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"[S]eriously, NPR does matter unless you want to live in a world with ONLY 30 minutes of vocal fry on the value and meaning of Mold (which is GREAT) and not, al
by Semiapies 11y ago
"[S]eriously, NPR does matter unless you want to live in a world with ONLY 30 minutes of vocal fry on the value and meaning of Mold (which is GREAT) and not, also, let’s say ... news of a terror attack in Belgium."
It's difficult to concisely unpack and dissect everything wrong with this line. To put the tunnel vision of it in context, ponder the tiny minority of people who heard about the Belgium attack on NPR first, or even from them at all.
You can't posture in defense of NPR on the basis of a service that people can get anywhere else, and in the case of young listeners, are getting almost everywhere else. (Not even in-depth news - if you want that, you'll read something. Something younger people appear to do more of.)
- scott_s 11y agoI also found the "vocal fry" comment unnecessary - it's basically a way of saying "voice of a young person", since that's just how some young people talk. Kinda ironically, my source for this is an NPR program, This American Life: https://jenmacdonald.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/vocal-fry-on-this-american-life/ https://jenmacdonald.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/vocal-fry-on-t... (Well, a blog that mentions the program, but I figured people are more likely to read the conclusions from this blogger than listen to the whole segment. The irony is thick in this comment.)
- extra88 11y agoThis American Life is not an NPR program, it never has been. Not all public radio comes from NPR.
- scott_s 11y agoThis American Life is produced by WBEZ Chicago, which is an NPR affiliate. It airs on stations other than WBEZ. To me, that makes it "an NPR program".
- ghaff 11y agoYes, a lot of people use "NPR" as shorthand to mean all programming that is associated with public radio stations in some way (often because they don't know that there is a distinction). But that doesn't make it correct--especially when the distinction is quite relevant as in the context of this article.
- Torgo 11y agonot all young people use a vocal fry; it is learned; it is increasing; a lot of people find it annoying.
- scott_s 11y agoCorrect, not all young people speak with vocal fry, but it is more common among young people than old. So if someone is complaining about vocal fry specifically, they're basically complaining about young voices. All voice is learned, so I don't see how that distinguishes it from any other vocal phenomenon. We don't talk the same way as people did in, say, the 40s. That's learned.