I want to preface this by saying I am no expert in anything— hell, my profile is Axis Powers: Hetalia, I’m 16, and I draw silly boys at night. However, I want to be able to explain what I think, so I’m going to write about what’s been on my mind for the past week.
This is also one of my first long blogs, and I’m not the best at phrasing. I’ll try my best to edit this and make it make more sense, but I hope you understand me.
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and its use for the purpose of obtaining profit. (Wikipedia)
Private ownership means non-government ownership. Such as, CEOs owning their company. The core fundamentals of such a system are:
- Private ownership
- Profit motive (this one is important)
- Wage labour / paid work
- Competitive markets
Profit motive is self-explanatory, the company doesn’t seek to make the best product/service, but the one that allows for the most profit. And in this day-and-age, where the new generation are broker than ever, and more stubborn than ever, it’s a hard sell to get those onto your platform.
Do you guys remember the console wars in the 2010s? The most popular two being XBOX and the PS4 (the ps4 is better!), why did this even happen? It’s due to brand loyalty.
Brand loyalty is when you get introduced to a brand, usually at the younger ages, and you stick to it. Imagine Taylor Swift’s ‘Swifties’. It’s a very ride-or-die mentality, (and one I have some words for, I think I’ll write a blog on how a cult-like following is common for most medias, celebs, and apps.)
An example I think that would hit home is YouTube. I’ll be using YouTube (YT) as my first case study, my second will be TikTok (TT). Both of these platforms are free to signup social medias, however from different eras, but nonetheless follow the same path.
YouTube
Founded in February 14th 2005, it’s the video-sharing platform and a social media platform secondly. Initially, it was released for the soul purpose of sharing videos, a simple premise, but at the time it was difficult to send videos to one another, and harder to find clips of events occurring online.
It began as a non-ad platform, where only short videos would appear, not the same kind of short-form content that TT and YT shorts would promote, but rather because 100MB was the maximum amount of content it can support. Videos would cap out at 30s (usually), and because of this, people would post videos that are straight to the point. The algorithm was an afterthought, and the website was just passion and fun.
Why was it like this? It was because of the lack of insensitive. A YouTuber that comes to mind is Mr. Beast (oh man), I’m not sure if his older videos are still on the channel, however, his previous posts that are pre-money era were just silly, such as
“I counted to 100,000!”
I used to be a fan of such posts, I found his authenticity to be engaging… however. Nothing good lasts forever. As YouTube began rolling out payed posts, more of those red-circle posts (as I call them) appeared. Honestly, just look at the thumbnails for Mr. Beast. He’s a good way to see how we lost some of the “bullshit-ness” of YouTube.
Now, YouTube becoming corporate is not why kids can’t read, but it’s TikTok. Oh…TikTok.
TikTok
Popularised in 2020, and the successor to musica.ly (or however you spell this), it was a boom in the pandemic. The fast paced content fulfilled the monotonous life of a year in your house — as there’s always something new.
Your brain gets repeated dopamine hits from scrolling, maybe there’s a song it liked, a take it hated, a new trend, dance, meme, whatever. Dopamine makes your brain excited, and by the time you close the app, an hour went by (if you’re lucky).
I recall a comment saying
“I was scrolling for 3 hours and I didn’t even remember half of it.” (Not verbatim)
And that really puts things into perspective when you recognise that people are wasting their lives away on apps like TikTok.
Well, what does this have to do with Capitalism, and even more so reading? Well,
It gets worse.
Apps like TT and YTshorts encourage users to create “ragebait” (as other social media users call it), which is just content that enrages people for engagement to make money out of it. These posts are usually people saying something stupid. Other posts are “brainrot” with AI memes, these two categories overlap frequently.
When you interact with these, you don’t use your brain to comprehend anything. Essentially, these posts make you fucking dumb. (Forgive my language)
And since Gen-Alpha and Gen-Beta are growing up on these stupid posts, they don’t use their brains either, they scroll when they’re bored, the dopamine hits them every millisecond, and they become numb. They don’t care for reading, or listening, sitting still, or even thinking…
Because that’s too much work.
The billionaires are happy because once you don’t think, they can get you to buy what you don’t need, and that’s what capitalism wants.
You won’t think and you will be happy.
You won’t own and you will be happy.
I know this is a bit of a doomer blog, but there’s always a way out. You can always get on your feet and teach kids around you how to do stuff, but the best you can do is tell their parents not to give them devices with YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram. Moderate their internet dosage, because nowadays, that too is just another drug.
Stay safe!
Comments
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Niyako
DISCLAIMER, it’s not the only reason, but a big one. The underfunding of school especially in the USA.
bellablasphemy777™ [glmrklldUS!]
This is really good, I always feel so bad when I see the people around me wasting so much time on TikTok but I never know how to help them :(
Sadly lots of them are too addicted to care, I do tell them why I quit, but sometimes you can’t move an unmoving rock, until they get the want to move themselves.
I do still encourage an attempt, you never know… someone can change their mind. It worked for me before!
by Niyako; ; Report
seaoforcas
capitalism is also the reason why schools are so poorly funded. they only want to give money to well performing schools is wealthy neighborhoods. little do they know if they funded the schools with low performance, maybe the students will do better!
