News Brief: The Casual Soft Eugenics of Self-Help "Friendscaping" Content by Citations Needed Podcast published on 2021-06-16T15:49:55Z In this public News Brief, we discuss a recent advice column in the New York Times advocating upwardly mobile professionals dump their fat and depressed friends and how it's part of a much broader trend of pop sociology repackaging cruelty and soft eugenics as "science-driven" self improvement. Comment by kattekens What about the materialist conditions that produce even the abusive? A person getting away from them is good. But what about the abuse those people likely experienced, often beyond what any of us can imagine, that made them abusive? 2022-09-29T17:20:01Z Comment by Alberto GarcĂa the neoliberal anglosaxon mind is truly something horrifying 2021-06-29T14:03:47Z Comment by thekillerwhale I will go beyond criticizing this as 'problematic'. At a much more basic level, people should share mutual obligations to their friends and family. A lot of the discourse is driven by people with toxic family members and the like, but this is a minority of human relationships and should not inform the general vocabulary. You should not cull the various bores who make up your friends and family (with the exception of abusive relationships) but be devoted and loyal. 2021-06-17T07:29:59Z Comment by David Winter 14 being obese is unhealthy, full stop. it doesn't make you a bad person or deserving of abuse but you will die sooner. 2021-06-17T03:26:12Z Comment by Joshua Marx this shit is as embarrassing as it is chilling and that's never good. 2021-06-16T23:17:08Z