The Top 5: From Sports gambling to feudalism
Welcome to the latest edition of the Top 5 articles we’ve read this week. Each week, we read dozens of articles in the hope we find essays and reporting that speak to big ideas, trends, future looks, and incredible human stories. We hope you enjoy these articles, and do always let us know if you have a suggestion or a recommendation!
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The Top 5 articles for your week:
“The Mass Trauma of Porn” (Substack)
Because Freya India warns, “My generation was taught to see each other not only as content to consume, and products to shop through, but as categories, sex objects, things to get pleasure from. We grew up watching what were often sex trafficking victims, likely seeing rape and abuse — and are somehow expected to file that away, to fall in love in the real world, to have romantic experiences just the same as previous generations did, to be tender and gentle and loyal, to know how.”
Freya will speak at CCPL’s upcoming summit in DC in October. You can grab your tickets now!
“Gamblemerica: How Sports Betting Apps Rewired a Generation's Relationship to Risk” (Substack)
Because Kyla Scanlon examines the damaging rise of sports betting:
Young people have come of age during what feels like the gamification of everything and human psychological limitations becoming a source of value. Day trading has become TikTok content! Crypto has become a presidential talking point! Any sort of hobby that you have can become a monetizable side hustle - and you better be monetizing, buddy!
“Why We Should Worry About Nuclear Weapons Again” (Washington Post)
Because Jon B. Wolfsthal, Hans Kristensen, and Matt Korda argue that the peril of nuclear war is more precarious than ever. Michael serves on the board of Ploughshares. You can explore their work here if you want to learn more about this issue.
“Feudalism is Our Future” (The Atlantic)
Because Cullen Murphy writes about the risks of increasing privatization.
As the pace of privatization picked up in the 21st century, the idea of “neo-feudalism” or “techno-feudalism” began to interest scholars and theorists—Joel Kotkin, Jodi Dean, Robert Kuttner, and Yanis Varoufakis, among others. Most of the scholars are profoundly wary: They foresee an erosion of transparency, a disregard for individual rights, and a concentration of power among an ever smaller group of wealthy barons, even as the bulk of the population is relegated to service jobs that amount to a modern form of serfdom. For their part, theorists on the techno-libertarian or neo-reactionary fringe, observing from egg chairs in the Sky Lounge, see all these same things, and can’t wait.
“Your chatbot friend might be messing with your mind” (Washington Post)
Because Nitasha Tiku looks at a recent study about the dangers of using chatbots as therapists and life/career coaches.