, murders, and general crime. Also, Covid was a chaotic factor. And now we have a little chaser called loaming possible world war.

[kcrazorbackfan]

It’s everything going on in America and the uncertainty of what’s going on in Russia, Ukraine, China, North Korea, etc., etc. that has everyone on edge.

These gas/diesel prices are seriously going to alter peoples lifestyles.

[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby

I think that's a whole lot of malarchy. Women working is not some new phenomenon. Blaming today's ills on both partners of a marriage working for a living doesn't add up at all, since this has been a thing since the Great Depression - and most people in the Villages hadn't even been born yet. Those who were, would probably not even remember it - they'd be in their 90s now and they would've been under 10 at the time.

You can't blame it on the internet either - it's been around since the 1980's. Social media actually predates the world wide web; the first dial-up bulletin board system went online in 1978.

Can't blame cable TV - that's been around since 1948 and was common in the 1980's.

I blame it on people who insist that something other than their own personal responsibility is the cause of it. You are responsible for the information you choose to absorb. There's nothing stopping any of us from checking sources, asking questions, challenging beliefs. If you don't do these things, then that is your choice - but it's also your choice to deprive yourself of knowledge, and you have no one to blame but yourself when you discover that other people might have different opinions based on different information that they've acquired.

I agree with about 85% of the post. As to the single or 2 persons working in a marriage, I don't think you can just go back in time and say that there were plenty of women working in the 1920s or whenever. Obviously, in centuries ago tribal times, men, women, and children ALL had to work. The way I see it is that around roughly 1980 the US middle class started (for various reasons) to decrease in numbers. Many families realized that to KEEP their former living standard, keep paying their mortgage, and maybe sending a child to college......that they NOW NEEDED 2 salaries.

[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by defrey12

Thank Washington for perpetuating the divisions…because they know if we quit fighting with each other, they’ll be next on the chopping block. It is not in their interest for us get along.

I am sorry, but my opinion is that Washington has no interest in causing divisions between various US groups. Washington is a mishmash of many, many legislators and their staff. Also, the money and influence peddlers. The end result is an organization that MOSTLY resembles America as a whole. It may skew a little bit toward the high end of society. Wealth is a factor everywhere in the world.
........There is always going to be a central government of some kind. Even if anarchy could take over. It would be short-lived. To have a country, you MUST have borders. To have these borders, you need a central government to protect them.

[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by Joe C.

The reason we can't all get along in the sandbox, is because someone is always crapping in it.

Good one!

[MorTech]

"why can't we get along, and move on, why oh why"

...said the spider to the fly
...said rabies to the dog

[lynnschindel]

Great post! It makes perfect sense to me, because MONEY, and the frantic race to accumulate the biggest pile of it, is what drives the world.