I have been to counselling in high school and uni, but the sessions and counsellors I had were varied in effectiveness. I recently got a diagnosis and am wondering how my experience would have been different had I walked into therapy and said hey I have social anxiety. I want to work though that here”. I’m thinking of going to therapy specifically for social anxiety, and I’m wondering what other people’s experiences have been like?
I don’t think ai is inherently a bad thing, I think what makes it bad is how often it’s used.
I’ve heard that ai is bad for the environment. My friend told me about how data centres use up a lot of water and told me the story of a family who lived near a data centre who were unable to use the water in their house because the taps weren’t running well and the water was polluted.
Ai uses water for cooling purposes. I learned that there are two cooling systems: a closed loop and an open loop. The open loop takes in new water and expels wastewater, whereas the closed loop system cycles through the same water. I’m assuming that the data centre that the family lives near uses the open system, and I hope they change that as soon as they can.
The problem is, idk which system is being used by the specific ai that’s responding to my prompts. And presumably, the more developed the ai industry becomes, the more ai companies will look into using technology that’s less wasteful and harmful.
Also, water is one thing but electricity is another resource that it’s gotta use a lot of. The issue with this is that we use so much electricity daily for things that aren’t ai (phones, tv, home lighting etc).
Basically, I’m confused. On the one hand, yes ai is obviously bad for the environment. On the other hand, so are many things. So is it just a matter of using it sparingly, while also being mindful of how much electricity we use in general and not using more than what you need?
First of all, the movie is a lot more existential than I realized. Many characters in this movie at some point experience tension between how they want to define themselves and how they feel they are defined by others. Barbie struggles with the notion that she has inadvertently made girls feel bad about themselves by representing unrealistic beauty standards. She also struggles with self-consciousness for the first time when she enters the real world and gets treated poorly by many men. She then seeks to discover herself at the end of the movie when she decides to live in the real world. If someone wants to share their thoughts on this in the comments, I’d love to hear your perspective.
Another point is that Barbies and Kens are knee deep in layers of conflict. Ken feels sidelined in the Barbie world (because Kens are cast aside to only live by the beach) and then establishes an extreme form of patriarchy once he returns from the real world. The Barbies then get their revenge by turning the Kens against each other and re-establishing the matriarchy. Ken’s feelings of inadequacy fuel him to be empowered by a world where men are on top, because for once in his life he feels important. Barbies eventually realize they’ve been brainwashed and ban together to restore a previous order. I’m not entirely sure what connection this has with real life, if someone wants to clarify please do.
Something that was a major arc in this movie was how outdated gender roles can lead to men and women relying on each other to be a certain way so that they can feel secure about their gender identity. Feminism may threaten a man’s identity because if he defined himself as someone who is needed by a woman and sees that a woman doesn’t need her, it feels like an attack on his masculinity. This doesn’t have to be the case obviously, men can still feel secure in their gender regardless of how women act. Ken in this case defines his worth based on whether or not Barbie is interested in him. This deep insecurity causes him to be jealous of other Kens when they secure Barbie’s attention even just for a little bit, and also get revenge on the Barbie’s by establishing the Kendom. Another point is how he objectified Barbie, in that he interprets any attention from her as confirmation (or potential confirmation) of her interest in him. She is interpreted only in a non-platonic way, serving as a symbol of validation for him rather than a real person.
Something I found interesting is that they didn’t try to create a new, egalitarian society at the end. I figured they would have, but that may have been too utopian. If I had to guess why they didn’t do this, I’d say it is because Barbie land and the real world mirror each other. In Barbie land, women dominate, in the real world, men do. After the Barbies win the election, one of the Kens asks President Barbie for a job and she gives him one that is of a lower rank, and the narrator goes “gotta start somewhere”. Imo this reflects how even when women entered the workforce, they were still limited in the jobs they could have. Progress, but not freedom yet. I think this is why the producers stuck with the re-establishment of the matriarchy and not the creation of a new system altogether. The real world is becoming more accepting, but is still patriarchal.
Something the movie didn’t explicitly touch on but that I really noticed is that gender is socially constructed. Barbies and Kens never behaved in one consistent way throughout the film, their expression of their gender differed based on context. For example, the Barbies in Barbieland acted VERY differently at the beginning/end of the movie vs. during the establishment of the Kendom. This goes for the Kens too.
What are your thoughts? What messages did you take away from the Barbie movie?