Understanding Ballerina Farm: Brand vs. Identity

Pandora's Box is open. We will never go backwards in terms of technology. Social media literacy is media literacy. There are more eyeballs on small screens scrolling through influencers than people reading political news or watching television shows. Influencers have more of an impact on people than most politicians and traditional celebrities. We need to talk about how to talk about them. Today we are joined by media critic and writer Caroline Burke about the different ways to parse the social media industrial complex to make it healthier for us. Our brains are not up to the task of dealing with the level of manipulation happening on the socials.

We dive into:

• The lack of literacy in Congress around social media
• Why Ballerina Farm should be called a brand, not a person. Also, let's remember that its followers outnumber the population of many small countries.
• Why does our brain feel like it is overheating when we are on social media for too long
• Why don't we teach tech literacy in schools?
• How our parasocial Instagram relationships make us buy more stuff
• Why is jealousy inherently a moral negative?

You can follow Caro on Instagram here.

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