The culture war is killing us [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#121

Post by skinnymuch » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 10:30 AM UTC

throwawaysea wrote: post #52

readonthegoapp wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Hill, like the Observer, used to be a great actual newspaper. The reporting in there was just phenomenal. And then presumably some conservative billionaire took it over and turned it into fox news light. Jared Kushner did the Observer takeover and turned it from something very weird and entertaining and serious and very New York into a directionless soup of trivialities. I used to buy and actually read the physic…

It’s rated as centrist bias: https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart From what I’ve seen they make an effort to be balanced. Saagar Enjenti, who appears in this video and is a Republican, regularly presents alongside Krystal Ball, who is a progressive, in this joint show: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rising_(news_show)

The Overton window applies is. That dividing that site is doing is in no way indicative of how the world is or how the US has been. Just how the mainstream is since Reagan. Notice it doesn’t take into account any leftist publications. Their left most section includes mostly neoliberal things.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#122

Post by corporateshil1 » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 12:23 PM UTC

anticodon wrote: post #104

nradov wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's well known that foreign intelligence services are active on social media trying to foment divisiveness. They're not even necessarily pushing a specific political goal, just getting Americans to hate each other. The Russians appear to be the most active but other countries play the same game. So before you get drawn into an online argument, ask yourself am I dealing with an authentic person or a paid foreign trol…

> The Russians appear to be the most active but other countries play the same game. Russia is bombarded incessantly by US propaganda from US troll factories. Ever since I'm on Internet, I'm reading that Russians are drunkards, barbarians, that our past (even going 1000 years back) is all history of mutual killings, yadda yadda. It's so disgusting that I guess it even somewhat stopped to work because people are tired…

[dead]

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#123

Post by corporateshil1 » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 12:51 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #56

1cvmask wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Please don't post political flamewar boilerplate to HN. Threads here are supposed to be curious conversations. This is not that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Dang, theres too much inconsistency with your moderation. You didn't seem to want to limit such flamebait from false statements from GP's comment. It is unfortunate factual statements are not allowed on here. Allowing one side to flame away is not the process to reach curious conversations. Good luck with that.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#124

Post by motohagiography » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 12:55 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #112

motohagiography wrote: post #17

I don't know if there a good way to add value and insight to this topic because even insight is going to be zero sum and partisan, but here's a shot. Sectarianism is something I've talked to acquaintences about for a few years, as I was thinking about how to make predictions on how current events were playing out, and the precdents I thought would be useful as a model to anticipate were an environment like the Troubl…

> It's still just skirmishes between very small physical groups that will probably move into terrorism and assasinations over the summer, and with tacit or direct approval and funding from within institutions to keep it going. Over this summer (2021)? Or did you mean "summer" as in "there's a decade or three of spring where things heat up and it culminates in a violent, hot summer"? > The fashionably Girardian view w…

Re: reaitonalists, Laughably, yes, because the idea of a scapegoat is ancient, and it needs to be someone essentially neutral to the conflict. Literally? Perhaps not them, but they are an example of who in the current culture war could stand in for one, e.g. moderate, meta, insensitive, and aloof thinkers are people the extremes could agree on.

On the terrorism and assasinations, yes this summer is a reasonable bet. We saw trial runs of it last year in the U.S. and because the parties in the conflict are really small groups, they will use tactics that create that sort of cost effective spectacle. Once one is into real directed political violence, there's nothing earnest or heated about it, it's a cynical tactic mixed with manipulation and deception and the targets of it are reduced to symbols.

The perpetrators do not deserve our shock, concern, or even surprise. It's an inferior tactic to hold a losing cause together.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#125

Post by sjg007 » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 1:05 PM UTC

salimmadjd wrote: post #7

Have many of us have become the useful idiots of the corporate media overloads? I know it's fashionable to blame Facebook for the divisiveness, but I'm old enough to recall Obama's 2004 DNC speech that got him his first national attention. Before there was Facebook, Obama was talking about divisiveness. I firmly believe anger and anxiety is constantly injected into the mainstream corporate media to increase eyeballs…

Obama's speech was about hope and change, "yes we can". Yes we can elect a black man as President but yes we can change and do better. This was on the back of Bush's destruction of the economy.

