A Sociological Eye

  This is a portrait of Elihu Yale and his intimates being served by an enslaved boy wearing a padlocked collar. I’m showing it to you because I want to talk about Yale Law School, and specifically its graduate JD Vance. A funny thing about Vance's Hillbilly Elegy book: the man believes he had a unique experience, because he felt like an outsider when attending an Ivy League university. He didn't come from a background of wealth and prep schools and world travel. He was at a loss as to how to handle his cutlery when taken out to a fancy restaurant by a potential employer, because the place settings included a salad fork and dinner fork, a soup spoon and teaspoon, a steak knife and a butter knife. And when he went back to his hometown, he found he did not want to brag to strangers about going to Yale. If they were the kind of people who would disrespect him unless he shared that credential, then they weren't people he wanted to bootlick, and if they were ordinary locals...

  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...

    Ah, yes, surely this AI Overview summation of the Internet’s information about US presidents who attended UW-Madison must be correct! As supernatural beings, former presidents often rise from the dead to add a university degree to their resumes, you know. . . Twenty years ago, college instructors would sternly warn students not to cite, or even look at, Wikipedia. Since entries were written by ordinary human volunteers, these instructors admonished that they would likely contain both foolish errors and misinformation.    Today we can see that Wikipedia is one of the most trustworthy sources of information on the internet, precisely because it is written, and more importantly constantly reviewed, moderated, and revised by actual people—people invested in the pursuit of truth and knowledge.    Along comes Google, diligently pursuing profits via “ enshittification ” (Not my term but one you should know!). Google knows users are unhappy at how their search ...

  I have been busily grading term papers, and in my Sociology of the Body class, a number of my students have chosen to write their final papers on supplements that make extraordinary health claims. When they do this, I always search the student product choices out online and scroll down to find the ingredients. Usually these are obfuscated by made-up names--"adaptogenic beta-pyridoxine" is just a heavily embroidered way to write "vitamin B6," or are pure nonsense--"non-transdermal X39" makes as much sense as "powdered unicorn horn."   Scientific analysis of herbal supplements hawked online show that many contain little or none of the claimed ingredients in any case. Usually they just contain fillers like microcellulose (basically sawdust), but sometimes they contain ingredients like caffeine (to make the purchaser feel the pills give them a lift), or even ground-up expired prescription drugs (like ED medications added to pills that are supposed ...

  People will say students today are "digital natives" who should navigate school software and web platforms with east. They are so wrong.  Today's students aren't "digital" natives, they are SMARTPHONE natives. They know their social media, and can pop a snarky gif reaction into a group chat with astonishing speed. But unlike Millennials, who were the first generation to be named digital natives, they have never loved their laptops. Millennials first interacted with the internet on computers, and it was their window to a wider world. As kids, they saved their schoolwork onto floppy disks. Later, they burned their own CDs, and saved their papers on thumb drives. They knew as routine chores such activities as updating their drivers and reinstalling their operating systems. They used word processors with practiced ease.   My Gen Z students feel like their phones are an extension of themselves. Their laptops are just a tool they use for school. A lot of my stud...