Imagine if every time you went to a library to go read and learn history or science or poetry you had to pass through and see Playboy/Maxim/Pornhub version of science and history pulling you away. And if you succumbed and opened a volume like that once, then the next time you visited that aisle you found they had removed 10% of the educational books and added in 10% more softcore porn.
China banned a lot of types of content from their local Tiktok for children, but honestly we need bifurcated apps or ways to filter search results for thirst traps for adults too. It's not any different than putting chocolate bars in a health foods aisle at the grocery store or alcohol vending machines in a rehab facility.
How many of our next would-be Einsteins, Edisons, Teslas, etc are being distracted by Tiktok, mobile games, etc.
Whether it's for the military or not, I find these women's behavior gross and their followers pathetic. It feels like we're veering into post-feminist territory where attractive, charismatic women can market themselves on the internet and society can't offer a reasonable objection without resorting to social conservatism.
It seems like you're placing a lot of weight on the kind of intelligence that favors office work and ignoring all of the artists, builders, monks, healers and leaders whose names fill history books.
Brightest by your measure rarely get mentioned. Not to say historical impact is the most valuable metric, but it begs the question of what is your measure of brightness good for?
They've claimed that this is their choice, that this is empowering, that the alternative was slavery and oppression, but I'm not sure how many sincerely believe those slogans.
This was all foreseen and predicted. The world was warned, but the world pressed on blindly.
Are droves of young men really being driven into the ranks of the army in frenzies of desire? I somehow doubt it.
As for the "droves of young men", propaganda works. The fact that the military had cooperated with 10k Hollywood Films attests to that. They may not join for her, but it all adds up in the effort for painting military life as cool.
Well if you're the one who needs citations, no problem.
https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/docume...
Casti connubii, Pope Pius XI, 12/31/1930: released to coincide with the Anglican Lambeth Conference. Paragraphs 45-48, 51, 63-67, 71, 75, 106.
https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/docume...
Humanae vitae, Pope Saint Paul VI, 7/25/1968: released in response to the hormonal contraceptive pill (not to mention the "sexual revolution" while the Vietnam War raged on). HV is remarkably short, and I recommend reading it in full if you have a few minutes. But you want citations: Paragraphs 3, 7, 10, 13, 14, 16, and finally, the predictions and anticipation are laid bare in paragraph 17.
"Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection."
Why would a woman, forced into viewing sex as inherently risky, want to get married to a guy with those views? Wouldn't it be better to be dumped after a few dates instead of being married to someone who doesn't respect you.
In this world are married couple, also forced to only have sex for procreation or have their family size explode to levels where they can't afford their children. Why would men or women want that? Kids survive childhood far more often and most people don't need a bunch of free labor for the fields anymore.
This is also completely ignoring the huge health issues we are seeing now in states banning abortions, with women being forced to bring dead fetuses to term, doctors afraid of running afoul of the law to save a woman's life when there is an issue with the pregnancy, and raped children and women being forced to flee their state or have their rapist's baby.
It's a pretty sick future if we eventually encourage these mass shooters to rape someone on their way to the crime because they know their lineage will live on.
‘A Poison in the System’: The Epidemic of Military Sexual Assault [1]
Latest Military Sexual Assault Report Shows ‘Tragic’ Rise in Cases, Pentagon Officials Say [2]
Sexual assault reports increased 28% at US military academies in 2022 [3]
... etc ...
1: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/03/magazine/military-sexual-...
2: https://news.usni.org/2022/09/01/latest-military-sexual-assa...
3: https://usafacts.org/articles/sexual-assault-reports-increas...
I don't understand what you mean by "forced" and "inherently risky". What risks are you talking about? Sex isn't ever "inherently risky" and I don't know anyone who would reason like that if they just thought about it for a few moments. There are circumstances and behaviors which may increase risk of certain outcomes when having sex. There is nothing "inherent" about these elements. You don't make any sense.
Sex is inherently exciting, enjoyable, holy, and very good. Sex is designed that way so that humans and other creatures will engage in it often. Christians understand this, and we promote that view.
Your comments draw a bleak landscape of discord and strife over sex, and nobody wants that. We want a Culture of Life, where human dignity is respected and upheld at every stage of life, for every person, equally.
They can. As long as they’re not on duty, violating uniform regulations, or OPSEC, it’s pretty much fine.
Edit: It's also poor form to stealthily edit your comment after someone has already replied to it and you've been down voted for it.
I am pretty sure the military is doing whatever they can do to market to that remaining 25%.
Beautiful women doing this I am sure is rather effective too. I would have considered the military far more when I was young if my image of the military was not that of the movie Platoon. A large group of young men getting yelled at by older men in between running.
I agree with the other person here. It’s just the context of YouTube. Take HN for example: there’s little to no adult content on this site.
I’m in a similar camp in that I’m frustrated daily that Facebook can’t figure out that I (admittedly a single 30 male) don’t want the lewd content. I say “show less of this” on every lewd post, but it can’t figure it out.
That being said, I think the answer is fostering/finding other communities with different natures rather than changing Facebook or YouTube to be something they aren’t.
I don't think it's too much to just give feedback into the void with the hope that if enough people chime in with the same thoughts, that some day some Google PM might actually do something about it.
That being said, I'm sure its a question of $ budget for ML recommender processing and/or the cost of labeling videos. But the labeling could be done by users.
Yeah... Based on the type of content, and the type of people consuming that content, I'm not holding my breath.
I guess the military just needs people with a pulse
Sex is very often inherently risky. Before protection became commonplace it was almost always inherently risky.