The divisiveness happened when the tea party took off in 2009 after Obama was elected and the tea party dialed up the oldest trope in the book, race. It was also the only part of the republican party that could oppose the ACA. The ACA was modeled on Romney care after all who was a popular Republican. The republican party reeling from the loss to Democrats basically had to double down on the tea party to have any chance of sucess at the 2010 midterms. So it became about race, death panels and socialism.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#126

Post by jl2718 » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 1:19 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #84

The saving grace of our society is that, thankfully, things are still pretty comfortable at the personal level, even if their politics dictate that they be in conflict. If you don't search for it you won't see the kind of bifurcation around the Chauvin trial. Most people just breath a sigh of relief, including a lot of Republicans. It does deeply concern me that so many people claim Chauvin was framed, etc. Those who…

Framed? That is a completely stupid thing to believe, and I have never heard it suggested by anybody except you. The problem here is not those boogeymen that don’t exist. It’s you. And now me because I’ve dragged myself down to your level.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#127

Post by weasel_words » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 1:36 PM UTC

clcaev wrote: post #10

I believe the cultural wars focus the population's attention on issues that divide us, rather than issues that would unite: concentration of power, gutting of main street, etc. The detachment of our news and media from local civics denies our population practice working together, with real problems, with real consensus. Instead the polarization is on more abstract, national, and intractable concerns -- political spor…

"As technologists, how can we work to rebuild regional and local political and economic sovereignty?"

I always thought it fascinating how "technologists" thought themselves somehow able to solve social issues. SV is a glaring example of this - Mark Zuckerberg anyone?

Anecdotally, I know many people in the MMO game industry. Wonderful people, but none have more than average EQ. Most are extremely awkward and/or have social anxiety (which, in part, is what drove them to become gamers in the first place). It is really interesting to watch them struggle with trying to figure out what "social" features to add, but cannot grok what actually makes something social. Trying and failing over and over -- sometimes on the most obvious things.

Why would you think you could solve social problems when you, yourself, aren't a social animal?

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#128

Post by throwaway0a5e » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 1:45 PM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #62

nradov wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's well known that foreign intelligence services are active on social media trying to foment divisiveness. They're not even necessarily pushing a specific political goal, just getting Americans to hate each other. The Russians appear to be the most active but other countries play the same game. So before you get drawn into an online argument, ask yourself am I dealing with an authentic person or a paid foreign trol…

The problem is it's not an argument that manipulates you, it's passive reporting and it only has to be echoed by one other real person before it becomes "the rumor on the twittersphere" or whatever. Even the act of people writing debunking articles like "Is shocking X actually true? No." is still doing a little bit of work to inject that idea into your psyche.

>Even the act of people writing debunking articles like "Is shocking X actually true? No." is still doing a little bit of work to inject that idea into your psyche.

I get a chuckle every time I see a social media post about that's some minor mishap and OP is pretending to be repentant ("if only I had this wouldn't have happend") and all the commenters virtue signaling to each other along those same lines.

Little do they know they're making it seem more normal for people to do whatever sin they're all hating on.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#129

Post by snikeris » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 1:59 PM UTC

bostonsre wrote: post #79

titzer wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an ant death spiral at this point. The only way to be free of it is to unplug and focus on your own life.

Yes, individuals can flee to get out of the path of said shit snowball, but their descendants, family, friends, and neighbors are directly down hill from it.

Individuals can divert said snowball from said people.

Re: The culture war is killing us [video]

#130

Post by jl2718 » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 2:16 PM UTC

Dark pattern: War is bad. It’s their fault. Therefore, war is good.

So sick of this zero-information propagandertainmemt. Admitting dysfunction doesn’t fix it. Candid reporting of facts would fix it. There are hundred page reports written for every incident that hits the news cycle, and all they give is some uninformed celebrity opinion. People cannot be that stupid.

Maybe they are though. TV news is basically a senile retirement occupation. If you’re young and you watch this stuff, you may want to ask yourself what else you could be doing with your life.

Just turn it off. Let it die.

I fed it, but I’m also going to downvote.