Skios posted:

Chip Bok

escapegoat posted:

David Horsey posted:

Today’s teenagers live in a world of bullying, vicious gossip, sexual harassment, commercial exploitation, self-harm and alienation — a world they cannot escape because it exists in the cellphones and computers that are the most intimate objects in their lives.

Parents have plenty of cause to be alarmed. Social media, for Gen Z, might be better characterized as anti-social media. The anonymity provided by internet platforms allows the worst human impulses to be exercised without penalty and with a powerful reach unavailable to past generations. And those platforms, such as Meta, X and TikTok, are designed to be addictive and nearly irresistible to a young person’s developing brain.

Last month, the Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony from the CEOs of major social media companies. Senators took turns raking the tech titans over the coals for their failure to show concern for the children who are hooked on their extremely lucrative products.

“They’re responsible for many of the dangers our children face online,” committee Chairman Dick Durbin said in his opening remarks. “Their design choices, their failures to adequately invest in trust and safety, their constant pursuit of engagement and profit over basic safety have all put our kids and grandkids at risk.”

Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg claimed his company is making a serious effort to address the problem, but he was contradicted by Arturo Béjar, a former engineering director at Meta.

“They know how much harm teens are experiencing, yet they won’t commit to reducing it, and most importantly to be transparent about it,” Béjar said. “They have the infrastructure to do it, the research, the people, it is a matter of prioritization.”

The internet has opened up the biggest Pandora’s box in human history. All the benefits it has provided may well be outweighed by the deep injuries that have been done to society. International criminals and rogue regimes have been empowered, political extremists have been given a huge megaphone, the newspaper industry has been decimated and, as a result of all of those factors, democracy is imperiled.

Most of the destruction is probably irreversible, but there may still be a chance to save our children from being lost down the alluring dark hole of the online world if political leaders take effective action that forces tech billionaires to undo the worst that they have done and begin to develop a conscience.

idonotlikepeas posted:

Lee Judge

idonotlikepeas posted:

Lee Judge

Wikipedia posted:

Kirschen won the Israeli Museum of Caricature and Comics' Golden Pencil Award for his work.

L. Ron DeSantis posted:

How old is Kirschen anyway?

Phlegmish posted:

But...he's a bad and lazy artist. The people and objects in his cartoons are usually just collections of unsteadily drawn spheres mashed together. He never uses compelling visual imagery, there are no metaphors, and there is no subtlety in the messaging or anything else he does. 80% of his work involves nothing more than a poorly drawn mouthpiece directly facing the camera while plainly stating their support for Palestinian genocide. I refuse to believe that he has ever won any sort of award relating to cartooning

e: if he is really that ancient, maybe he used to be better.

Phlegmish posted:

e: if he is really that ancient, maybe he used to be better.

Doomykins posted:

A true pioneer of those clowns in congress storytelling.

Discendo Vox posted:

Contrast this with early Payne where it becomes obvious that it was a choice made in the interest of speed above all else.

Phlegmish posted:

I've never seen early Payne, but I don't think he is a horrible artist even now. He has his signature style of snooty, pointy-nosed people, that I would guess became overly stylized and exaggerated with time, but I wouldn't mistake a Payne cartoon for anything else. Just my assessment as someone who has no background in art whatsoever. He also attempts to be clever in his observations, despite usually failing.

Kirschen is just on a different level from almost everyone else in this thread, literal children could make better cartoons than most of the ones I've seen from him. It's baffling that his work was apparently published at some point (and still is?).

Discendo Vox posted:

One notable change for Kirschen is that the text of his comics, the complexity, has gotten even simpler and, well, dumber. The historic examples above at least include attempts at sequential jokes.

Payne is notable because he started with a completely different, much more detail and ink-heavy style mixed with caricature that was common of the period and now mostly persists in Ramirez’s work (though without the same level of crosshatching). Payne was and probably is a conventionally skilled illustrator in that regard. From memory I think we decided one reason for the change is Payne is (or was) also a full time automotive journalist.

Byzantine posted:

Adam Zyglis' version of the GOP elephant haunts my dreams and I kinda wish he would put less effort in there.

Nenonen posted:

It's amazing that the art quality matches so closely the original, if it was just monochrome lineart then no one would believe that the Yaakov character is a real Kirschen

idonotlikepeas posted:

Ed Gamble



Ward Sutton

axolotl farmer posted:

Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling



US liberals and leftist could actually take a hint from this.

Skios posted:

Tom Stiglich

Discendo Vox posted:

Did the guy running Ramirez’s paper go full nevertrump?

Technowolf posted:

Pretty sure Ramirez has always been a nevertrumper.

Skios posted:

Tom Stiglich

Kikas posted:

It is comforting to see that Ramirez has still, to this day, never looked up how a battleship actually looks.

Kikas posted:

It is comforting to see that Ramirez has still, to this day, never looked up how a battleship actually looks.