271–280 of 537 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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-...
Maybe I'm old, but didn't the NYT used to be very right-wing?
The peak of this, for me, was pizza rat (late 2015) which felt like the last time everyone on the internet had seen the same thing. Kind of like the old days of TV where the whole nation would watch the same episode of something in the same evening. Dat boi (early 2016) was the first time I missed out on the meme zeitgeist and it’s been slipping further from my grasp ever since. I suspect I am also getting old.
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.
X isn't dead, nor is it dying. Elon Musk took away a bunch of people's status, people who thought they were important somebodies because some nerds in an office met them in person and/or they paid some money to get a verification mark. That's what happened. It's the election of Donald Trump all over again. One of the few people who actually understood what happened in the 2016 election - and was able to articulate it…
Some people get it. From before the 2016 election:
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberali...>
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-on...> (so, so prophetic in why the Rust Belt broke for Trump)
and after:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/commentary-the-unbearable-smugne...>
The New York Times pointed out after Trump's election stunned the press that http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/business/media/media-trump...>
>Whatever the election result, you’re going to hear a lot from news executives about how they need to send their reporters out into the heart of the country, to better understand its citizenry.
>But that will miss something fundamental. Flyover country isn’t a place, it’s a state of mind — it’s in parts of Long Island and Queens, much of Staten Island, certain neighborhoods of Miami or even Chicago. And, yes, it largely — but hardly exclusively — pertains to working-class white people.
In other words, it isn't just a question of The New York Times (and the TV networks, and pretty much all of the rest of mass media) completely ignoring the rubes out in rural Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin (which all, strangely enough, unexpectedly voted for Trump), but their ignoring the residents of their own city, just across one bridge.
> Or maybe artificial intelligence is flooding the internet with synthetic information and killing the old web. Relevant: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory > The dead Internet theory is an online conspiracy theory that asserts that the Internet now consists mainly of bot activity and automatically generated content that is manipulated by algorithmic curation, marginalizing organic human activity.[1…
I find it distasteful that this article frames it as a fringe (conspiracy) theory of the present, rather than simply a theory of the future.
Is the Internet dead now? I mean no, that's pretty fringe.
Will it become so in the future? It's a very reasonable and thought-provoking hypothesis.
IMO the article should be reframed to take this into account, or a new term should be coined.
Recently I was thinking about how I am completely out of touch with the culture of younger generations, and was about to laugh it off cause that's how it is with every generation, but then I realized that I don't even know how I would know. In the past if you wanted to know what kids were listening to, you change the radio station to that new loud one you normally skip, or watch that new TV show that people are going…
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.
X isn't dead, nor is it dying. Elon Musk took away a bunch of people's status, people who thought they were important somebodies because some nerds in an office met them in person and/or they paid some money to get a verification mark. That's what happened. It's the election of Donald Trump all over again. One of the few people who actually understood what happened in the 2016 election - and was able to articulate it…
Not quite. I used to get work through Twitter until Elon made it so you need a subscription to DM people. I used to get about one DM per week, but I haven't had any for about 3 months.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Common sense is more valuable (in the real sense, not just money) than a diploma. And, the GPT revolution is making traditional education even less important than before. “Hate all you want, but I'm smart, I'm so smart, and I'm in school. These guys are out here making money all these ways, and I'm spending mine to be smart. You know why? Because when I die, buddy, know what's gonna keep me warm? That's right, those…
> Common sense is more valuable You assume that people with high income/education have less common sense. Correct?
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.
I feel very lucky I was already out of university by the time algo-feeds became mainstream, otherwise it would be hard to chat about "latest episode of Game of Thrones". Or just generally chit-chat about "some stuff that everyone saw online".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was talking to my younger sister (college student) the other day, and she mentioned that she and her friends are very reluctant to post their opinions online, especially under their real names. This was a bit of a surprise to me, because she volunteers for the Democrats and is openly lesbian, so I would have thought her opinions are generally a great match for the current cultural milieu. I think maybe part of the…
Maybe what they are feeling is a deep unconscious unease at the realisation that the cancellation culture the leftists have bought to life is bad karma. What goes around comes around.
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.