Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

Anything you experience may push you in a direction with some magnitude, but we tend to overestimate the magnitude and mispredict the direction because we’re worried about the wellbeing of kids. Think “violent video games create school schootings.” In reality, kids have to deal with a lot of real things in life that are hard, an abusive parent or bullies at school, but those realities are harder to deal with so we distract ourselves worrying about violent video games. At the end of the day, it’s a recording on a screen, which is very different from a traumatic reality because you can just turn it off.

I'll offer the following speculation:

Virtual reality simulates physical reality.

In some cases, like violent video games, they assuage traumas. Whether it's a recording on a screen or not, can our brains tell the difference?

Something is going on, spooky and subtle in the mind that makes whatever is on the screen meaningful to us.

I don't want to get us trapped in this false interpretation that in the year 2025 there is a difference between how human beings are affected in the physical and digital world. To be frank, it's stupid to think like this, meaning that it's an insult to the intelligence of the person who thinks this way and it needs to be called out as such in order to encourage them to think critically about the matter.

If this whole interaction is just some woopdy doo, willy nilly, be that as it may sort of engagement with media, what compels us then to entertain the things that we don't (or don't want to) attribute to the hard things in life?

I'm going to assume your gender and your age to some degree here:

Middle-aged men have a tendency to Wednesday Night Sitcom Dad their way out of confronting things that bring their own vulnerabilities into question and collectively make them accountable for figuring out what to do about these things, especially if it comes at the cost of comfort that they're trying to preserve that are the accessories to their vulnerabilities.

What we're discussing isn't as simple as the "close your eyes to avoid cyberbullying" quips of yore: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/tyler-the-creators-cyber-bull... (in which I make a more blatant attempt at guessing which generation you belong to and consequently expose my own).

Close: male but not middle aged

Our brains can’t tell the difference, but that’s not what I said. What I said is that it can be turned off. Social media cyberbullying comes along with entanglements that keep you on the site. For a shock video, I think the suburban dad has a point. To be clear, if someone came up to me and said they had really struggled with what they’d seen in a shock video as a kid and that it was really messing with them, I wouldn’t dismiss that or make fun of them or something. It’s just that the opposite has been my experience and the experience of those who I’m close to.

My friend (we're friends now, and that makes you middle-aged by association):

I hope it didn't seem like I was advancing premises that you never proposed outright. I was derived that premise on my own. I take full ownership of the words that you put in my mouth by the virtue of what you did say being thought-provoking.

And I ask you, if our brains can't tell the difference then what does turning it off actually achieve? If your self esteem or your sheer will to live is broken offline, going online does not solve this problem on its own. I'm speaking unconditionally and not in a way that can be made subject to circumstance.

If you feel ugly, or feel like dying, or feel anything, in a way that resonates with you at the very core of your being (and I know, I know, who's to say a supernatural "core of being" exists right?) then it's a wrap for you. It's going to take about as much effort to redeem yourself as it would if you were physically harmed in the street.

At the end, I don't think that what I'm saying is spectacular for anyone who has basic qualities of self-awareness and empathy (and I'm not saying that you're not one of them) or psychology (of which I am no savant and would even follow your lead to some extent if you have any trails to offer).

The point of contention is a matter of belief—ideologically and morally—and the depths that we're willing to go to scrutinize what gives us pleasure and why. In a way I think that this runs counterintuitive to the notions of "civil liberty" that pervade modern thought and any attempt to distinguish right from wrong on a scale greater than the individual makes the powder-wigged patriot in us quiver in our britches.

So there's that. I'm tapped.