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The Cracked Wisdom of Dril

newyorker.com

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Re: The Cracked Wisdom of Dril

#41

Post by bigDinosaur »

abathur wrote: post #37
robmerki wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good observation. It's the purest form of intellectual laziness.

This is a low effort "gotcha" way of dismissing the work of real humans who are struggling to meet newsroom deadlines and productivity schedules as their industry gets picked over by vulture capital in the wake of online news, craigslist/social/app classifieds, and social/search ads hoovering up most of their revenue streams. (I agree these are cheap, fluff news--but it's hard to judge most individual reporters when…

Reposting reddit comments is hardly work. If that style of journalism vanished nobody would care. People who find themselves doing that should consider a different career. I wouldn't be surprised if the attrition rates for the industry are very high.

Re: The Cracked Wisdom of Dril

#42

Post by abathur »

bigDinosaur wrote: post #41
abathur wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a low effort "gotcha" way of dismissing the work of real humans who are struggling to meet newsroom deadlines and productivity schedules as their industry gets picked over by vulture capital in the wake of online news, craigslist/social/app classifieds, and social/search ads hoovering up most of their revenue streams. (I agree these are cheap, fluff news--but it's hard to judge most individual reporters when…

Reposting reddit comments is hardly work. If that style of journalism vanished nobody would care. People who find themselves doing that should consider a different career. I wouldn't be surprised if the attrition rates for the industry are very high.

Sure--but getting clicks is (~now) part of their job.

Re: The Cracked Wisdom of Dril

#43

Post by streamlining »

robmerki wrote: post #28
anonporridge wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"To the privileged, equality feels like oppression."

This is a low effort "gotcha" way of dismissing the real feelings of humans who are struggling to reconcile their deeply held desires with what they perceive in media.

Yes, let's all offer our deepest thoughts and prays to these individuals enduring this terrible imaginary plight.

Re: The Cracked Wisdom of Dril

#44

Post by bigDinosaur »

abathur wrote: post #42
bigDinosaur wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reposting reddit comments is hardly work. If that style of journalism vanished nobody would care. People who find themselves doing that should consider a different career. I wouldn't be surprised if the attrition rates for the industry are very high.

Sure--but getting clicks is (~now) part of their job .

I'm aware. I have no respect for that at all. I'd rather many of those people literally get paid to do nothing than generate clickbait. What a sorry state for a profession that allegedly aspires to speak truth to power. In my mind it's like doctors who have sunk to pushing vitamin water supplements on personal-brand style websites.

Re: The Cracked Wisdom of Dril

#45

Post by tootie »

spicyusername wrote: post #2

Sometimes, when I'm reading random articles (like this one), I'm struck with the feeling that most journalists inhabit the same tiny, tiny world. There are definitely some laughs to be found skimming @drils Twitter, though.

The world of journalism is both shrinking and consolidating. Aside from their being fewer and smaller newsrooms, they're all on Twitter following each other.

Re: The Cracked Wisdom of Dril

#46

Post by ip26 »

phailhaus wrote: post #17
robmerki wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started interviewing people (across multiple different cities) for a new book I'm writing, and I'm shocked at how out of touch journalism has become. I expected progressive / left leaning answers from late 20s/early 30s people. On issues like healthcare/marijuana the answers were what I expected. On issues of dating/love/gender roles, I found a far more traditional response from both men and women (including severa…

> A common answer I received was: "I love the push for equal opportunities for men and women, but I desire [traditional gender role] and I dislike having to justify it to myself." I always found this interesting. Do they think that it's not an option anymore? That's like saying "look, I get that left-handed people should have equal opportunities, but I'm right handed." Why is the option of something else treated as a…

The push for equal opportunities tends to cast the traditional roles in a subtly negative light.

Re: The Cracked Wisdom of Dril

#47

Post by abathur »

bigDinosaur wrote: post #44
abathur wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure--but getting clicks is (~now) part of their job .

