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Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

theatlantic.com

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Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#241

Post by latency-guy2 »

digging wrote: post #119
1970-01-01 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The most watched Netflix show that nobody's heard of The oxymoronic style of this sentence reflects why I now ignore reading the Atlantic. Clearly it cannot be true, yet they claim it is to continue their narrative. Their next sentence, a citation of "one person posted" is also unpalatable.

> The oxymoronic style of this sentence reflects why I now ignore reading the Atlantic. Clearly it cannot be true, yet they claim it is to continue their narrative. Not going to try to convince you to read The Atlantic, but the issue here is entirely on your end. They are not literally claiming that nobody has heard of the show. They are employing hyperbole.

> They are employing hyperbole.

So its not an issue entirely on one end, its a deliberate action designed to make people feel one way, but falls apart under analysis.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#242

Post by AlbertCory »

tayo42 wrote: post #198
aliasxneo wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always found this story so fascinating. The amount they get targeted is insane for being a satire website, regardless of if you think it's funny or not.

[flagged]

John Oliver and Stephen Colbert (and formerly Jon Stewart) would beg to differ. Their "satire" consists entirely of making fun of anyone to the right of AOC.

Saying something that's officially forbidden is quite often satire. Saying something that you know your audience agrees with is not.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#243

Post by mckern »

steveBK123 wrote: post #11
segasaturn wrote: post #4

Maybe that's a good thing? I remember a few years ago when journalists were outsourcing their reporting to Twitter and we had headlines like "The Internet is Freaking Out About X" when it was really a dozen nobodies on Twitter. The death of Twitter and the re-fragmentation of the internet sounds like a breath of fresh air compared to the purple haze of the last decade's centralized web.

Would agree. Some old school journalists from NYT wrote about that phenomenon. Colleagues doing a lot of stories that were basically the groupthink of their friend group or what they saw on Twitter. Part of it is economics/incentives leading journalists to have to churn out a lot of content. Part of it is laziness as it's a lot easier than going out into the field and actually talking to people.

In fact, The Economist published a 17,000 word un-paywalled piece [0] recently about the NYT's group think problem.

[0] https://www.economist.com/1843/2023/12/14/when-the-new-york-...

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#244

Post by working__cls__ »

gorwell wrote: post #217
nuker wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Correction That election was about the working class finally getting one over on the managerial elite. 7 years later and you still don't understand 2016 or refuse to understand it, all while acting smug.

[dead]

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#246

Post by latency-guy2 »

mikrotikker wrote: post #229
5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #29

> "Consider TikTok....Try to imagine which posts might have been most popular on the site this year. Perhaps a dispatch from the Middle East....Or maybe something lighter, like a Gen Z dance trend....Well, no: According to TikTok’s year-end report, the most popular videos in the U.S.—clips...aren’t topical at all. They include makeup tutorials, food ASMR, a woman showing off a huge house cat, and a guy spray-painting…

> According to TikTok’s year-end report, the most popular videos in the U.S. Maybe better to wait for an independent actor to verify that (if thats even possible). It would not be in tiktoks best interests for instance to have in that list, people reading out Osama Bin Ladens letter and exclaiming him to be correct.

I'd mostly agree. But we can verify that particular instance's popularity by proxy through political content popularity. I would make the bet that it was not anywhere nearly as effective as Crunchy Cat Luna at getting views.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#247

Post by liveoneggs »

I can't tell if this article and its title are satire or not. "Nobody" implies that there was, for a period, a group of "Somebodies" who did, in fact, know what was "happening online". That entire premise is the entire problem with the tweets-as-news culture and obviously false becuase "online" is a HUGE PLACE.

There appears to be a resignation that the "news" will now print whatever tiktok puts in front of them(!) and a cynical confession that drumming up clicks for random nonsense was, actually, the previous strategy.

Those of us who never took it seriously can't wait for it to keep unraveling.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#249

Post by steveBK123 »

mckern wrote: post #243
steveBK123 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would agree. Some old school journalists from NYT wrote about that phenomenon. Colleagues doing a lot of stories that were basically the groupthink of their friend group or what they saw on Twitter. Part of it is economics/incentives leading journalists to have to churn out a lot of content. Part of it is laziness as it's a lot easier than going out into the field and actually talking to people.

In fact, The Economist published a 17,000 word un-paywalled piece [0] recently about the NYT's group think problem. [0] https://www.economist.com/1843/2023/12/14/when-the-new-york-...

Yes! I hadn't managed to sit through and read the thing until now, though I've seen a number of interesting excerpts quoted.

Two that really stuck out to me was-

Even columnists with impeccable leftist bona fides recoiled from tackling subjects when their point of view might depart from progressive orthodoxy. I once complimented a long-time, left-leaning Opinion writer over a column criticising Democrats in Congress for doing something stupid. Trying to encourage more such journalism and thus less such stupidity, I remarked that this kind of argument had more influence than yet another Trump-is-a-devil column. “I know,” he replied, ruefully. “But Twitter hates it.”

Trying to be helpful, one of the top newsroom editors urged me to start attaching trigger warnings to pieces by conservatives. It had not occurred to him how this would stigmatise certain colleagues, or what it would say to the world about the Times’s own bias. By their nature, information bubbles are powerfully self-reinforcing, and I think many Times staff have little idea how closed their world has become, or how far they are from fulfilling their compact with readers to show the world “without fear or favour”.

Re: Nobody knows what's happening online anymore

#250

Post by lukifer »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #168
mbb70 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The extreme personalization of the internet/modern life can lead to a feeling of isolation. I recently was on a plane with broken inflight entertainment, so all you could watch was a single movie in lock step with everyone else. When the movie ended, there was a weird sense of camaraderie; "we are all stuck in this tube and we all just sat through that mediocre movie".

I'm not sure the official name for that is but I call it the "shared experience." Obviously something that pulls us together, but recently with less and less of it we're becoming islands in a sea of nothingness.

Shares at least some overlap with a "ritual of common knowledge": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1116212.Rational_Ritual
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