I'd ascribe much of the increase in trans identity- particularly in those born female- to adolescent hypersuggestibility exposed to an unprecedentedly hypermediated environment capable of highlighting subjects in oversimplified ways that lead them to exaggerated fad popularity or fad unpopularity- while downplaying other more important t…
I'd ascribe much of the increase in trans identity- particularly in those born female- to adolescent hypersuggestibility exposed to an unprecedentedly hypermediated environment capable of highlighting subjects in oversimplified ways that lead them to exaggerated fad popularity or fad unpopularity- while downplaying other more important topics or ignoring them entirely, because they lack clickbait value. So we get endless threads of preening exhibitionists performing their narcissistic complaints on Twitter and organizing into mutual support cults to reify claims like gender dysphoria, while minimal attention is paid to stories with zero photogenic values, like nutrient pollution and oxygen starvation leading to dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, and even less attention is paid to soil conservation.
The Internet Era is in its toddler stage, and maturity can only be achieved over time. The question is whether it can mature quickly enough- whether human civilization will make it that far, or whether toxic modernity will lead the entire project to disintegrate from a combination of unchecked self-indulgences and failures of imagination, such as despairing apathy and paranoid militarism.
I'm hoping that the biological effects from being saturated in the byproducts of disposability and instant-gratification convenience won't be found to be too terribly severe. We certainly are lucky that petrochemical wax compounds- the plastics- don't appear to be all that toxic. If they were, we'd have been ravaged by chemically induced plagues and escalating cancer incidence by now, considering their all-pervading presence in animal and plant life forms. Fortunately, epidemiology statistics don't bear that out; the most common compounds found in microplastics and nanoplastics, polyethylene and polypropylene, seem to be fairly inert. But the polluting synthetic byproducts of modern organic chemistry definitely have some deleterious effects, related to dose and the vulnerability of individual circumstance. I think that endocrine disrupting chemicals may very possibly explain the quite recent collective drop in measured testosterone levels and sperm count that's been found worldwide.
I'd ascribe much of the increase in trans identity- particularly in those born female- to adolescent hypersuggestibility exposed to an unprecedentedly hypermediated environment capable of highlighting subjects in oversimplified ways that lead them to exaggerated fad popularity or fad unpopularity- while downplaying other more important topics or ignoring them entirely, because they lack clickbait value. So we get endless threads of preening exhibitionists performing their narcissistic complaints on Twitter and organizing into mutual support cults to reify claims like gender dysphoria, while minimal attention is paid to stories with zero photogenic values, like nutrient pollution and oxygen starvation leading to dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, and even less attention is paid to soil conservation.
The Internet Era is in its toddler stage, and maturity can only be achieved over time. The question is whether it can mature quickly enough- whether human civilization will make it that far, or whether toxic modernity will lead the entire project to disintegrate from a combination of unchecked self-indulgences and failures of imagination, such as despairing apathy and paranoid militarism.
I'm hoping that the biological effects from being saturated in the byproducts of disposability and instant-gratification convenience won't be found to be too terribly severe. We certainly are lucky that petrochemical wax compounds- the plastics- don't appear to be all that toxic. If they were, we'd have been ravaged by chemically induced plagues and escalating cancer incidence by now, considering their all-pervading presence in animal and plant life forms. Fortunately, epidemiology statistics don't bear that out; the most common compounds found in microplastics and nanoplastics, polyethylene and polypropylene, seem to be fairly inert. But the polluting synthetic byproducts of modern organic chemistry definitely have some deleterious effects, related to dose and the vulnerability of individual circumstance. I think that endocrine disrupting chemicals may very possibly explain the quite recent collective drop in measured testosterone levels and sperm count that's been found worldwide.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/18/health/sperm-counts-decline-debate/index.html
That's modernity. It's always something. You gotta drink upstream from the herd.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fendo.2021.706532/full
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8395949/