This Week: A look at online troll culture – were these awful people always among us?… Here’s who goes to choral concerts… A look inside the brain as it watches movies… Lin Manuel Miranda’s crusade against ticket bots.
- Online Trolls – Are They Getting Worse Or Does The Internet Just Make Them Visible? Time magazine devotes a cover to examining the culture of internet trolling. Trolling does seem to be on the rise. “A Pew Research Center survey published two years ago found that 70% of 18-to-24-year-olds who use the Internet had experienced harassment, and 26% of women that age said they’d been stalked online. This is exactly what trolls want. A 2014 study published in the psychology journal Personality and Individual Differences found that the approximately 5% of Internet users who self-identified as trolls scored extremely high in the dark tetrad of personality traits: narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism and, especially, sadism.” An exclamation point on the story is the news from NPR this week that it will discontinue reader comments. Meanwhile, Twitter is being bashed for its tolerance of trolling: “Despite its integral role in popular culture and in social justice initiatives from the Arab Spring to Black Lives Matter, Twitter is as infamous today for being as toxic as it is famous for being revolutionary.”
- All About Community – Who Goes To Choral Concerts: Chorus America releases a study that aims to find out who is the audience for choral music in America and why they come. Forty-two million Americans sing in choruses. So perhaps it’s not surprising that the leading motivation for attending concerts is personal connection. “Among the children and youth choruses surveyed, four in five respondents have a familial or friendship relationship with a young performer. Among adult choruses, about a third of respondents reported having a relationship with a performer.“
- Here’s What’s Going On In Movie Viewers’ Brains While They’re Watching: Scientists did MRI scans of people’s brains while they watched movies. Researchers could measure how the brain responds to images and stories, and they could even see which scenes caused more brain activity. “Our results demonstrate that some films can exert considerable control over brain activity and eye movements. However, this was not the case for all types of motion picture sequences, and the level of control over viewers’ brain activity differed as a function of movie content, editing, and directing style.”
- Lin Manuel Miranda Targets Ticket Bots: The “Hamilton” star believes the bots are wrecking Broadway. His interest is personal:“The issue has been a fairly personal one for Miranda: ticket prices for his hit musical Hamilton soared to outrageous heights during his final weeks as the show’s lead actor. The New York Times reported that scalpers made $15.5 million off of his last 100 performances alone, and the going price for an orchestra seat at his last show was about $15,000.” He believes legislation is necessary because whatever steps primary sellers of tickets take to slow down the bots, the technology will adapt to thwart it.
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