You seemed to be disappointed in the “widespread use of contraception” in your original post - without contraception there’s even more risk.
... or maybe they didn't have the distractions and that was key?
There is no reason to believe that social norms can only change for the better, and in fact a lot of evidence that they aren't moving in a positive direction.
The US right may be overreacting to this by rolling back too many changes and throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
But that doesn't mean that conservatism in general is a bad idea. There is certainly something to be said for assessing the outcomes of a change before running many experiments in parallel without a control group.
>Less than a quarter of young American adults are physically fit to enlist and have no disqualifying criminal record, a proportion that has shrunk steadily in recent years.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/14/us/us-military-recruiting...
Are you really suggesting that the option of contraception and abortion should be removed, to ensure that women are loved, respected, and cherished by men?
For the benefit of others not au fait with social media culture, Wikipedia describes thirst traps as ‘a type of social media post intended to entice viewers sexually. It refers to a viewer’s “thirst”, a colloquialism likening sexual frustration to dehydration, implying desperation, with the afflicted individual being described as “thirsty.”’
So is the problem you have being the military using sex to sell(or recruit), or that their message is that the military is painted as being cool?
Is a potential 21st century Einstein somehow "less valuable" because his surroundings ensured he could live up to his potential?
You're thirsty if you're horny, typically for a particular person but not always.
You're thirsting over someone if you're horny for someone in particular.
A thirst trap is an act (or video, or Instagram post, etc.) that intends to make others thirst over you. It's like a mating display, but with ulterior motives, if you want to look at it that way.
Good lord, that needs a source.
It's crazy to me that conservatism has become a dirty word. And I wasn't immune to that either when I was younger. It's only as I've matured that I realized what the word actually means and that conservatism is actually the center on the reactionary-conservative-progressive axis. I also learned that progressivism is mainly ideologies driven from academic circles who consider themselves an intellectual elite that should decide where society is headed and that those circles have been catastrophically wrong in the past with things like eugenics and communism.
I've often thought that if I moved to the US I'd have no-one to vote for. Both sides seem to have some insane, out there policy.
I mean, this is a game of cat and mouse. YT is already very aggressive on sexual content. Content creators just find the next line and push it there.You could require everyone making videos to be wearing suits and people would still find ways to be evocative.
At some point your best move is to self moderate. Ignore those thumbnails or aggressively click "not interested" on any content like that.
>But the labeling could be done by users.
In these times? It'd be a bloodbath of political labels being thrown at various ideaologies. It'd be a wreck.
No, this can't be automated. YT would need to pay staff and set a rubric. But I'm guessing that it's not financially impacting YT as is.
are you really? It's a very simple exploit of raw human urges. And the amount of push-back against eroticism in society makes it all that more desirable to seek that forbidden fruit when presented.
Combine that with the internet where you can make your own persona (or simply lurk, unbeknownst to any and everyone except the algrithm overlords) and eliminate any social risk and you got a recipe for drawing in almost anyone.
I don't really know the situation on the ground in the US. In the UK I feel like we're a fairly conservative country in general, the majority of the population are socially conservative (if perhaps not fiscally), but then the political parties are split in a way that makes this complicated.
Put simply - in the UK, half of the country are capital C Conservative, but probably >80% are conservative.
Time management is key.
Which reminds me were just ignoring the true grossness of this marketing given the military's extreme issues with sexual assault.
Hmm, lots of power dynamics and angles, especially given this all happening under the auspice of the state building their war machine.
Anyway, thanks again.
Simplified, republicans seem to have an issue with abortion. Democrats seem to think there are eleven genders.
Both just seem super out there to me as a Brit.
Financial policies aren't really something I care about to the same degree.
It could also go the other way. Add a "misinformation" label and suddenly everything is misinformation, from Jordan Peterson speeches to live recorded NASA space launches to Spongebob clips.
Women in many cultures and times were just seen as baby machines and failing to have children often led to intense shame especially if the women failed to produce the right gender. And for those with unwanted pregnancy - suicide was a common option either by failed abortion, or trying to make ends meet in other ways, or just straight suicide I read quite a lot of stories of it. People made things work or just didn't and finished it quickly, they were expected to and I'd say that the concept of love was a lot different then how we think of it now. People did things because they were supposed to (or were forced too), not always because they wanted to. You can look at any time in history and see this, the Bible has a ton of examples of poor women in bad situations (Leah & Rachel, Hagar, Bathsheba, etc). It also even brings up when to abort a child as a way to prove guilt or innocence of sleeping around (Ordeal of the bitter water.) But you find concubine stories, slave stories, multiple wives all over the world, ... Women historical were often treated more like children or objects then treasure. The Bible also shows cases of women in power too (Deborah, Miriam, etc) and the love of them is mixed. I'm just saying you might think it's a 'modern problem' but it's always been a part of history. Conception has always been around too even if not well understood, the rich having the best access.
I do agree that relationships nowadays can be much cheaper though but for particular generations like millennials for example sex in general is at an all time historical low. I'd say in general more people are afraid of relationships then anything due to money, family trauma or many other cases be it America, Europe and Asian countries. It's more stress and fear related then anything I'd say besides the devaluing of children (in cities they are an expense, on a farm an asset). Plus with many families separated because of work, it's harder to rise children with lack of community in many places.
Manipulating people with sex is nothing new, and we will keep finding new ways to do it with every new technological innovation.
However, the previous comments were suggesting that a broader adoption of social conservatism could potentially influence the algorithm's function, mainly due to the increased likelihood of individuals shunning such videos.
https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1659536981305487363
https://brian-whit.medium.com/former-mint-press-journalist-p...