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by ndriscoll 695 days ago
That world does still exist though: just don't engage with those platforms. If everyone were on heroin all the time, it doesn't mean you can't exist in the world without doing heroin yourself. You can just... not do it.

My 3 year old daughter picks up my guitar and strums it and makes up a song about not wanting to do bed time. She doesn't need exposure to consumer culture to create; it's innate. In fact she's already got some Wesley Willis vibes going without ever having heard him.
1 comments
dnpp123 695 days ago
> You can just... not do it.

Sure you can keep your kids away in a farm away from any human interactions too. Or in a basement if you live in a city.

> it's innate

Playing guitar is innate to your 3 year old daughter? Hope one day I'll listen to her album with chords & rhythms no one has ever heard before! /s

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ndriscoll 695 days ago
She goes to parks, library story hour, gymnastics, soccer, and pre-school/playgroup. None of it involves Meta/X/TikTok/Google, and all of them have other kids. People still do things in the real world. I see older kids in some of those places too. I suspect that doing things has a natural tendency to select yourself into a social group that does things. Want to not be part of crowd that sits in a room shooting up? Go outside and you'll find your like-minded group.

Obviously she's not going to go through life having never heard any music, but I don't think you'd really need to hear someone else to be able to walk up to a piano, press some keys (perhaps even simultaneously), and think "hey, that sounds nice". It's pretty easy to discover a bunch of chords by accident. Rhythm is even easier to make up your own thing. Whether no one has ever heard it is irrelevant to whether you need to have heard someone else to make it up.

She doesn't need to make an album for you. She can create for her and for us. You and the people in your life can create for you. That's kind of the point of not buying into consumer culture.

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dnpp123 695 days ago
A piano which has keys ordered in a certain order influences any creation process.

Nobody exists in a vacuum, we're all consumers of the culture which surrounds us. I think you're confusing consumption and mass consumption.

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ndriscoll 695 days ago
Okay, but modern "social" media is designed to do nothing but funnel you into mass consumption, both on that platform and in the sense of pushing products on you to buy (their actual goal). They are not centered around enabling you to share with your friends, family, and community. They're an entirely vacuous experience, and you don't need them (indeed, you'd probably benefit from not interacting with them) to be creative or social.
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dnpp123 695 days ago
Depends of your use. For example, a local fedivers instance can fit a lot of cases not targeted at mass consumption.
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