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Reneé Girard has some interesting things to say about scapegoating. > "Everywhere and always, when human beings either cannot or dare not take their anger out

Reneé Girard has some interesting things to say about scapegoating. > "Everywhere and always, when human beings either cannot or dare not take their anger out on the thing that has caused it, they unconsciously search for substitutes, and more often than not they find them." Seeing the overwhelming vitriol towards Facebook (justified to a certain extent, but certainly over-indexed), I can't help but join you in this low-value conspiracy indulgence... If Girard's prescription is true here, what really is the media so rampantly enraged about that they are seeking to continually beat the downed (arguably) dead horse that is Facebook's PR image? * Is it an old-money / new-money thing? https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/12/facebook-rupert-murdoch-threatened-mark-zuckerberg-in-2016-with-a-war.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/12/facebook-rupert-murdoch-thre... * Is it related to an increasing coastal elite / tech / income-inequality distrust with the rest of America? * Is it a trendy common-enemy for young intellectuals to frame as the next trope for "misused, oppressive power"? * Is it anger and bargaining from the 2016 election fallout where the unhappy masses are working through the Stages of Grief and are searching for an object where to fixate the blame to move on?

apatters 8y ago
FB is a direct competitor to media brands -- eyeball time that would have gone to CNN or WashPo or MTV now go to FB. FB then resells those eyeballs to said media brands, and it's big enough to command market power--it can control prices and terms and it's so huge you can't easily take your budget to a competing service. (It has in fact done this, before the wave of "FB is evil" stories, there was a wave of "FB is raising the price of impressions" stories. So many media brands perceive it as an existential threat. FB did some fairly dirty things to obtain its huge market share and it's too powerful. So I don't really see a problem with all its competitors piling up on it, but that's definitely what's going on.

apatters 8y ago

FB is a direct competitor to media brands -- eyeball time that would have gone to CNN or WashPo or MTV now go to FB. FB then resells those eyeballs to said media brands, and it's big enough to command market power--it can control prices and terms and it's so huge you can't easily take your budget to a competing service. (It has in fact done this, before the wave of "FB is evil" stories, there was a wave of "FB is raising the price of impressions" stories. So many media brands perceive it as an existential threat. FB did some fairly dirty things to obtain its huge market share and it's too powerful. So I don't really see a problem with all its competitors piling up on it, but that's definitely what's going on.