Posts from Semigoodlooking in thread „Famous people supporting political issues“

Quote from JAN

The problem is, that most famous do not have a superior IQ I guess, so their ideas or thoughts are not better than any other persons!

A lot of the famous would be better of keeping the piehole shut.....Roger Waters is a good example, or any rapper or popstars in general....

The low IQ argument (although you may have been saying it flippantly) is something I have thought about, and it is interesting even if I have not come to any big conclusions.

Firstly, there is some observational evidence that shows people who are locked into their path in life earlier tend to struggle with critical thinking and analysis. For example, sports stars are well known for being - for want of a better word - stupid. Their whole development is centered on becoming elite in one specific field. For many actors this is a similar path.

It's a generalisation that I have not quite come to terms with yet so don't want to go too deep on it. Of course, if your path was centered on something that involved critical thinking (like physics) then your world view may be more expansive.

However, there is no way all people fall under this and some people in the world of celebrity must have a grasp on current affairs and knowledge. The question is where are they? You mention Roger Waters and for me he fits in with Robert De Niro. Someone who is reputed as making thoughtful art does not equate to having something thoughtful to say on other subjects. It's got nothing to do with whether I agree with them or not, they offer such low effort arguments and deal with slogans. They don't even realize Trump saw what they were all doing in pursuing self advertising and seeking approval and took it to the 10th degree and became president off it.

Edit to add that having an IQ higher than the next person does not neccesarily make your opinion on a given subject more valuable.

Quote from Splinter

Social media has a lot to answer for, especially Instagram which is now the new Facebook.

You're right about Instagram, but only to a degree. Instagram has become the platform for teens and celebrities, so it is definately the platform where they are pushing their views.

However, the celebrities pushing opinions are rarely basing the information on their own views. For the most part they are following memes (I mean meme in the truest sense), which are still largely pushed on Twitter and to a lesser degree Facebook.

I guess what I am saying, in terms of political discourse, Twitter and Facebook are still far more influential, and dangerous. Celebrites will take issues (whatever the meme issues are that week) and often conflate them before summarizing them in their "own view" on Instagram.

Social media does have a lot to answer for, but if you removed Instagram, the problem would not improve. If you removed Twitter it arguably would. Or at least until the environment around political discourse moved to another platform (so, yeah, about 2 minutes).

On the actual subject of the thread, rarely have the celebrities had something interesting to say. I watched the actors round table from last week where De Niro could not help to push his political agenda. Now, I agree with De Niro in terms of his general politics, but every time I have heard him talk about it he comes across as empty with little to say. Of course, we think of him as this legend of film and automatically believe he must also be extremely thoughtful.

Another example is Ben Affleck attacking Sam Harris on Bill Maher's show. On many, many subjects I don't agree with Harris (although I do on some) but rate him or not his whole schtick is discourse. I will let you decide the merit of his intellectualism, but the point is he enters into debate. Affleck instead believed debate means to attack and spout ill-conceived arguments. It was embarrasing and highlighted to me that for the most part, celebrities should keep their mouth shut.

Having said that, Trump was a celebrity and got quite far by not keeping his mouth shut, so, who knows.