Alternative hypothesis: the internet encourages people who otherwise wouldn’t contribute to the general discourse to contribute to it. In the past, contributing meant writing some kind of article, or at least letter-to-the-editor, which 1) requires a basic level of literacy and intellectual capacity, and 2) provides a filter, removing the voices of those who can’t write something publishers consider worth of publication (with higher-influence publications having, in general, stricter filters).
Anecdote in point: I have yet to see an internet comment that I couldn’t imagine one of my relatives writing (sorry, relatives, but a few of y’all have some truly dumb opinions!). But these relatives I have in mind wouldn’t have contributed to the general discourse before the internet was around, so if you don’t have That Uncle in your family you may not have been exposed to ideas that bad before seeing YouTube comments.
Last minute edit: I mean that I have yet to see an internet comment that I couldn’t imagine one of my relatives writing years and years ago, i.e. I expect that we would have seen 2018 level discourse in 2002 if That Uncle had posted as much in 2002 as in 2018.
(a) The Internet (and TV before it) make it in platform’s interests, via ad revenue, to produce clickbait (soaps/game shows), because humans are more interest-seekers than truth-seekers. This phenomenon is aka ‘dumbing down’. And also:
(b) the Internet enables all consumers to broadcast their own stuff regardless of truth/quality. This is another kind of dumbing down; though note TV didn’t do this, making it clear that it’s a different kind.
I do think EY’s central point is a long-observed one. Essentially that over decades the media has increasingly dumbed down in order to appeal to mass audiences; and this perpetuates the dumbness of audiences.
The second half is not so often observed as the first, with regard to the media, though it is in other spheres. For example, in the UK over the last few decades high school and university curricula have dumbed down (due to competition for students between exam boards and new universities), with the obvious effect of producing dumb students.
Alternative hypothesis: the internet encourages people who otherwise wouldn’t contribute to the general discourse to contribute to it. In the past, contributing meant writing some kind of article, or at least letter-to-the-editor, which 1) requires a basic level of literacy and intellectual capacity, and 2) provides a filter, removing the voices of those who can’t write something publishers consider worth of publication (with higher-influence publications having, in general, stricter filters).
Anecdote in point: I have yet to see an internet comment that I couldn’t imagine one of my relatives writing (sorry, relatives, but a few of y’all have some truly dumb opinions!). But these relatives I have in mind wouldn’t have contributed to the general discourse before the internet was around, so if you don’t have That Uncle in your family you may not have been exposed to ideas that bad before seeing YouTube comments.
Last minute edit: I mean that I have yet to see an internet comment that I couldn’t imagine one of my relatives writing years and years ago, i.e. I expect that we would have seen 2018 level discourse in 2002 if That Uncle had posted as much in 2002 as in 2018.
This seems like a really important point. Thanks.
I reckon a bit of both—viz.:
(a) The Internet (and TV before it) make it in platform’s interests, via ad revenue, to produce clickbait (soaps/game shows), because humans are more interest-seekers than truth-seekers. This phenomenon is aka ‘dumbing down’. And also:
(b) the Internet enables all consumers to broadcast their own stuff regardless of truth/quality. This is another kind of dumbing down; though note TV didn’t do this, making it clear that it’s a different kind.
Further comment on re-reading the essay:
I do think EY’s central point is a long-observed one. Essentially that over decades the media has increasingly dumbed down in order to appeal to mass audiences; and this perpetuates the dumbness of audiences.
The second half is not so often observed as the first, with regard to the media, though it is in other spheres. For example, in the UK over the last few decades high school and university curricula have dumbed down (due to competition for students between exam boards and new universities), with the obvious effect of producing dumb students.