#critical thinking is awesome

[breezypsyche]

Do you remember how last week I discussed how homophily encourages us as humans to branch out to those who think, act, and feel similarly to us? Do you also remember how I mentioned that this tendency can be seen in a positive light through the use of the algorithm? How about how the algorithm can help populate content geared toward our areas of interest, such as that one series of movies you watch in guilty pleasure even though they are not seen as "cool" or "entertaining"?

We will flip that script and see how homophily and algorithms can be used for not-so-good things. Are you as intrigued and excited as I am? (If you would like to play catch-up from last week, or if you would like a quick refresher, click here to read about the birds!)

But what is a bias bubble, anyway?

I know you have heard people refer to "living in a bubble" before, but it may not be so far off from reality with how social media can be. Kaiser and Rauchfleisch (2020) mentioned that a "bubble" can be formed around individuals by how the algorithm is designed to work (Kaiser & Rauchfleisch, 2020). What does that mean, exactly?

Look at how algorithms are designed - they keep spoon-feeding content similar to what the user has previously viewed, sometimes in a continuous loop. That continuous content loop can keep a user "trapped within a bubble," so to speak. While within a bubble, nothing comes in, and nothing goes out - this is also similar to content that can be viewed on social media.

Content bubbles ensure we view the same content repeatedly, forever in a loop. For some, this could mean something as insignificant as makeup tutorial videos, gaming strategy videos, or even how-to videos. However, that continuous content stream can create the perfect storm for "us versus them" thinking for many others through the means of cognitive bias.

A perfect example of allowing cognitive bias to flood the mind negatively through social media is conspiracy theory content. We all have encountered that person who continually posts about various conspiracies. Let us say you were bored one day and decided to click a video about cryptids. Once that link is clicked, you have encouraged the algorithm to feed you more information about cryptids, which can bleed into other conspiracy theories. After so many hundreds of hours of viewing cryptid-related content, it would be difficult to not believe.

Oh.... now I get it. I don't want it anymore.

As an American, I see this played out in real-time through the political environment on social media. Family members and friends of mine lean in opposite directions concerning political views and constantly post such aligned content to their walls, making my feed a weird amalgamation of "red" versus "blue" (not the old YouTube show about Halo, sadly).

When you're stuck in the bias bubble, it is incredibly easy to continually find the same type of content being regurgitated, which can morph into something more hateful and sinister the longer you allow yourself to be stuck inside that bubble. Lee, Karimi, Wagner, Jo, Strohmaier, and Galesic (2019) found how one thinks or views their personal social media groups influences their own behaviors, thoughts, and beliefs, thereby creating a bias based on the very influence of their social media groups. (Lee et al., 2019).

How can I break free of the bubble of bias?

It is physically accessible, but may not be mentally easy to break free from the bias bubble. To put it simply: use that beautiful brain of yours! Critical thinking is a delightful tool any human on the planet can use to be open-minded about any topic. Meegan (n.d.) shared the depth of critical thinking to be artful, analytical, and evaluative (Meegan, n.d.).

Critical thinking is artful because it takes consistent practice over one's lifetime - in fact, most do not ever truly "master" the art! Critical thinking is analytical because it takes breaking down each thought, feeling, or opinion bit by bit until you get to the core of the rationality behind it. Critical thinking is evaluative because it is up to each of us to find the standard behind each thought, feeling, or opinion we come across.

Great - what does Critical Thinking have to do with breaking the bias bubble?

It is really so simple: find someone who does not think like you! In social media, this can easily be done by utilizing the search bar to type in a topic you know nothing about and read away! If you do not know what certain words or phrases mean within that community, ask away or consult a dictionary - which is at our fingertips thanks to our mobile devices!

Try flexing that beautiful brain of yours today!

