Weekend Reads (Oct 7): QAnon, Google, TikTok, Netflix
Recommended weekend reading October 7, 2023.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
What do you do when your son becomes cult leader promoting bizarre QAnon-related conspiracy theories and prophecies?
These false beliefs are a symbol and symptom of a broader ideology that thrives on anger, disillusionment and loneliness and is fueled by politically and financially motivated opportunists who have weaponized the community-building capabilities of social media.
Michael Protzman got swept up in this alternate reality.
Depending on who you ask, Protzman was either a victim whose convictions and worldview were so radically altered by what he was reading on the internet that it cost him his family, his home and his business. Or he was a manipulative opportunist who conned his followers into believing a warped QAnon-style biblical prophecy that tore them away from their families – some of whom believe he spawned a cult.
One interesting/troubling detail: The article notes a possible correlation between the rise of conspiracy theories like QAnon and a decline in community and offline forms of socialization.
Related: Conspiracy theories are attractive, even comforting, because they offer simple explanations for complex situations (like global pandemics).
Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman were awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their research into mRNA, which became a critical component for the COVID-19 vaccine. But as this New York Times profile of Karikó reveals, their research had been overlooked and dismissed for years.
For her entire career, Dr. Kariko has focused on messenger RNA, or mRNA — the genetic script that carries DNA instructions to each cell’s protein-making machinery. She was convinced mRNA could be used to instruct cells to make their own medicines, including vaccines.
But for many years her career at the University of Pennsylvania was fragile. She migrated from lab to lab, relying on one senior scientist after another to take her in. She never made more than $60,000 a year.
[…]
Dr. Kariko’s struggles to stay afloat in academia have a familiar ring to scientists. She needed grants to pursue ideas that seemed wild and fanciful. She did not get them, even as more mundane research was rewarded.
“When your idea is against the conventional wisdom that makes sense to the star chamber, it is very hard to break out,” said Dr. David Langer, a neurosurgeon who has worked with Dr. Kariko.
Dr. Kariko’s ideas about mRNA were definitely unorthodox. Increasingly, they also seem to have been prescient.
Megan Gray recently accused Google of undermining accurate search results in the pursuit of profit.
Google likely alters queries billions of times a day in trillions of different variations. Here’s how it works. Say you search for “children’s clothing.” Google converts it, without your knowledge, to a search for “NIKOLAI-brand kidswear,” making a behind-the-scenes substitution of your actual query with a different query that just happens to generate more money for the company, and will generate results you weren’t searching for at all. It’s not possible for you to opt out of the substitution. If you don’t get the results you want, and you try to refine your query, you are wasting your time. This is a twisted shopping mall you can’t escape.
Why would Google want to do this? First, the generated results to the latter query are more likely to be shopping-oriented, triggering your subsequent behavior much like the candy display at a grocery store’s checkout. Second, that latter query will automatically generate the keyword ads placed on the search engine results page by stores like TJ Maxx, which pay Google every time you click on them. In short, it’s a guaranteed way to line Google’s pockets.
On the surface, this sounds plausible because, hey, everyone knows that Google’s search results ain’t quite what they used to be. And who doesn’t like to believe the worst about Big Tech? But as Nick Heer points out, there currently isn’t much evidence to support Gray’s claims. Until there is, that word “likely” in the above quote is doing some heavy lifting. (Indeed, Wired eventually took down Gray’s article because “the story [did] not meet our editorial standards,” hence the Archive.org link.)
Creators and wellness influencers who peddle “health” products are getting a big boost from TikTok’s algorithms.
Social media platforms like TikTok have always been filled with snake oil salesmen and wellness influencers pushing questionable cleanses and protocols. But the US rollout of the TikTok Shop in September has shined a spotlight on how dubious online wellness advice and TikTok’s trend cycles work together to find new audiences, and how they repackage ineffective or dangerous health remedies that have been around for years. Creators shilling parasite cleanses, detox drinks, miracle cures, and promoting oils and tinctures with overbroad health claims have all been pushed onto the For You Pages of TikTok users in recent weeks.
