## vlogbrothers: "You're not addicted to content, you're starving for information"[^1] ## John Stewart: "If you go to a restaurant and the food is delicious, it's because they probably like add a little extra butter, or they throw a little salt in there, a little umami in there, maybe they throw a little sugar in the marinara, you know what I mean? And you eat it and you're like, 'wow, that's decadent and beautiful. And I would like to come back here.' But it's still within the realm of what we understand as the earthly tricks we play on each other. But there are guys in lab coats who work for Kraft, who were figuring out how to take the gland of like a beaver's anus and turn it into strawberry flavoring. And then there's a bunch of other dudes that are checking the consistency of it, and they're designing it to get past the prehistoric reptilian wiring of your brain so that you no longer understand that two bags of chips and a quart of ice cream might not be good for you in the long run. And social media is that. What we do is we communicate, and we sometimes use hyperbole, and we sometimes use puns, and satire, and like totally and all and parity to convey something. And it's cheating a little bit. But social media is ultra processed speech in the same way that Doritos are food. It's designed to bypass the parts of your brain that keep you off it, that keep you from diving into those holes, from radicalizing yourself. That's what you're up against. They are designing these things in the lab to bypass our ability to collaborate and cooperate."[^2] --- Living by a [[garden ethos]] means living from your own home grown, nutritious information. [^1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9euKCrTyMEc [^2]: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/tnyradiohour/articles/jon-stewart-on-the-perilous-state-of-late-night-and-why-america-fell-for-donald-trump