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Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

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Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#471

Post by pvg »

Guthur wrote: post #270
pvg wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest I have no idea who Newsweek were or are These things seem germane to the discussion, though.

Not at all. The OP was maintaining because the brand changed hands that it was somehow a scam, that feels quite disingenuous.

that feels

How would you assess the accuracy of that feeling without knowing or finding out about the facts being discussed? You're saying 'I know nothing about this at all but that isn't germane because the OP is giving me a disingenuous vibe'. It's a curiously strident, stridently incurious position.

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#472

Post by aleister_777 »

cozuya wrote: post #431
mellosouls wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The summary in Wikipedia may be correct but it is worth remembering that Wikipedia itself is hideously biased to the left at times in its coverage of political issues. I've generally taken that not to be down to malevolence but probably just down to the fact those drawn to editing it are most likely of a similar political hue to those from academia.

What's the Occam's Razor of "everyone smart enough to be in advanced learning seems to have the same political bias", do you think?

They are all drinking from the same self-righteous well of "morality". The fact that they consider themselves "advanced" also seems to translate that they are also "correct" in all matters, regardless of their expertise.

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#473

Post by mellosouls »

enkid wrote: post #325
mellosouls wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just read the many, many articles on cancel-culture and de-platforming that have emerged in the last few years which is all a part of the same thing and overwhelmingly a problem from the left. Presumably the right-wing are just as capable (and historically have been the aggressor often), but the left have mastered it as a form recently.

So, this is a different argument from the one you were making before. You first post is about ingestion of media. This one is about production. This is a very different claim, but still requires evidence beyond stating that there is some. Can you help me out and provide some?

I don't know which post about media ingestion you are referring to, you possibly have me confused with another poster or you'll need to link to it for clarification.

As for providing some evidence of cancel culture and deplatforming, somebody would have to have been living on Mars (or have blinkers) to have missed the odious practices (as evidenced in the OP!) that the terms were invented for, and I'm not sure me spending my time googling and linking examples is going to help in that case.

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#474

Post by cmorgan31 »

smaryjerry wrote: post #434
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right just tried to burn down the House in the US, murder the government, and install a dictator because it didn't accept that it lost a fair election. Many on the right still can't, even now. If you want your philosophy to remain legal, acting like this is a very bad thing and not something that can really be excused - for any reason - might be a good start.

I think another post hit the mark here but generalizing people into extreme groups is a real problem. I know many people on the “right” and “left” that basically only agree with half of what their chosen party says, or maybe they only agree with one issue that is very important to them. On the left it is usually abortion and the right it is usually economy. My point is that saying things like “many” is not all or eve…

You're not going to convince many that symbolically property damage across the nation is of the same offense as storming the capitol and beating one of your own to death. The group that stormed the capital was also not ideologically diverse. They were running on a common emotion of hate. Sure, you had hundreds of useful idiots giving the bad actors cover but that's the whole point of being a useful idiot for the left/right/center. It provides an excuse for like minded to dismiss the extreme position but they still sat down with Fascists to eat a meal.

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#475

Post by hluska »

Udik wrote: post #441
hluska wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure that I’d call the reaction to Bergstrom a debacle. Here are a couple of quotes from the excerpt that made everyone angry: “It’s a novel with a teenage heroine set in a dystopian future. Which novel in particular doesn’t matter because they’re all the same. Poor teenage heroine, having to go to war when all you really want is to write in your diary about how you’re in love with two different guys and can’…

I find those quotes absolutely normal, what's wrong with them?

You should maybe start off with his interview with Publisher’s Weekly. He said a couple of things about the YA genre that just aren’t true. The biggest one was that he seems to think it doesn’t take a lot of brains to write YA whereas his book is somehow special.

That interview was the first time that anyone had taken any notice of Bergstrom. So then, everyone read his excerpt.

(Incidentally, that’s a bad flow in writing. If your press insults an entire genre, your excerpt better be damned flawless. This goes 100x if you’re talking YA.)

The first paragraph delivers a really traditional out of touch old dude description of the Hunger Games. That’s treading on dangerous territory because you’re dealing with a universe that young people have become deeply invested in.

