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Motion:  THBT media companies exploit LGBTQ+ struggles for profit. Proposition: Even though LGBTQ+ media companies pretend to address the root cause of the problem, which is social perception in today’s society, selling rainbow merch is bound to be exploitative towards these people. Admittedly, selling rainbow tote bags, watching related Netflix movies for the 6 th time, may seem an easy solution to raise awareness of the subject, but this might offer a superficial understanding of the issue. This doesn’t necessarily promote high-quality discourse between people. In fact, these companies reach higher visibility while they misrepresent that community, entrenching prejudices. In addition to this, they knowingly distort the reality surrounding these vulnerable people. This is tantamount to exploitation and rainbow capitalism! By and large, social media algorithms reward engaging content, which is why popular content can easily get caught up. Content creators seek to reach higher visi...

Motion: THR the rise of pop-psychology Proposition: When people turn to pop-psychology content, they tend to establish diagnoses about themselves based on scientifically groundless claims. This can be mainly put down to the superficial nature of, for example, pop-psychology books that offer surface-level understanding of their subjects. TikTok videos about OCD or anxiety are no better. This leads to a distorted understanding of psychology. Psychologically speaking, people are prone to hold to their pre-established beliefs about themselves and their environment. They can inadvertently cling to irrelevant beliefs related to specific cases, which don’t lead to overall improvement in their mental health. Thus, they cannot make informed decisions on how to move forward from one point to another. Pop-psychology content doesn’t offer them scientifically plausible explanations for certain psychological phenomena or behaviour, and thus, they overrely on information. They don’t necessarily ta...

Motion: THR the increased popularity of sex work based social media (e.g., OnlyFans) Kiara Lord (pornstar) with her husband Proposition: Social media rewards engaging content. Sexually explicit content is very likely to generate a lot of views, comments, shares, subscriptions, etc. Media like these are the ones that get caught up and reach higher visibility online. On these sex media platforms, content creators will eventually realize that more sexualized content will lead to higher engagement. This creates competition for customers. As there are growing expectations towards content creators, it will encourage them to make their videos more extreme so as to continue their business. Content creators will post more frequently to interact with their fans and reach a wider audience. This may eventually blur the line between their private and public life. They can easily become dependent on the ones they get their income from. Content like this will normalize extremist sexual behaviour a...