This is unfortunately a fact. Most schools being funded are not the public ones, that most go to, but rather the private. —I do go to private, have my whole life, and when I see photos of the differences between my schools (and past ones) to the public schools of my country, and the gap is large.
That’s why the ratio of dropouts is insane.
by Niyako; ; Report
i was always in public school for education since 1st grade. my elementary school was in a well-funded area, but my middle school and high school were in defunded areas. The differences in education quality were insane, so many teachers didn't know what they were doing.
by seaoforcas; ; Report
I went to meet with a government liason and teachers at a inner city highschool near me, they had literally many MILLIONS of dollars in surplus equipment just sitting around. On top of tens of millions of dollars from the federal government. I'm really not exagerating I promise. They had an entire room full of multi-axis mills, lathes, etc. All untouched... Enough to run an actual machining business. IF the kids were good/well behaved, and got good grades then they got to go use the machines.... But there wasn't even a single chip on the floor and the machines appeared prestine as if they had never been used. School was also in session yet there were no students there. The school was newly built too, and got TONS of federal funding mostly because the adminstration was actually unabashedly doing record/diploma fraud.
The REAL problem was that over half of the student body couldn't speak english, and in total there were 13 different languages spoken among the students. So it wasn't a money issue. Also these refugee students were literally 18 years old about to graduate and I saw them doing basic addition like 2+9, and 1+3, as well as english sight words like "this" and "that".
There is a cultural and genetic component that goes into how students(humans) perform, that is often neglected. The reason a low income area is low income is often because of the genetics and attitudes towards life, learning, work, health, , delayed gratification, and finance.
The secondary problem is that the administration was just fradulently manipulating grades from F-'s to A's and B's. Even the students who literally just stay home and play video games and smoke, almost never coming to school got their diploma's this way. So this way the administration doesn't get fired, and the faculty keeps getting oodles of OUR money through taxes.
My property tax alone, let alone my school district tax on my income (on top of my income tax), And let alone all my sales tax, and other taxes, is more expensive to pay for JUST one of the schools in my area than the cost of full tuition at a private school in my same area. These beaurocrats just find ways to sippon money off to themselves and their friends. That's the other problem, throwing money at things doesn't always work. The deeper problem that needs fixed is at the systems/sociological level.
by X; ; Report
I don’t think it’s particularly genetic for why low-income areas are so. It tends to be due to the area being a minority (usually colored) area. This + it’s getting ever more hard to climb into wealth without some support by the wealthy.
I think the problem is not only funding, it’s experience, and how school is managed to begin with. I plan on making an entire blog to talk about it, but generally,
1. People of different situations get thrown together, as my physics teacher put it: “some students who benefit from how school is taught become stunted by the students who don’t. Eventually, they equalise in the same area of smartness.” And I think about that quite often.
2. The lack of experience from the teachers, I don’t want to blame them, but many are unprepared. Lots of them have boring ways to educate; though I will say this has been steadily improving from where I live. (Love you, biology teachers!)
3. The funding being thrown at the wrong places. As you mentioned, rich get richer, poor get poorer. I’ve seen schools with such potential, passionate teachers burn out because they can’t teach due to lack of equipment. For example, my physics teacher complained how the lab was incredibly empty.
4. The students. They have no passion to learn anymore, it could be due to the lack of dopamine studying gives you, and instead the fear. It can also be the environments. This one is a little hard to fix, as some are too far stuck to their habits of scrolling (hell, TikTok was out for 6? Years and I’m struggling to read because of it [im improving XD], and I’m not 7 years old.)
I’m missing a few points, but this is my take.
by Niyako; ; Report
On 3. I never mentioned that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That's actually a myth, it's just that people have survivorship bias and they only look at the few families who have been the exceptions, e.g. medici's, rockefeller's, rothschilds, J.P.Morgans. Multi-generational wealth is entirely lost 50% of the time within 1 successor generation, and 80% of the time within 2. Businesses fail all the time, and those who once had capital go broke.
Don't get me wrong, greedy crony capitalists that are lobbying/tricking government and even worse... unelected agencies like the EPA to kill their competition, buy them out, prevent any new competition from being able to form, and then charging insane prices while providing worse products because they know we have no other options is the problem.
But those same greedy crony capitalists are trying to trick everyone into thinking that capitalism/free market in general is bad. Which they want to leverage sociologically so that they will secure their power/status permanently, while not having to actually take any risks into R&D or offering competitive pricing and hurting their margins/risking their careers/wealth.
On equipment, teachers that taught the kids who became the people who designed and built skyscrapers, and turned america into the hyper inventive, industrial powerhouse it was did not have computers, calculators, projectors, or even lightbulbs. The ciriculum back then was also MUCH harder than it is now.
Also they used to not even have highschool. 8th grade was it.
(So now when you hear "all he had was an 8th grade education" it hits a little different ;P )
Now just to be a teacher you HAVE to have a college degree, like you said they have no passion to teach, and the students have no passion to learn. Money doesn't solve this problem. Part of the reason people's mood is so bad right now is because since 2020ish, prices on pretty much all common goods have gone up over 200%, my property tax alone is as much as some people's monthly rent now, because the government says the value of my home is now 200% higher. The schools have been saying "we need more money" every year since I was born and often times, in my area, they get the levy passed, yet everything seems to still decline. Every local, state, and federal agency/organization/department/etc.
by X; ; Report