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Kanye West is buying Parler

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Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#591

Post by JumpCrisscross »

aerostable_slug wrote: post #463
winternett wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

he is a victim of his own choices... I don't want to sound callous, but to be honest, we all face a much more harsh and unforgiving future than him if we made the same mistakes. He has squandered the good faith he built over many years by making bad decisions. Somehow he generated wealth out of it all, but continued to make bad decisions in hopes of hanging on to his dramatic public personality/popularity. It's not f…

> he is a victim of his own choices... Would you say the same about a schizophrenic who refuses to stay on his meds and ends up ranting at people while living under a bridge? People with bipolar disorder sometimes won't take their meds for a variety reasons, one being they seek the energy of manic episodes (one in my acquaintance had only had one major manic episode in her entire life but she put up with depression f…

> Would you say the same about a schizophrenic who refuses to stay on his meds and ends up ranting at people while living under a bridge?

No, because Kanye isn’t living under a bridge. He’s a billionaire.

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#592

Post by mikkergp »

SilverBirch wrote: post #52

I think this makes sense from a business perspective. Social media is actually a surprisingly hard business to make money at - look at Twitter. It's only the superscale businesses that make good money - Facebook, Youtube, Tiktok. And the dynamic is that because these businesses are primarily making money through marketing they need to keep a fairly neutral brand in order to retain an advertiser friendly platform. So…

I think the problem is that twitter is attractive _because_ of who is on it. Journalists, liberals. The goal isn't really to permit free speech, it's to make certain ideas and values more palatable in our society. There's no point of buying a big platform if you can't attract/retain the people you're trying to influence.

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#593

Post by [deleted] »

dudeinjapan wrote: post #581
diceduckmonk wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT) I was just there yesterday haha. Glad we agree.

Nice!! You must have caught the Jean Prouve exhibit on its closing day then. That one was killer, I really enjoyed it with all the actual portable houses setup. Another highlight in this past year was an exhibit the making of the classic Godzilla movies, they had some of the miniature sets recreated.

[deleted]

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#594

Post by kgwxd »

P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul wrote: post #320
taylodl wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and these Parler people are scamming him - that's an interesting point I hadn't thought of. My first thought on hearing this news was so what? I don't care about Parler or Kanye West, but if Parler is taking advantage of Kanye's mental decline then that's next-level awful. Like I said, I'm no fan of Kanye, but that's horrible to take advantage of people like that.

Is Elon Musk being scammed by Twitter? Same situation. Can't a rich dude buy a company without goofy rumors being spread (scammed into buying Parler)? Having a celebrity owner increases the value.

Twitter wasn't a platform created specifically to grift idiots, and it has actual reach.

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#595

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #117

This is really a story about a celebrity's mental illness and public breakdown. If you haven't been following the news, West has spent the week saying increasingly unhinged things, not just about politics but about Pete Davidson, his wife, and (if I'm remembering right) his kids and the fake actor children that have been installed in his former home to corrupt them. He was interviewed for a show on Fox and a big chun…

[deleted]

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#596

Post by cwkoss »

qq66 wrote: post #461
spywaregorilla wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who doesn't listen to much rap / hip hop, and can only name his cover (adaptation?) of Stronger, I do know who Kanye is. I don't know anything about his music. Mostly I just know of him because he's a very public asshole. Much like his wife. I find it basically impossible to empathize with him. I just wouldn't ever be in that situation. "Rising against adversity" is not the story I'd be be using here so mu…

> Mostly I just know of him because he's a very public asshole. Much like his wife. By "his wife" do you mean his ex-wife Kim Kardashian? If so, in what ways is she an asshole?

She's a no-talent clown who bought her way into the public view with nepotistic wealth. She heavily uses photoshop on her pictures, and then sells beauty products to insecure young women to profit off the insecurities her digital media team helped manufacture. Her brand is basically just 'stupid and rich' - not someone I'd ever want any of the young women I care about to idolize. Her fame is a shame of American society: her rise is emblematic of the shift, away from talent, to wealth being the primary factor in modern cultural prominence.

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#597

Post by mikkergp »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #571
giraffe_lady wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that it's important to have a mainstream and consequence-free venue for all forms of speech may be your belief but it is not mine. My belief is that public forums with reach into the tens or hundreds of millions are fertile ground for nationalist and genocidal movements, and they will be used for that purpose if it is not actively prevented . Moderation of wide-reach public forums with the goal of preventing…

> The idea that it's important to have a mainstream and consequence-free venue for all forms of speech may be your belief but it is not mine. Well, imagine that you got kicked off the internet for saying what you just said? You’re only allowed to express your disagreement because of free speech principles

> You’re only allowed to express your disagreement because of free speech principles

Sort of true, but it doesn't make sense not to re-evaluate how we apply those principles when we encounter dramatic changes in communication patterns. You can believe in freedom of speech as an end in itself, or you can believe in freedom of speech as better than the alternative. If you think of it as better than the alternative, then you should be consistently measuring to ensure that is still true.

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#598

Post by JKCalhoun »

sangnoir wrote: post #577
letterlib wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of examples of this and the left has had some truly great advocates for free speech. In terms of time period, the Red Scare and Mccarthyism was a time when the left was being heavily censored by the right. The Civil Rights movements as well with MLK during the 1960s and then Frank Kameny in the 1970s trying to get rights for gays. Other leftist advocates for free speech include Obama, Elenor Roosevelt…

What counts as "free speech" tends to be subjective: was MLK pro-free-speech or against it? That depends on whose speech you're considering. I can give even earlier counter-examples with left/right flipped (e.g. abolitionist literature in the south). My initial point wasn't that it never happened, only to show there were never deliberate, strategic positions on free speech by the left or right- only messy tactical ci…

> Obama famously called someone a "jack-ass" after they exercised their free speech on-stage.

I thought that a strange comment. Disapproving of what one says is clearly not the same as condemning free speech.

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#599

Post by enragedcacti »

qq66 wrote: post #461
spywaregorilla wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who doesn't listen to much rap / hip hop, and can only name his cover (adaptation?) of Stronger, I do know who Kanye is. I don't know anything about his music. Mostly I just know of him because he's a very public asshole. Much like his wife. I find it basically impossible to empathize with him. I just wouldn't ever be in that situation. "Rising against adversity" is not the story I'd be be using here so mu…

> Mostly I just know of him because he's a very public asshole. Much like his wife. By "his wife" do you mean his ex-wife Kim Kardashian? If so, in what ways is she an asshole?

On the flip she has been doing a lot of advocacy for prison reform and is apprenticing to become a lawyer in California, seemingly to that end.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/arts/television/kim-karda...

Re: Kanye West is buying Parler

#600

Post by notduncansmith »

kgwxd wrote: post #566
filoleg wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was genuine. He worked hard to get good at making beats, to the point he got signed at Roc-a-Fella Records to make beats for big artists at the time (Jay-Z, Alicia Keys, etc). He was super known for that in the industry, but Kanye insisted on one specific term of the contract - they gotta let him release his own album. Which they hesitantly allowed, because they thought he was just gonna fail and go back to what t…

> All of this is confirmed by tons of other people affiliated with Roc-a-Fella Records (like Jay-Z and others) at the time. They're in on the story.

I’m not buying this Kanspiracy theory.
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