The second quote violates one of the genre’s rules about writing women.

So, you’ve got a writer who signed a big contract and a film deal. His introduction to his genre’s fans was an absolute disaster. So, the genre’s fans did what they always do and made a huge mess.

Some might call it disproportionate but then they don’t understand the genre either. YA is about disproportionate reactions. That’s essentially marketing.

All of that should make everyone seriously question whether this is a Paramount growth hack. Heaven knows Paramount wouldn’t be the first company to try to create controversy when they own rights to a book.

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#476

Post by mellosouls »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #372
mellosouls wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just read the many, many articles on cancel-culture and de-platforming that have emerged in the last few years which is all a part of the same thing and overwhelmingly a problem from the left. Presumably the right-wing are just as capable (and historically have been the aggressor often), but the left have mastered it as a form recently.

I think the number of right wing political violence attacks is larger than the number of left wing political violence attacks and political cancelling a combined.

Possibly you missed then the hundreds (thousands?) of antifa/etc riots and violent attacks in the US this year alone?

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#477

Post by [deleted] »

profunctor wrote: post #450
eplanit wrote: post #400

The Left is using psychological projection as a technique. They accuse their opponents of doing exactly what they themselves are doing. They'll call you a fascist while they burn books. They'll call you racist while accusing you of "white privilege". Like you say, they'll destroy people's lives, based on racial hatred, while accusing those people of racial hatred. Domestic terrorism.

There is a clear difference between racism and acknowledging white privilege. White privilege simple describes one way in which racism manifests itself. If you can't tell the difference between a KKK member and someone says that people with white names getting called back for job interviews more than people with black names is white privilege then you are willfully ignorant. It is not racist to say that someone benef…

[deleted]

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#478

Post by Chris2048 »

banana_giraffe wrote: post #21
D13Fd wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't know why people use "post what you're thinking" style social media at all at this point. With employers being so sensitive, how can the cost/benefit analysis ever really result in a determination that it's a good idea to be active on Twitter/Facebook (or Gab, Parler, TheDonald.win, etc.)? Maybe that's part of what makes things get so extreme on those sites. The most reasonable people know enough not…

I always suspected there's a little bit of survivorship bias (? not sure of the best term here) going on. If you haven't suffered the hoards, or had someone you know suffer them, you're likely to think some combination of "it only happens when it's justified" and "no one will care about little old me" I've witnessed it happen to a colleague early on in my career. He posted how trivial it was to cause an IoT device to…

To be fair, sometimes things happen, and it can be good (I think JP said something like that). something like "never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake" - if people demonstrate their shittiness, help them.

It would just be your friend that got an (admittedly mandatory) wake-up call - other employees would too. The best remedy is just a totally neutral post/tweet detailing what happened, with no judgement at all - 3rd parties will get angry on your behalf, and a lack of initial anger will only motivate that moreso.

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#479

Post by mellosouls »

ashneo76 wrote: post #384
mellosouls wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The summary in Wikipedia may be correct but it is worth remembering that Wikipedia itself is hideously biased to the left at times in its coverage of political issues. I've generally taken that not to be down to malevolence but probably just down to the fact those drawn to editing it are most likely of a similar political hue to those from academia.

When you are in the wrong lane, everybody is going against you? Has it struck you that maybe the world is actually that way and that they prefer to be that way. Just because it isn't your way doesn't mean that you dismiss the rest of the world.

I'm a man of the left, which is partly why I find these issues so shameful.

So you'll need to clarify how I'm "in the wrong lane".

Re: Agent fired from literary agency for using Parler and Gab

#480

Post by NeutronStar »

kasey_junk wrote: post #304
Guthur wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. The OP was maintaining because the brand changed hands that it was somehow a scam, that feels quite disingenuous.

Newsweek was a bastion of print media for decades in the US. It would be similar to someone turning the BBC into a Christian news organization. The organization that took over Newsweek did it with the intention to improve their own credibility by banking on the name, while removing all the people and processes that built that credibility in the first place. If it’s not an outright scam it’s certainly approaching it.

If you ever change your stance on an issue are you a scam?
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