these people are obsessed with productivity and competition - meaning the workers aren't working hard enough for the vested interests which fund them and sponsor all their verbiage. heaven forbid that people waste time on phones or having fun! how will we COMPETE in the GLOBAL GAME against our enemies?
nevermind that, by all accounts, the CCP have huge issues of their own with chinese students playing (western) computer games to excess or young workers dropping out of society to ‘lie down’ all day procrastinating on social media. the CCP just banned video games for all students, i think, or restricted them to one day per week or something, in a similar moral-political panic. perhaps not a good look to try and match their rhetoric, breitbart.
maybe they should think a little harder about why working/living conditions are so poor in their own countries that people are driven to spend half their lives seeking distraction and escapism. a healthy, engaged and contented populace don't spend $1500 a month on mobile games.
this sort of moral jeremiad is pretty timeless. 'the lower orders have too much cakes and ale!' the paranoiac twist, that somehow the CCP are using phone apps to subvert democracy or take over people's minds, is straight out of 'the manchurian candidate'. there's definitely privacy/surveillance worries about any sort of foreign-directed tech, but to turn it into a matter of 'distraction' and 'productivity' is another thing entirely. it reminds me of the signs stuck up in amazon warehouses blaring, in all caps, that workers SHOULD NOT LOOK AT THEIR PHONES WHEN CLOCKED IN.
Last edited by uziq (2022-01-04 04:03:24)
