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by colonel_panic 4978 days ago
Google doesn't teach your kids the narrative structure against which they measure their own lives.
2 comments

(a) Neither does Disney, (b) Google controls the Internet, which is scarier.
"Google controls the Internet"?

I use a lot of non-Google owned web sites and services. Can you support this assertion?

Most users of the Internet are dependent on Google to find anything on the Internet.
Nevertheless, you could flip the switch and turn Google off, and people would be able to find things on the internet just fine.
Just not true.

There are people, a LOT of people, who literally think Google IS the internet. If they can't get to Google in a web browser, they think the internet is broken; "I can't get to my internet!" And they know of no other portal thereto.

Just ask some folks over age 55 or so. You'll find this user mindset is very common.

Sure, but it will take 1min of evening news to tell them google is now spelled bing.
You? Me? Yes we could find things. However it would have a massive influence on how the internet works.

It's like Bear Grylls or some other "survivalist" who knows how to pick berries in the woods and make a shelter laughing at the idea that a breakdown in modern argiculture would have an effect on the world.

"People" as in "some number of people somewhere"? Sure.

But people in general? I strongly doubt it. Hang out with some "non-technical people" (they will often helpfully describe themselves this way for you) while they use the computer sometime. If they didn't have Google, they might be able to get to Facebook, but that would be pretty much the boundary of the Internet for them.

You don't think one of the top news stories is going to be 'omigod google is down, type yahoo.com at the top'?
Every browser has a built in search feature, which offers a variety of providers. IE doesn't default to Google.

I'm not sure why people here are acting as if Bing, Yahoo etc. don't exist and don't offer a decent service that would be adequate for the internet to continue functioning without Google.

Strong disagree.
Maybe, but who is going to flip that switch? Until and unless someone does, the dependency remains.
So the obsession many young girls have with Disney princesses, sometimes carrying it into adulthood (that makes for some very interesting conversations), has no influence on the narrative structure those girls are using to evaluate their lives?
No. The Disney Princess "narrative" simply fits into preexisting gender norms. There was no "Disney Princess" culture in the 1950s. If you created a chart showing the trendlines of female mobilization into the workforce (and particularly the "professions") and the revenue extracted from Disney Princess offerings, you'd have a concrete reason to question the assumption you're making here.
FYI Disney's princess culture arguably dates all the way back to 1937, with Snow White.
Anticipating this very objection, I evoked the graph of Disney's revenue from Princess properties to further carry the point.
the narrative structure that people respond to is objective and possibly derived from ancient myths. disney follows this structure rather than invent it.