Instagram is the most toxic mainstream online space of them all. It's where people go to prove that they have mental health issues related to body image and materialism. Check in with /r/instagramreality sometime. It's easy to laugh, but truly, I hope these people get help.
It's not fair to say that all of Instagram is toxic. I've managed to curate an Instagram feed that is almost 100% jewelers and watchmakers - about as toxic as I get is Diet Prada. But when you get points for being pretty, toxicity will certainly be created.
The internet has taken the social influence people have on each other and magnified, intensified and filtered it so grotesquely. Is it net evil? Does it need regulation? Is it salvageable? I'm so grateful there are still smaller places (like hubski!!) where that magnification is less apparent and influential. On a lighter note, A friend of mine worked as a flight attendant and told me to just treat the ground staff well and politely ask for an upgrade (rather than fraudulently demand one) but it hasn't paid off for me yet. I did get an unrequested upgrade on a short haul flight to Hong Kong once. Business class was about 50% occupied and it was so pleasant to just get randomly bumped like that.
pun score +1 I think about this a lot. The internet is inevitable, for one thing. How do we regulate the very nature of an open internet, which will always have an available channel for society's craziest folks to link up and fan each other's flames of stupid? Apparently, human beings naturally form online echo chambers to most efficiently delude ourselves. Pretty much every major world government has capitalized on this fact by waging radicalization campaigns against the citizens of their enemy countries. Major companies attempt astroturfing operations on social media. Someone is using a shirtless picture of me from highschool to catfish. People often don't have enough critical thinking skills to determine whether information they come across online is true or not. It seems entirely too common to struggle with discerning whether information is an opinion or factual, even when opinion articles clearly state as such. Although it has enabled commerce, technological advancement, entertainment, etc., the internet has completely upended the old information infrastructure. In the now-distant past, reconfiguration of this infrastructure only happened gradually, and it was easier for people to ascribe reputation and trust to news organizations with established track records of good work. Meanwhile, folks getting their news on facebook are currently playing a game of telephone, injecting human error on top of bad actors inserting propaganda into the mix. How are we gonna regulate against negligence? From these standpoints, the internet seems like a failure. At a species-wide scale, we aren't socially mature enough to handle the technology.Is it net evil?
Does it need regulation? Is it salvageable?
Unequivocally yes. But the only way out is up. I figure they don't upgrade everyone that asks because otherwise they'd be putting everyone in business when they have space and that would defeat the purpose. But it's nice when it happens.Is it net evil? Does it need regulation? Is it salvageable?
I did get an unrequested upgrade on a short haul flight to Hong Kong once.
I love the influencer bullshit because it's basically a bunch of attention whores leveraging the fact that manufacturers and vendors have no fucking clue how advertising works anymore. MVMT, kickstarter whore brand of bullshit watches that was purchased for $100m by Movado, spends fuckin' $30m a year on influencers despite the fact that all evidence is that influencers accomplish exactly fuckall. Nonetheless, they have an InstaWhore pipeline directly on their page. A million dollars for this: That said, some guided speculation from the article: "- Did Ng fabricate the email?" Whelp, based on this passage: I'ma go with yeppers! "- Did she accidentally email an incorrect address, where the recipient played an elaborate prank on her? If so, how did they get the real name of an actual airline employee?" Ms. Ng professes to be a former employee of Cathay Pacific's parent company: I would hypothesize that she forged her boss' boss' email because she was formerly internal and is now external. In other words, she knew enough as to what she could get away with, but not enough to know she wouldn't. "- Is it even possible, as Ng thinks, that the airline sent her the email and then later claimed it was a forgery? What would they gain from this?" This is a woman who moved from Canada to Hong Kong for a job... that didn't work out after four months. "Left on my own self-accord" is the over-elaborate phrasing of a person who doth protest too much. "- Did the person who sent her a response go rogue, and then deny it when the company asked for clarification? Why would the company claim the email didn't originate from it's servers in that case?" Occam's razor doesn't cut along the grain on that one. "It does seem like the company overreacted by banning her from the flight - a forged email that says "we might give you a business class upgrade if one is available" doesn't even seem like grounds for fraud investigation unless the company never does that or the gate agent knew the person who had supposedly signed the email and followed up with them." ...but it sure seems appropriate for a company that invited part of their social media crew to find another job only to have that former crewmember forge credentials to score a business class upgrade on a transpacific flight.In response to this email, Ng made a crucial mistake in her self-advocacy mission. Not only did she not provide the requested information, she told the executive that she failed to see “the relevance of this request.” Then she announced that all further communication should go through her own legal counsel.
I moved to Hong Kong to work for Swire Resources as a Brand Manager in June 2018. I resigned from the role in November 2018 on my own self-accord. You can see that both my employee profile and reviews were extremely stellar and I received strong recommendations from my Director/HR. You can Google my background to also see that back in Canada; I won the Top 20 Under 20 National Award, given to young Canadians who have shown innovation, leadership, and achievement in society. The above speaks to my character.
This is the impression I got reading the article. You'd have to be a bit wild to try and board business class with only a fake letter to back you up. I feel that somebody screwed up at the airline. Maybe somebody deleted it on their end to avoid losing their job because they upgraded someone without doing research? The security team would have to go through a lot of email accounts and even find potentially deleted messages. And who knows if this influencer has the tech skills to extract embedded data from email messages.Is it even possible, as Ng thinks, that the airline sent her the email and then later claimed it was a forgery? What would they gain from this?
I dig Instagram. I follow motorcycle builders, rugby players, hot goth chick makeup tutorials (because I love to see how they create those looks), and my friends who have kids. I loved it originally, because it had a clever discovery algorithm that helped me find new content. After FB bought it, they dumped the good algorithm and put the shitty Facebook one on (which was copped directly from Pandora: here's content only from 5 friends, with one oddball thrown in at random). But... it's got nice pictures of motorcycles. And peeps into the life of my friends' kids and some rugby players. It's good brainless scrolling when I need it, and there's no Trump there.
It's ridonkadonk to expect an upgrade due to social media clout but the concept is hardly new. My brother got upgraded to business class on a flight to Hong Kong because he knew my uncle. That was it. He just knew the dude who routinely flew business class. The flight attendant was just like heeey come up here! Pretty wack but there's always been a different set of rules. They're just being expanded to the social media generation. But the second you try to defraud a company for any reason you can expect a lifetime ban.