References Kaiser, J., & Rauchfleisch, A. (2020). Birds of a feather get recommended together: Algorithmic homophily in YouTube’s channel recommendations in the United States and Germany. Social Media + Society, 6(4). Lee, E., Karimi, F., Wagner, C., Jo, H., Strohmaier, M., & Galesic, M. (2019). Homophily and minority-group size explain perception biases in social networks. Nature Human Behaviour, 3(10), 1078-1087. Meegan, G. (n.d.). What is critical thinking? [Blog post]. Links to an external site. https://theelementsofthought.org/what-is-critical-thinking/

[ignatiusteto]

i think sacred music in the kryn dynasty would be very cyclical and repetitive in form to symbolize the idea that life is a continuous thing (at least those who are consecuted right right) and is a cycle across lifetimes and yeah

[stay-funky-ponyboy]

One day I will make a video because the parallels, themes, etc of dorym need to be in a compilation and I would love to see it all in one place

[sampegger]

do you guys think the writers would have taken it more seriously if it had been alastair around relentlessly tormenting dean in late seasons as opposed to lucifer with sam

[drinkingdeadpeopletea]

midst podcast really called moc weepe a "diabolical bastard" in the literal trailer description and is still leaving me with my jaw on the fucking FLOOR about him being a diabolical bastard. "oh haha cool glass man with the funny voice who runs a shady cabaret and commits petty theft in his first scene i BET he's diabolical :) wow he's killing the guy trying to blackmail him in a totally horrible way but the guy WAS trying to blackmail him so go king! :) hey what do you MEAN he's selling out dozens of his own friends and employees to the church corporation in exchange for a bunch of beads that mean basically nothing to him what do you MEAN--"

[some-pers0n]

I'm really sorry for Hazbin posting again but godddd because this one clip of Alastor and Bill Cipher has been going around late on Twitter reminds me so much of how utterly lame it is when Alastor swears. Like the whole thing that makes him unnerving is how well-spoken he is. I don't even like him saying "fuck you" to Lucifer. Him saying "I'm about to end your fucking life" sounds so lameeeeee he sounds like an elementary schooler who just learned the fuck word

The part that makes him fun and interesting is how well-spoken he is. It kinda plays on the gimmick of radio hosters being kind, chipper fellows and how they don't swear or do anything. It acts as a contrast. I literally don't understand why Viv is allergic to making characters not swear. Him not even swearing would probably be better when it comes to threatening Adam. Like I don't get it. Why is this show's writing like this. He's so uncool and unthreatening when he swears

[queen0fm0nsterz]

Ended up pirating all of Hazbin for the sake of my younger days (used to be a fan when I was around 14/15, before all the stuff with Viv came out) and I am so surprised by how I felt... nothing for the most part. Like a lot of the show's storylines feel like they was crammed in there with no real pacing. A lot of this should have been season 2 territory, which is a sentiment I've seen echoed around, but also... it feels as if the show is trying to be episodic while also having a long narrative thread, which just doesn't work with just 8 episodes. Especially not when paced like this. So I kinda ended up feeling nothing for the most part. All the events got a "Oh, great, so what?" reaction out of me because there was little to no buildup to most of them.

Sir Pentious was always a fave of mine so I was glad to see they kept him around and, though I think we should have had more episodes with him as a villain, I think how he ended up was fitting for what little of an arc he had. I am livid about what they did to Cherri and Mimzy.

I fucking loved Mimzy, I have no idea why they sent her away -- having someone like her at the Hotel would have been a blast considering how the others are already on the road to redemption. She would have balanced it out by being a regular sinner, someone who doesn't care about redemption and won't probably ever care unless it's in her best interests to. Plus her friendship with Alastor was quite cute, they bounce off of each other very well imo. Plus I could see her have a bit of a conflict with both Charlie and Vaggie because of her ways of acting. I'm so sorry they took that from you girlboss.

And Cherri... dear lord where WAS she? She should have been a lot more present. I used to like her relationship with Angel and I even think Cherrisnake is cute conceptually, but both these relationship had... little to no room to breathe imo.

[burr-ell]

i compare potential faves to two criteria: did you invent the gun knowing full well what it could do before shooting a kid's fingers off, and did you cast blight on the tree of names after committing Magic Tax Fraud

[codacheetah]

It's deeply important to me that Loop kind of sucks

[laughatlocksmiths]

so here's my take on something no one asked for my opinion on: vampires do not need circulation for sex or for brain function or to avoid blood pooling in their lower bodies or for any other purpose. vampires do not need an explicable bodily process for how they generate fluids other than blood in order to cry, spit, sweat, etc onscreen. vampires do not need a process for excreting the blood they feed on.

like, if you just enjoy speculative biology and want to come up with a vampire design that explains how they function then that's awesome, you guys are cool as hell. but other authors/artists that create biologically-unrealistic vampires are not doing that because they don't know enough about science to understand that living creatures need to excrete waste. like, come on.

most vampires are anatomically unrealistic because most vampire stories are not about anatomy, you know? vampires drink blood because they steal and consume human life. vampires can have sex (or can't have sex, depending on the story) because the author wants to talk about the relationship between sex and death. vampires have hypnotic/mind control powers because they represent anxiety regarding power or bodily autonomy. vampires can turn into animals because the Other is often animalistic and wild. these reasons among other reasons, of course. i just don't think it's a plot hole for these tropes to lack a biological explanation. i think that in many cases, the story would be weaker if there was such an explanation.

