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Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge

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Re: Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge

#91

Post by alistproducer2 »

giardini wrote: post #81
alistproducer2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think that the authors have no problem with authoritarianism Like any conspiracy site, it's going to attract people who share a view of the world in which everything must be orchestrated, controlled - a reason for all things. Randomness has no place in the mind of a conspiracy theorist. The order provided by conspiracies comfort the conspiracy theorist: paradoxically making the world feel safer, more ordered while…

Zero Hedge is NOT a conspiracy site. I don't know why you make that claim except that, once you did, many other posts on this forum followed suit. In all honesty your claim (that zerohedge is a conspiracy site) and the ensuing posts looks more like conspiracy (blog-spamming or blog-misdirection) than does zerohedge. zerohedge WAS once a decent current economics site that sometimes featured excellent articles but the…

I disagree. I don't have an interest in digging through ZH posts to prove my point, but in general the spin of the site is conspiratorial in nature.

Whether it's the Fed is in it with the banks to provide free money to prop up the market, or the BLS number are not to be believed or trusted, or any other number of reoccurring themes, ZH is a conspiracy site.

Re: Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge

#92

Post by carsongross »

maze-le wrote: post #16

I stopped reading this site some years ago. It had, and probably still has some interesting opinins and analysis. Most content is pretty far fetched / sensationalist, but if you have your grain of salt, this is not a problem, since most media outlets do this in one form or another. About 2 years ago the tenor of the publications shifted from libertarian to more and more reactionary (bordering on proto-fascist). When…

I think what you are noticing is a broader shift in the libertarian community: people are noticing that an open libertarian society isn't possible since most people aren't libertarians but would like the material benefits that more libertarianish societies offer.

Many libertarians I know are now "nationalist libertarians", opposed to large scale immigration, increasingly skeptical of international free trade, and so on. A lot of ex-Ron Paul types are now Trump supporters.

To me, this seems like the political/intellectual story of our time. It isn't happening in the mainstream media, of course, because libertarianism has never had the high ground there: you see it in the blogs and, of course, in the chans & reddit.

Re: Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge

#93

Post by ecnal »

return0 wrote: post #8
nxzero wrote: post #4

>> "Bloomberg LP competes with Zero Hedge in providing financial news and information." Translation: "Yes, we're attacking the competition." _____ Reply-To-Comments-Below: All editors make choices, and to me, this was the wrong choice. All this does in validate ZeroHedge is a threat and makes Bloomberg look like a wannabe thug. Beyond that, appears ZeroHedge made something of this disclaimer too: http://www.zerohedge…

anything wrong with that?

Well, it's fair to take issue with the idea that ZH provides any information whatsoever, but I get the feeling that that's not what the parent commenter is upset about.

Re: Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge

#94

Post by themartorana »

tcoppi wrote: post #43
TorKlingberg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you link to a couple of examples? I am not interested enough to go searching. I did find an anti-vaxxer piece on the frontpage, which did not exactly inspire trust: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-28/why-our-children-sh...

They post things like this all the time. I would take it not as them editorially advocating the position, but rather getting information otherwise censored by other media out there. Sometimes the information is not reported for good reason, such as this. You need a very good BS and relevancy filter to find the few nuggets of gold that are put out maybe a few times a year by ZH.

An "even a broken clock is right twice a day" method of viewing a content publication is a funny way of explaining away dangerous "journalism" for a couple of stuck clock hands.

Re: Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge

#95

Post by sevenless »

alistproducer2 wrote: post #35
maze-le wrote: post #16

I stopped reading this site some years ago. It had, and probably still has some interesting opinins and analysis. Most content is pretty far fetched / sensationalist, but if you have your grain of salt, this is not a problem, since most media outlets do this in one form or another. About 2 years ago the tenor of the publications shifted from libertarian to more and more reactionary (bordering on proto-fascist). When…

>I think that the authors have no problem with authoritarianism Like any conspiracy site, it's going to attract people who share a view of the world in which everything must be orchestrated, controlled - a reason for all things. Randomness has no place in the mind of a conspiracy theorist. The order provided by conspiracies comfort the conspiracy theorist: paradoxically making the world feel safer, more ordered while…

> Randomness has no place in the mind of a conspiracy theorist.

I agree, and I see chronic conspiracy theorizing as a pathology. One should beware the Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory of Everything (antisemitism, capitalism, imperialism, patriarchy, 'Cultural Marxism', are common belief attractors on who to blame)

But conspiracies do also exist in reality - in fact, conspiracies should be rather common, as giving your opponents perfect information makes you less competitive. As they say, one man's conspiracy is another man's business plan.

