Comment on Is America headed for an age of dumb phones?
bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 1 week agoBI is one of the biggest culprits of trying to push social trends in a ridiculous, serflike direction, and then they wonder why their ‘prestige’ has dropped to the level of rag.
CarnivorousCouch@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Genuine question - can you speak more on how this article would promote a social trend in a “serflike” direction? I’ve been thinking about switching to a “dumb phone” for the same reasons as the person in the article, and I’ve seen it as a potential reclamation of my time and attention to the present moment.
BI definitely publishes a lot of nonsense, but I feel like I’m not fully understanding your meaning.
bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 1 week ago
It just seems like a good chunk of the articles I see from them are stories promoting going without, dealing with less, and downgrading lifestyles in response to cost of living, but doing so in a “feel good” sort of way, kind of like a life hack in a sense. They just seem to keep pumping out stories that portray families and people in their 30s to 40s that are downgrading into small homes or even trailers, eating next to nothing, or forgoing basic necessities as a way to somewhat normalize not having shit but still working your ass off, or at least that’s what I’ve perceived from it.
Like with this article, they promote it as some kind of performance-enhancing life hack to not have an internet-centric phone, yet the person on the article is carrying three of them for different purposes. It just seems ridiculous. If you want to spend less time on your phone, uninstall the time wasting apps, set do not disturb on a per app basis for the ones you keep, and make a conscious effort to put your phone away. It just seems like a clumsy solution for not having self control.
CarnivorousCouch@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I appreciate the thoughtful response - I haven’t noticed that trend specifically with BI, but have seen the general tendency you’re describing in media at large. For this specific article, I find the concept of a dumb phone more intriguing than “Lifehack: Eat Gruel!” Type stuff – see my other comment in this thread if you’re curious about why – but also did roll my eyes at the person who has three such devices for different purposes.
Thanks for elaborating!
bobs_monkey@lemm.ee 1 week ago
No worries! It may be exposure bias, and I’ll be honest that the only BI articles I read come from here and there certainly is a certain slant. But from where I’m sitting, it really does seem like there’s a coordinated effort among so called ‘culture journalism’ articles such as this to push a certain normalcy of nothing I’m that I can’t help but wonder if there’s something funny about it. Perhaps it’s a sort of tin foil hat theory, but prescient in a really stupid way. This article in particular isn’t exactly a defining example, but more of a contribution to that nature. I dunno, I probably need to go to bed lol.