A Sociological Eye

  Social media algorithms today are weird in many ways. One way is the overpolicing of content that relates to people's lives coming to an end. I watch a lot of medical videos, because one of the things I study is the sociology of medicine, and it is really quite bizarre to see doctors who are explaining medical cases have to resort to all sorts of euphemisms when the case involves someone who didn't make it. "Despite this treatment, the patient had an outcome incompatible with life." That's just silly. It doesn't help anyone. And it is hurtful that algorithms take down posts where people are mourning the passing of a loved one whose end by their own hand, because the posts used the standard term for such an act. When it comes to actually viewing people's passing or their disturbing remains in media and social media, that's been treated as forbidden ever since the aftermath of 9/11. Many Americans were traumatized by watching scores of people lea...

  Every time there is a mass shooting, or the shooting of a public figure, people become glued to their information sources for news of who did it and why. That's a pretty universal reaction, because we want to know what the story is. We want there to *be* a story. We want to be able to fit this incident into our understandings of the world.   In the contemporary US, where people can hold totally different worldviews and beliefs, and even occupy "bespoke realities" happily served up by content providers, there is a frantic effort to control the narrative that emerges. At the moment I am writing this, factual information about Thomas Crooks, who shot at Trump and instead killed one rallygoer and seriously wounded two others, is scant. This frustrates the millions who want to hear a complete story, most importantly the why of it. What was the shooter's motive?   The fact that shots were fired at Trump in a period of intense campaigning primes everyone for a certain expl...

Last Thursday in Kansas City, Ralph Yarl, a Black kid of 16 who was a Science Olympiad competitor and talented marching band participant, went to pick up his little brothers. He wound up a block away from the correct address, rang the doorbell, and waited for some time. Finally an old white man, Andrew Lester, opened the main door--and immediately shot him through the glass storm door. Lester shouted, "Don't come around here no more," as Ralph staggered away with bullets in his skull and arm. Then on Saturday in Hebron NY, friends in a group of two cars and a motorcycle were driving to a party when they went up the wrong driveway. They recognized the mistake, but as they were leaving, Kevin Monahan, 65, emerged from the house and shot at the vehicles, killing a passenger in one of the cars, 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis. Reporting has focused on how Ralph and Kaylin were "good kids" who wound up at the wrong house in the sort of minor mistake we all make regul...