Hey, come on now. What’s so implausible about it? This happens all the time.
What gets you in more trouble in the modern military? Porn on the work machine? Or letting your security get so lax that a hostile power can hack it?
So the NY Times published an article on the “Intellectual Dark Web” a term that seems as incorrect as it is conceited.
My biggest takeaway was this:
Yet there are pitfalls to this audience-supported model. One risk is what Eric Weinstein has called “audience capture.” Since stories about left-wing-outrage culture — the fact that the University of California, Berkeley, had to spend $600,000 on security for Mr. Shapiro’s speech there, say — take off with their fans, members of the Intellectual Dark Web may have a hard time resisting the urge to deliver that type of story. This probably helps explain why some people in this group talk constantly about the regressive left but far less about the threat from the right.
“There are a few people in this network who have gone without saying anything critical about Trump, a person who has assaulted truth more than anyone in human history,” Mr. Harris said. “If you care about the truth, that is quite strange.”
Emphasis is one problem. Associating with genuinely bad people is another.
Go a click in one direction and the group is enhanced by intellectuals with tony affiliations like Steven Pinker at Harvard. But go a click in another and you’ll find alt-right figures like Stefan Molyneux and Milo Yiannopoulos and conspiracy theorists like Mike Cernovich (the #PizzaGate huckster) and Alex Jones (the Sandy Hook shooting denier).
It’s hard to draw boundaries around an amorphous network, especially when each person in it has a different idea of who is beyond the pale.
See, I would have gone with “as clumsy as it is stupid” for the full Darth Vader reference.
If the standard journalists set for themselves is that anything Republicans claim to be outraged about must be treated as a live controversy, then journalists disclaim a major potential point of failure, and become conduits for propaganda.
Hey, I’ve been shouting about this for years!
Now if only the NYT and their ilk would stop hiring right wing bloviators and paying heed to bullshit, maybe we could make progress as a nation.
Eh. Fuck the opinion pages. I’m way more interested in not giving access urchins** like Haberman space in the actual news sections of the publication.
** (y’know, like an access merchant but pathetic and begging for scraps.)
I think I’m officially done with Stephanie Ruhle on MSNBC. I’ve always liked her voice, her expertise on economics, etc, on my morning commute but the way she goes to bat for Trump so often lately has killed it. The NK talks fall apart and she’s arguing this morning that Trump still comes out a winner, thanks to the 3 hostages being freed. No matter that 2 of them were taken while he was President or that one kid came back home in a coma and died during his watch. He freed the hostages - winner!! She does shit like this way too often and it normalizes all the crazy insane evil shit his administration is doing. Sod off, Stephanie.
Among Trumpian circles, she’s probably right and it’s those circles which Trump cares about. That said, I didn’t see her segment and she may have totally meant in a different context.
Comedian Michelle Wolf on why the NYT Opinion Page sucks.
It’s about as subtle as a kick to the head, but it makes its point (and frankly anything more subtle than a kick to the head just gets shouted over these days.)
We lost her, Trig 😓
@abidingdude the only real question here is why does the emoji you used have the tear ABOVE it’s eye? What is going on???.
Ha! We’ll always have Tom’s reaction gifs tho.
Oh, and did someone say the NYT sucks?
Remember with me, if you will, those horrible 72 hours after election day 2016, when we came to grips with the notion of Trump as president. And remember too, being told that the New York Post’s Salena Zito had been prescient in her stories about undecided rust belters who were unmoved by the Clinton message and thinking seriously about Trump. I know I got taken in by that. Salena Zito had spotted something, and we should’ve listened. By gum, she was on to something.
Or, you know, she was making shit up. Today talking head S. E. Cupp took to the NYT opinion page to try to stand up Zito’s stories, and point out how Democrats STILL aren’t listening to her.
Only this time, former Gawker senior editor Tom Scocca is having none of this idiot mythologizing. If you too got taken in by this shit…well, this is illuminating.
SE Cupp is terrible and there’s only one reason she’s famous.
Spotted the guy who’s never watched any anime.
Seriously, what happened to that paper? I’d guess it’s a drop in quality due to the changing economics of the class, but damn. At least WaPo still has their shit together, for the most part.
NYT is shit.
I’m just quoting you because it really can’t be said enough.
I would also like to note that the NYT is absolute and utter gutless shit.
Reposting this to punctuate the point.