I'm aware. I have no respect for that at all. I'd rather many of those people literally get paid to do nothing than generate clickbait. What a sorry state for a profession that allegedly aspires to speak truth to power. In my mind it's like doctors who have sunk to pushing vitamin water supplements on personal-brand style websites.

You do realize the reporters didn't go to journalism school because they dream of churning out clickbait for a living, yeah? I'm sure the vast majority of them would rather be paid to do nothing than to generate clickbait, too. (Or, you know, be paid to challenge the powerful.)

In 2003--my freshman year in college--I worked for the online desk at my hometown newspaper. I worked overnight. Once the print paper was ready, I reviewed and massaged automatically-converted copies of the for-print layout to ensure they were ready to publish online and manually pulled them from the quark files if they weren't. Our online desk was in one corner of a cavernous newsroom with scores and scores of desks, between the compositor and the sports desk.

There were more sports reporters working the desk next to me in 2003 than the total number of reporters left at the entire paper now. The industry is a husk.

Re: The Cracked Wisdom of Dril

#48

Post by chowchowchow »

robmerki wrote: post #28
anonporridge wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"To the privileged, equality feels like oppression."

This is a low effort "gotcha" way of dismissing the real feelings of humans who are struggling to reconcile their deeply held desires with what they perceive in media.

“With what they perceive in media.” I notice even in defense you say their threats are “perceived”.

Re: The Cracked Wisdom of Dril

#49

Post by subjectsigma »

robmerki wrote: post #28
anonporridge wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"To the privileged, equality feels like oppression."

This is a low effort "gotcha" way of dismissing the real feelings of humans who are struggling to reconcile their deeply held desires with what they perceive in media.

I have met several LGBT people who refer to heterosexual people by perjoratives like "the straights" and "cis scum" and openly mock things like traditional marriage ceremonies. Like, in real conversations. To people's faces.

Unsurprisingly, straight people do not like this. People do not step back and say, "Gee, this person has clearly had some bad experiences that made them this much of a snarky asshole. Overall heterosexual people are not persecuted and homosexual people often are, so I shouldn't feel like my way of life is under existential threat. These verbal jabs can't really hurt me."

Nobody thinks like this. They just get mad.

Now is this scenario really relevant to actual discussion of what "equality" and "oppression" mean? Not really. But on the Internet we very quickly reach the lowest common denominator of discussion.

Re: The Cracked Wisdom of Dril

#50

Post by philwelch »

denkmoon wrote: post #13
fijiaarone wrote: post #11

Ben Franklin was a prolific author and publisher. He would have owned something significantly larger and better than Twitter, not been a social media consumer and meme reposter

You don't have to consume social media to post social media. He was a prolific pamphlet writer, which could be considered the bite-sized easily consumable publication of his day. Without really knowing too much about the guy outside of his historical impact, I think he would use whatever method was effective at promoting his ideas.

Ben Franklin was shitposting even in the 18th century.

One of his greatest hits was a proposal to transport rattlesnakes back to Britain in exchange for the felons transported to America, "to have them carefully distributed in St. James’s Park, in the Spring-Gardens and other Places of Pleasure about London; in the Gardens of all the Nobility and Gentry throughout the Nation; but particularly in the Gardens of the Prime Ministers, the Lords of Trade and Members of Parliament; for to them we are most particularly obliged".

After living in France and observing their local custom of sleeping in as late as noon, he wrote a long, satirical letter relating his "discovery" that the sun rose in the morning. "Your readers who, with me, have never seen any signs of sunshine before noon, and seldom regarded the astronomical part of the almanac, will be as much astonished as I was, when they hear of his rising so early, and especially when I assure them, that he gives light as soon as he rises." Later on he proposes, "Every morning, as soon as the sun rises, let all the bells in every church be set ringing; and if that is not sufficient, let cannon be fired in every street, to wake the sluggards effectually, and make them open their eyes to see their true interest."

You can't tell me this guy would have been able to resist Twitter.

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