{"id":242498,"date":"2025-05-15T03:29:59","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T03:29:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/activist\/stuck-in-our-bubbles-progressive-org\/"},"modified":"2025-05-15T03:29:59","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T03:29:59","slug":"stuck-in-our-bubbles-progressive-org","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=242498","title":{"rendered":"Stuck in Our Bubbles – Progressive.org"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Remember Apple\u2019s slogan \u201cThere\u2019s an app for that\u201d? It was\u00a0launched<\/a>\u00a0in 2009, marking a new era in which your \u201csmartphone\u201d was going to help you. It wasn\u2019t going to drown you in an insatiable need for more stimulus. It wasn\u2019t going to be the undoing of your conspiracy-prone uncle, threaten your data privacy, or cause any kind of addiction. Of course not, how absurd! Apple\u2019s slogan was so ubiquitous that they trademarked it and watched as we all hitched our wagons to the tech world\u2019s self-concept: that apps can do everything.<\/p>\n

To this day, apps often make the promise that they\u2019re solving a problem. In fact, I\u2019ve never seen an app come out and say, \u201cWe\u2019re adding to a problem.\u201d But since the halcyon days of 2009, I think we all know that many of them are, in fact, adding to a problem. Some of them are doing it unwittingly; others knowingly, driven by a short-term profit motive. Some are out to shake up the fundamental way we do things with the (arrogant) assumption that they know what\u2019s best.<\/p>\n

Enter\u00a0Oyssey<\/a>, a new real estate app that\u00a0purports to be<\/a>\u00a0a \u201creal estate search management platform.\u201d What caught my attention is a feature that allows homebuyers to see the political leanings of their potential neighbors. The app can also tell you all sorts of demographic information about those neighbors, like their income, age, education level, and even the extent of their\u00a0dog population<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On the surface, those features seem . . . useful. I get it. You want to buy a home near neighbors you\u2019ll get along with. Maybe you\u2019re not comfortable being surrounded by people who vote differently than you, or who have an alarming number of Shiba Inus. (These are the most cat-like dogs. Who wants that?)<\/p>\n

But if we think about it for an additional beat, it reinforces an obstacle rather than solving it. First, we already have similar people living in the same neighborhood. The metric around which they cohere tends to be wealth. That metric has delivered, among other things, a lopsided educational system in which schools in wealthier districts\u00a0receive more funding<\/a>\u00a0than schools in less wealthy districts. This has been reported on forever. It\u2019s one of the country\u2019s most persistent stains. Why can\u2019t children get equivalent levels of support in school no matter where they live? You even hear real estate characters in movies say, \u201cThe schools in this neighborhood are great,\u201d which is simply code for, \u201cYou guys all have money, so relax.\u201d So, clearly, rich people already know who\u2019s living in those big, beautiful homes next to the best schools, no app required.<\/p>\n

People use other demographics to self-segregate as well, such as race, ethnicity, and religion. Sure, some neighborhoods organically form based on these metrics; ever run into a bushel of Iranians in the Westwood enclave of Los Angeles? Or Hasidic Jews in New York City\u2019s Williamsburg neighborhood? Sometimes, though, these neighborhoods form because of\u00a0redlining<\/a>\u00a0and other far more sinister policies that have historically created economically coerced cohabitation. We did technically decide as a society that we don\u2019t like segregation. (See the 1960s.)<\/p>\n

Beyond the fact that we don\u2019t seem to need any kind of technical assistance with picking neighborhoods that already reflect us, we\u2019ve also seen from the last ten years that\u00a0polarization is a real buzzkill<\/a>, and that cementing it by curating a perfect bubble of proximate dwellers only deepens the problem.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mean to pick on any single app. But it seems like a sign of the times that such an app even exists. It calls out the problem while presenting it as an ideal, and then offers a way for us to dig in our heels.<\/p>\n

Instead, we should be seeking mixed-income neighborhoods; a chance to meet people unlike ourselves; neighborhoods that reflect the melting pot or salad or stew that this country has been known for. If we lean too hard into apps that only reinforce our self-selected clusters, the bubbles we all live in quickly become concrete walls.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\n \t\"Negin<\/a><\/p>\n

Negin Farsad<\/a><\/h3>\n

<\/p>\n

Negin Farsad is is the host of the political comedy podcast Fake the Nation and author of the book How to Make White People Laugh. Follow her on Twitter:
\n@NeginFarsad.<\/p>\n

Read more by Negin Farsad<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

May 14, 2025<\/p>\n

4:19 PM<\/p>\n

<\/time>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remember Apple\u2019s slogan \u201cThere\u2019s an app for that\u201d? It was\u00a0launched\u00a0in 2009, marking a new era in which your \u201csmartphone\u201d was going to help you. It wasn\u2019t going to drown you in an insatiable need for more stimulus. It wasn\u2019t going to be the undoing of your conspiracy-prone uncle, threaten your data privacy, or cause any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":242499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12022],"tags":[67583,9876,58759,13350,2083,89107,46470,89108,23668],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-242498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activist","tag-april-may-2025","tag-bubbles","tag-hemming-and-hawing","tag-housing","tag-magazine","tag-negin-farsad","tag-progressive-org","tag-redlining","tag-stuck"],"yoast_head":"\nStuck in Our Bubbles - Progressive.org - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=242498\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Stuck in Our Bubbles - Progressive.org - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Remember Apple\u2019s slogan \u201cThere\u2019s an app for that\u201d? 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