Formerly part of Christ and Pop Culture, Seeing & Believing is a new site dedicated to “searching for the sacred on screen.” In this introductory post, Kevin McLenithan outlines their approach to film criticism.
We are uninterested in imposing an ill-fitting ideological rubric onto the films and television we write about. Nor do we want to use those films or TV as a simple pretext for indulging our own personal hobbyhorses. One of our critical lodestars is thoughtful curiosity about what a film is trying to be and do. By paying close attention, we hope to discern how it helps the world grow (or how it fails to do anything of the sort) and maybe grow a little ourselves in the process. Hopefully, the writing that comes out of this pursuit inspires something similar in you, too.
I’m excited to see what Kevin and Sarah Welch-Larson do with their site.
Alison Willmore sings the praises of Richard Linklater’s Hit Man — and worries what it means that Netflix has purchased the rights after its success at various film festivals.
There’s a unique pleasure to having an actor sweep you off your feet the way Powell does in Hit Man, especially when you’re aware that other people around you are having the same experience — screen infatuation as a communal experience. To not have that be a significant part of how Hit Man is seen feels like a loss, though that’s not the only reason my heart sank when I saw the Netflix news. The service is the biggest platform a movie can get, in theory, with subscribers in the hundreds of millions. But in practice, that doesn’t translate to guaranteed attention, certainly not the sort that comes from a longer release arc. Netflix is still, for now, in the business of chasing Oscars, but it remains a challenge for those awards hopefuls to not just get lost in the streamer’s sea of offerings. The theatrical releases they do get feel largely ceremonial because they’re simply not a company priority — they’re a gesture before something gets dropped onto streaming where whatever traction it gets doesn’t tend to last long.
Chris Hubbs finds value in the “ministry” of good men like Patrick Stewart and LeVar Burton, regardless of their religious beliefs.
Whether Stewart attracted good people or just rubbed off on them I don’t know, but the men who acted around Stewart have also continued to display honorable attributes long after the show was done. Wil Wheaton, who played the teenager Wesley Crusher on the show, recounts in his memoir how Stewart and Jonathan Frakes (Commander Will Riker) were men who showed him what a real father should be like after Wheaton’s own parents abused him. And then there’s Levar Burton, who for the seven years of ST:TNG, and for 16 more years around it, hosted Reading Rainbow, encouraging a love of books and reading to children via public television.
None of these men went on to build great empires; none needed to play (or try to be, in real life) overly macho men. And yet here, decades later, they are beloved by so many simply because they have maintained integrity in their lives as men of gentleness and humility.
I’ve often thought of Jean-Luc Picard as a perfect fictional male role model. Sure, he was stern and standoffish in The Next Generation’s early seasons, but he was always clear-eyed when it came to things like truth, justice, fairness, and dignity. Plus, he could be a bad-ass and drop some serious wisdom like this scene, which I probably think about on a weekly basis.
As for Hubbs’ “heretical” comments and what The Gospel Coalition and other evangelical outlets might say about Stewart et al.’s goodness, I simply chalk it up to common grace and choose to celebrate it wherever I see it.
Essen Spiel is the world’s largest board game convention, and the folks at Dicebreaker will be liveblogging all of the news and releases.
With so many games to see and only four days to scour the show floor, it’s always a challenge to cover everything. We’re only human, after all. While we reckon we do a pretty good job of picking out the highlights of every Spiel, this year we’re trying something new to give you an even greater look at the most exciting games in Essen and spread the spotlight even wider.
Alongside our more in-depth news articles and hands-on previews, this year we’ll be hosting a running liveblog for each day of Essen Spiel 2023. The Dicebreaker team will be posting about the promising games they’ve spotted on their travels around the Messe Essen, as well as providing short impressions of the games that we play during the weekend.
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