Reading Time: 8 minutes In the late 2000s, research blossomed around our use of online avatars. Did our videogame icons and social media profiles represent our actual selves, our ideal selves, or something else entirely? And did they have a reciprocal impact, a “Proteus effect” that transformed self-perception? Did we change in the real world based how our online […]
sociology
Posted inSexuality
Male shame and the purveyors of pseudo-masculinity
Reading Time: 3 minutes If you’ve ever been to a strip club on a weekend night, you have likely witnessed a mouth-breathing, hyper-masculinized, and liquored-up bachelor party. It’s why I loathed working weekends as a stripper. In fact, in the latter years of my career, I avoided them altogether if it could be helped. I made it through more […]
Posted inDeep Dive
What makes ‘skeptical’ kids grow up to be God-believing adults?
Reading Time: 8 minutes If kids are the savvy, skeptical creatures that Will Gervais proposes in his recent essay, why do endless hordes of them in each generation turn into conservative American adults who uncritically worship invisible gods with zero objective verification? And what makes these same supposedly mature folks end up uncritically adoring visible but damaged demigods on […]
Posted inCulture
Sociologist: It’s called ‘culture war’ for a reason
Reading Time: 7 minutes On May 2nd, 2022, the Haven, Kansas city council voted to remove decals from police cars that said “In God We Trust.” They did so in a sensible effort to recognize the separation of church and state. Sixteen days later, after an intense backlash from conservative citizens in Haven, the city council reversed that decision. […]
Posted inTrue Story
Wherever we might ‘sonder’, there are microcosms we will never know
Reading Time: 8 minutes Around 5 a.m. every day, a man in his late fifties boards a non-integrated bus just north of Medellín, which takes around 45 minutes in early morning traffic to reach his stop, a 20-minute walk to a plot of public space where he will set up shop for the morning and midday. A non-integrated bus […]
Posted inSociology
How dehumanizing language fueled the Satanic Temple arson attack
Reading Time: 6 minutes On June 10, 2022, an arsonist attempted to burn down the headquarters of The Satanic Temple (TST) in Salem, Massachusetts. Forty-two-year-old Daniel Damien Lucey took a bus from Chelsea, then walked to the building, arriving around 10pm. He was recorded on a doorbell camera pouring lighter fluid on the front porch and igniting it before […]
Posted inPsychology
Vladimir Putin as the ultimate authoritarian leader
Reading Time: 7 minutes Recently, Elon Musk challenged Vladimir Putin to single combat–with the winner taking Ukraine. It was a dumb joke, for all that Musk claimed to be “absolutely serious” about it. But it caught my attention because the person he challenged happens to be one of the biggest authoritarians on the planet. That kind of challenge means something to an authoritarian that a non-authoritarian doesn’t quite understand.
Posted inAnalysis
Does religion really improve educational outcomes?
Reading Time: 4 minutes Horwitz makes the claim that religiosity is beneficial for working-class young men when it comes to their educational attainment. The claims in the article are clear illustrations of two logical fallacies – faulty generalization and cherry-picking.
Posted inRacial justice
It’s tough to be a white supremacist leader these days
Reading Time: 3 minutes The white supremacist group we’re discussing today, Patriot Front, utilized RocketChat to maintain their secrecy and privacy. It didn’t work.
Posted inCulture
The Cooperative Election Study Won’t Save Christianity
Reading Time: 7 minutes Solid information can only be good to have. If we can’t identify and describe something that’s happening, we’ll have very little chance of predicting outcomes from it or influencing it. That’s why I found Ryan Burge’s recent post on Religion News kinda frustrating.