There have been many occasions when "conspiracy theories" turned out to be true (Iran-Contra, Watergate, George W. Bush's manipulation of intelligence over Iraq's WMD), and it's all too convenient for the perpetrators to dismiss accusations as such.

Particularly, present day corporate media that only airs a narrow range of opinions and has zero interest in investigative journalism, tends to call anything that question the motives of those in power a conspiracy theory. Likewise the outsize role of money in US politics means it's easy for politicians to be bought and lobbied. And difficult for the corporate media, subject to the same financial pressures themselves, to point it out.

That disconnect between media reporting and reality also leads to a kind of 'conspiracy theory' that isn't a conspiracy theory at all: when politicians or corporations do corrupt things or go against the public interest in plain sight, but nobody in widely circulated news media's willing to report on it and bring it into public conversation. If you're on the right you'd say this is what's happening with immigration. If you're on the left you'd say it's what is happening with financial corruption or the military-industrial complex.

Successful democracy depends on information flow between population, media and politicians, and corruption and pressure from special interests can undermine that. Arguably conspiracy theories are a symptom of a decline of trust in a unified democratic society and particularly government and media. Those who subscribe tend to feel marginalized in some way.

Plenty of those who point this out aren't authoritarian in the least.

Re: Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge

#96

Post by alistproducer2 »

logfromblammo wrote: post #88
alistproducer2 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I'm speaking about people who spend most of their time online on conspiracy sites. I should know, I used to be one of them. I was 17 when 9/11 happened and spent most of the early 2000's reading about lizard people, the Illuminati and the bilderberg group. I'm ashamed to admit it, but once upon a time I was a daily reader of Alex Jones. There are conspiracies. They exist. But I'm mostly speaking to the mindset of…

I also used to be one of them, until I formed the meta-conspiracy-theory. What if conspiracy theory sites and groups are just part of a conspiracy that exists to monitor, marginalize, and distract conspiracy theorists? What if the only thing that gives the conspiracy any power at all is the weight of the conspiracy theories behind it? And that's when I spackled over the cracks in my pot, stopped looking for evidence…

> They can manipulate currencies and equities and get even richer, but a hired cook will still piss in their morning coffee or feed them a slice of doodoo pie.

All the upvotes for this right here LOL. But seriously, your comment reads like it came out of my own head. The elites _try_ to control everything but their efforts are like sticking a rocket onto an asteroid: you can influence its direction but you can't make it do a u-turn. If people want to burn this shit down, they will and there's precious little all that money and power could do to stop it.

The world is scary and unpredictable so people have been comforting themselves with predictions and models since time immemorial; even if those predictions are of their own doom, at least _they_ saw it coming and that makes them feel better/safer.

Re: Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge

#97

Post by tmaly »

I stopped reading the site several years back. It has too much of a end of the world doom and gloom view. Yes it does provide a different view against what you see in the mainstream news. You tend to get sucked into this worldview it presents, and you end up getting very little done on your side projects.

Re: Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge

#98

Post by jonstokes »

I think ZH is a great site, and I read it daily, BUT if you don't take it with a truckload of salt then it will be hazardous to your wealth. Seriously, if you had been in the ZH bear trade since 2009, then you missed out on the greatest stock market rally in a generation. I know, because I missed the first half of said rally as a ZH reader until I realized that the constant drumbeat of negative news from that site was distorting my judgement.

Here is what ZH is good for: they have stuff before anyone else, because they'll print almost anything. For instance, after San Bernardino those guys had details way before other outlets, because they're willing to go to press with just "some guy overheard this on the police scanner and tweeted it".

So when you read ZH you see stuff first, but you place a big mental asterisk by it until their scoop trickles up the media food chain and starts to get confirmed as real reporters do actual work on it.

I like seeing stuff first, before everyone else gets it, hence my continued regular reading of ZH (again, I keep a 40lb bag of Morton Salt by my desk with the ZH logo on it, though).

Re: Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge

#99

Post by nxzero »

ecnal wrote: post #93
return0 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

anything wrong with that?

Well, it's fair to take issue with the idea that ZH provides any information whatsoever, but I get the feeling that that's not what the parent commenter is upset about.

Creative you are, and you're right, idea that Bloomberg would feel they're a competitor to ZH is a joke.
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