[thebestusernamepossible]

Literally going insane, might have to write fanfic for the first time in 2 years because the people™️ do not get my favorite female characters like I do and I feel the insurmountable urge to write her. I’m going to bite drywall why don’t ppl see her complexities. PLEASE STOP WRITING HER ETHIER AS DOMICILE MOM OR BITCH (or just for shipping) she is so so cool please guys please.

Also while I’m here, fandoms tendency to shove women in the ‘pure powerful goddess who can do no wrong’ box and then proceed to never give them an actual narrative role other than like ‘supportive’ or ‘took out a few background guys’. Like why DOES this incredibly badass and complex female character just get shunted into doinging some cool flips, getting praised about it (she’s the strongest fighter, so feminist wow) then never getting actnowleged as a 2 dimensional character.

I saw this a lot when I was in the Batman fandom, particularly with Cassandra Cain. She is a highly complex and interesting character, but in fandom she’s kind of shunted to ‘Badass therapy dog who takes care of the men’. Because even on the slight chance her backstory is brought up it’s always never delved into and mostly used to make her etheir more tragic and in need of support on a surface level or to let her be compassionate with the men characters who get their actual problems foucused on. It’s a unqiue kind of frustrating because it’s like almost letting the cool female character be cool, but it’s more like the idea of a badass women is shoved in your face, maybe joked about (or if we’re lucky she gets to beat up a few bad-guys), but ultimately treated like a cardboard cutout. Interestingly this actually isn’t entirely a female character thing, it’s also common with like old grandfather/grandmother characters and the elderly in general. But it’s usually badass women from what I see. :/ Why can’t fandom explore their stories (people do but why is it so much less), why can’t they be the prtags of cool AUs or time-travel fix-its, or crossover events

Idk I think I’m just frustrated, and I typed out more than I thought I would. Also Ive seen what happens to some other posts complaining about fandom misogyny, so please know if you’re a TERF, fuck off you have no place in this discussion. We will never agree, and frankly all of these points apply to canon Trans Women characters. Don’t say shit ill fucking end you.

[emotinalsupportturtle]

sometimes a piece of media gets praised too much that I loose some appreciation for it (maybe because it raises expectations). The star beast however, is a piece of media which I love more every time I see it criticized on mainstream social media

[lasnevadaslaborunion]

World of Warcraft is... nnnnnot the best medium in which to tell nuanced and morally complex character dramas, but setting aside all that, Garrosh Hellscream is a surprisingly decent depiction of a Specific Type Of Guy.

A young man who suffers from depression and misplaced shame, who feels that he is not supported by those around him, who then discovers an ideology that gives him a sense of pride and purpose, at the expense of fueling his anger and resentment of entire groups he now considers to be "beneath" him. He is then given a position of power that he is woefully underprepared for and increasingly abuses it to suppress his own insecurities. He is a scarily realistic antagonist who could have so very easily taken a different path. He is a tragic villain, a disaster created by both circumstance and by choice.

And then you look at the fandom, where half the people saw him as an arrogant snot-nosed brat right from the start, and the other half unironically insists that his "True Horde" fascism and orc supremacy are Based

Worst part is, I understand why the fandom discourse around him is so heated, because that Specific Type Of Guy is one that, unfortunately, is regularly encountered in the Warcraft community

(Never, ever, read Trade Chat)

[narukyuu]

You know something FUN and wonderful that will change a campaign forever happened when the fandom is big mad about it.

Never change Taliesin Jaffe 🥰

[fourx]

osctwt will never ever respect writers. even if something is mediocre I truly don't think it warrants harassment at people.

[bigothteddies]

I think that part of what like. kills me about the whole media literacy and critical thinking aspect of enjoying media these days is that people refuse to like. contextualize that

A. Bad media can still hold significant meaning to people

B. Media made for a demographic you aren’t apart of is not inherently bad media

C. Media made for and consumed by the opposite demographic is not inherently shallow or flawed nor is it above criticism for its media tropes either.