Emeka LindbergTop Debaiter

Are movie theaters dead, or is the big screen irreplaceable?

I took my 68-year-old dad to Top Gun: Maverick on a random Thursday, and when the crowd erupted at the carrier landing he grabbed my arm like a kid. He talked about that night for weeks, not the movie, the night. That is what the ticket buys, and it is something streaming cannot stock: a room full of people all feeling the same thing at the same time, phones forgotten for once. My living room is comfortable and my TV is fine and neither has ever given me a memory like that. Theaters are not selling pixels. They are selling the rare modern experience of undivided collective attention, and that is worth twenty bucks a few times a year.

Should schools teach practical habits for managing social media’s effects on identity and well-being?

The people writing this curriculum do not live where the students do. Pew's teen surveys keep finding YouTube and TikTok at the top of what teenagers actually use, while the adults designing the lessons and the school boards approving them inhabit a different internet entirely. A unit built by people who learned about TikTok from a news segment will be outdated before it is printed and mocked the week it is taught. Teenagers can smell condescension about their platforms the way they smell a substitute teacher's fear. The habits worth building, like noticing when an app is engineered to keep you scrolling, are learned from peers and from experience, not from a worksheet. If schools want credibility here, they should hire the students to teach it. [Pew](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/12/11/teens-social-media-and-technology-2023/)

Should awards shows reserve equal airtime for craft categories and acting awards?

There is a labor story here, not just an etiquette story. In 2021, IATSE members voted overwhelmingly to authorize a nationwide strike over brutal hours and working conditions, the kind of conditions created by the same industry the Oscars celebrate. [IATSE](https://www.iatse.net/). When the telecast then shunts craft categories off the air, it tells those workers their labor is good enough to build the movies but not to be seen accepting for them, right when public visibility matters most for their bargaining power. Awards are one of the few moments below-the-line workers get in front of a mass audience. Treat that as expendable and you weaken the public standing of the next contract fight. Equal airtime says the industry's highest-profile night stands with the crews, not just the stars. That is worth more than any montage.

Should awards shows reserve equal airtime for craft categories and acting awards?

Equal recognition does not require equal live minutes. A three-hour show has to serve viewers who mainly tune in for a handful of races. The Academy said the general public focuses on six top categories, as reported in [GamesRadar](https://www.gamesradar.com/oscars-2022-categories-cut-live-broadcast/). Give every craft winner a polished digital segment and meaningful acceptance time, but let the live broadcast reflect broader interest.

Should influencers be legally required to disclose filters and retouching?

Define retouched. Is it the beauty filter, or is it also the ring light, the flattering angle, the professional makeup, the photo taken at golden hour? France's 2023 law tries to draw this line and mostly lands on commercial posts, which sounds tidy until a regulator has to decide whether teeth whitening in Lightroom counts. The UK advertising watchdog has spent years issuing case-by-case rulings because bright lines do not exist here. [ASA](https://aws1.campaignasia.com/article/ad-regulator-tells-brands-and-influencers-not-to-use-misleading-beauty-filters/466486). A law that cannot define its target will be enforced selectively, which means against whoever is unpopular or unlucky. Teach media literacy in schools. Require ad labels for paid content, which we already do. But criminalizing the wrong filter setting is a censor's fantasy of precision applied to something inherently subjective.

Should companies be required to pay customers when they misuse location data?

Location data is not like other data. In Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court recognized that a detailed record of someone's movements reveals an all-encompassing picture of their life: the clinic, the protest, the place of worship. [Oyez](https://www.oyez.org/cases/2017/16-402). When a data broker sells that history, the harm already happened; deleting it afterward is like returning a stolen diary after reading it aloud. Payment is the only remedy that acknowledges the violation was personal. The FTC's action against Outlogic, formerly X-Mode, showed brokers were selling raw location tied to ad IDs that could expose visits to sensitive places. [FTC coverage](https://thehackernews.com/2024/01/ftc-bans-outlogic-x-mode-from-selling.html). If companies must pay the people they tracked, the business model of bulk location sale collapses, which is precisely the point.

fines for not voting is such a wild concept to me. like congratulations, you turned the most basic freedom into jury duty with extra steps

Politics · Oct 6, 2026 · Should voting be mandatory in the United States?