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The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

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Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#11

Post by colechristensen »

dlivingston wrote: post #7

"We are in a world where moralistic mobs gather on social media and rise like a storm, falling upon newsrooms in an overwhelming blow. This requires immediate counter-measures by publishers, leaving no room for ponderation or meaningful discussions. Twitter is a place for furor, not debate. The most outraged voices tend to define the conversation, and the angry crowd follows in." This is a significant problem, not ju…

>the latest flavor of puritanical outrage

For some time I have been searching for ways to express how the worst characteristics of religion people give for leaving persist widely with nonbelievers. This expresses it nicely.

Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#12

Post by hestefisk »

This reminds me of the famous Muhammad drawings in 2005 in Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten (JP). Back then they were seen as a defence of free speech and our democratic rights, a way of mocking the draconian regimes of the Middle East. Had it happened again today, the Puritan twittersphere would have been all over it and JP would likely have had to follow same route as NYT. Very sad.

Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#14

Post by _vertigo »

gfodor wrote: post #9
dlivingston wrote: post #7

"We are in a world where moralistic mobs gather on social media and rise like a storm, falling upon newsrooms in an overwhelming blow. This requires immediate counter-measures by publishers, leaving no room for ponderation or meaningful discussions. Twitter is a place for furor, not debate. The most outraged voices tend to define the conversation, and the angry crowd follows in." This is a significant problem, not ju…

It does confuse me that these mobs have such power on decision makers at companies and media outlets like this. The interesting thing about Twitter "mobs" is that if you look away from the computer screen or hit the button on the side of your phone, they are suddenly silent and may as well not exist. You can, in fact, log out of Twitter and never log back in again. Most of the time doing so will have zero long term n…

What is confusing? Even if you yourself log out of Twitter, other people are still looking at it. In that sense, they don't cease to exist when you put your phone down, because other people are still paying attention to them.

Sure, as long as they don't know who you are, then it's not such a big deal. An online mob that's mad at you but doesn't know who you are is easy enough to ignore - just log out, as you said. But increasingly it feels like it is less and less likely that the mob does not know who you are. A Twitter mob knows that its outrage is for naught unless it can cause lasting harm to its target, and so it goes to great efforts to dox those targets. Almost always, it seems, the target is doxxed and then their life is ripped to shreds.

Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#15

Post by quietbritishjim »

gfodor wrote: post #9
dlivingston wrote: post #7

"We are in a world where moralistic mobs gather on social media and rise like a storm, falling upon newsrooms in an overwhelming blow. This requires immediate counter-measures by publishers, leaving no room for ponderation or meaningful discussions. Twitter is a place for furor, not debate. The most outraged voices tend to define the conversation, and the angry crowd follows in." This is a significant problem, not ju…

It does confuse me that these mobs have such power on decision makers at companies and media outlets like this. The interesting thing about Twitter "mobs" is that if you look away from the computer screen or hit the button on the side of your phone, they are suddenly silent and may as well not exist. You can, in fact, log out of Twitter and never log back in again. Most of the time doing so will have zero long term n…

> It does confuse me that these mobs have such power on decision makers at companies and media outlets like this. The interesting thing about Twitter "mobs" is that if you look away from the computer screen or hit the button on the side of your phone, they are suddenly silent and may as well not exist.

If you are a company then bad stories on Twitter could cause a significant drop in business. So if you just choose to ignore Twitter, that does not mean that it may as well not exist.

Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#16

Post by detaro »

gfodor wrote: post #9
dlivingston wrote: post #7

"We are in a world where moralistic mobs gather on social media and rise like a storm, falling upon newsrooms in an overwhelming blow. This requires immediate counter-measures by publishers, leaving no room for ponderation or meaningful discussions. Twitter is a place for furor, not debate. The most outraged voices tend to define the conversation, and the angry crowd follows in." This is a significant problem, not ju…

It does confuse me that these mobs have such power on decision makers at companies and media outlets like this. The interesting thing about Twitter "mobs" is that if you look away from the computer screen or hit the button on the side of your phone, they are suddenly silent and may as well not exist. You can, in fact, log out of Twitter and never log back in again. Most of the time doing so will have zero long term n…

The criticism of the NYT cartoon wasn't just on Twitter, but had demonstrations in front of their office, other large organizations weighting in, ...

Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#17

Post by benj111 »

mAEStro-paNDa wrote: post #8

Here's an article over the cartoon mentioned here that sparked outrage in April which led to this: https://nypost.com/2019/04/28/new-york-times-condemned-for-a...

Is it actually anti Semitic to portray a (Jewish) head of state as a (guide) dog?

I'm going by the description here, rather than the actual imagery, but as described it doesn't seem to me to anti Semitic.

Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#18

Post by praneshp »

hestefisk wrote: post #12

This reminds me of the famous Muhammad drawings in 2005 in Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten (JP). Back then they were seen as a defence of free speech and our democratic rights, a way of mocking the draconian regimes of the Middle East. Had it happened again today, the Puritan twittersphere would have been all over it and JP would likely have had to follow same route as NYT. Very sad.

> Back then they were seen as a defence of free speech and our democratic rights, a way of mocking the draconian regimes of the Middle East

Was this an universal viewpoint in the West? As a non-Muslim teen in India I saw it as mocking Islam (I get that others' mileage varies).

Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#19

Post by __i___ii____ »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #15
gfodor wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does confuse me that these mobs have such power on decision makers at companies and media outlets like this. The interesting thing about Twitter "mobs" is that if you look away from the computer screen or hit the button on the side of your phone, they are suddenly silent and may as well not exist. You can, in fact, log out of Twitter and never log back in again. Most of the time doing so will have zero long term n…

> It does confuse me that these mobs have such power on decision makers at companies and media outlets like this. The interesting thing about Twitter "mobs" is that if you look away from the computer screen or hit the button on the side of your phone, they are suddenly silent and may as well not exist. If you are a company then bad stories on Twitter could cause a significant drop in business. So if you just choose t…

The angry vocal minority on twitter (people who may not even be customers, perhaps likely are not) really has such an effect on a company's sales? Got any examples?
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