4 ms·

I disagree. News != politics. In fact, if I replace the "status quo" in your statement with "reality", the meaning will change significantly. I don't need a jou

I disagree. News != politics. In fact, if I replace the "status quo" in your statement with "reality", the meaning will change significantly. I don't need a journalist to tell me that the healthcare situation (to pick an example) is absurd, or that taxation (fed+state) in some states is already at European levels, yet without any healthcare or education benefits. It's easy to be aware of these facts, you just have to be alive. But I also don't need journalists to be brain-washing people by suggesting different ways of sharing the costs (insurance? single payer? have rich people pay for me?). The real solution is, of course, to lower the cost to the levels comparable to EU countries, but the costs are rarely discussed in the mass media, only cost sharing is brought up. Why? Because it's an unpopular solution among people who set the agenda. Fixing health care (i.e. halving its cost _at the very least_) means dropping US GDP by a whopping 9% [1]. So it's not about slow vs fast news. It's about controlling the public discourse. The old system of setting the national agenda [2] is obviously not working well if a populist with a Twitter account can override the MSM narrative and get himself elected. [1] https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/nationalhealthaccountshistorical.html https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/sta... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

yourbandsucks 8y ago
If I were the illuminati, I'd find it hard to beat the current system of keeping everyone tied up in a culture war while I picked their pockets.
- photojosh 8y ago
  I try to post in-depth and reasoned comments to this exact point whenever someone in my social circle posts ranty "news" articles, but they just get completely flat-out ignored. I've never seen anyone argue that this elite vs the rest pickpocketing isn't actually happening and (what we call) the culture war is the real battle. It would be helpful if there was, because then I could try to understand the mindset behind the dismissal of our view— it's driving me crazy.
  - yourbandsucks 8y ago
    Trying to rise above it is more offensive than taking the other side :) After all, they can understand fellow addicts on the other side.
shsbr5392 8y ago
This is dangerously naive with respect to how marketing works in the era of social media. Questions you should be asking yourself... Who controls the influential twitter account or blog? Do they make money from it either by posting sponsored content or do they run ads? Could someone who controls a botnet or clickfarm manipulate them by either granting or withholding likes, traffic, and clicks?
- ChristianBundy 8y ago
  > This is dangerously naive with respect to how marketing works in the era of social media. I was going to point out that this makes the assumption that they're consuming corporate social media, but we're on HN so I suppose that's implied. I should probably delete this account too.
  - TheRealDunkirk 8y ago
    You can't.
slg 8y ago
I don't know what you are intending to mean with your first point. Yes, you can change a word in my comment to a word with a different meaning and it will change the meaning of what I said. That doesn't mean what I said isn't true. Healthcare is really too big and broad of an issue to really highlight what I am saying here. There is no way not to at least be aware of it if not interact with it and it has been one of the biggest political issues in this country for decades. However you can take a look at certain pieces of that to see my point. For example, a tiny minority of people reading this have any reason to know the price of a month's supply of insulin is over $450 or that 1 in 4 people with diabetes are rationing themselves insulin in order to afford the drug. But more and more news stories are highlighting this issue which is leading to political pressure to address it. Just today there was a congressional hearing on the subject. I have no idea if something will be done to reduce the costs of insulin, but I know the price wouldn't go down if people just ignored every news story about it.
- old-gregg 8y ago
  > I don't know what you are intending to mean with your first point. > Yes, you can change a word in my comment to a word with a different > meaning and it will change the meaning of what I said. > That doesn't mean what I said isn't true. By using the inflammatory vocabulary, you've re-framed the issue as a class conflict, pushing the proposed solution (ignoring the news) out of scope. This is a classic move straight from Animal Farm. I simply suggested to re-read your comment using less polarizing language. This re-focuses us back on the original proposal, and suddenly we may realize that not listening to sponsored "suggestions" proposed by the media may have us voting for (using my example) a working healthcare system, which would be great for all people, disadvantaged or not.
  - shrimp_emoji 8y ago
    >suddenly we may realize that not listening to "suggestions" proposed by the media may have us voting for (using my example) a working healthcare system, which would be great for all people, disadvantaged or not. Maybe, but what are the odds of that vs. being kept in a state of aloof hypocognition that reinforces the status quo though? Without hearing of disasters or San Franciscan homeless slums from the news, I'd barely know about them because I don't go out of my way to research things like that -- the time and interest isn't there. Left entirely to my own perspective, the biggest problems in the world are the ones I'm facing -- usually programming or computing related.
durability 8y ago
You are an awful human being.
- dang 8y ago
  Yikes, posting like this will get you banned on HN. We're trying to do better than internet default when it comes to nastiness. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when posting to HN from now on?

yourbandsucks 8y ago

If I were the illuminati, I'd find it hard to beat the current system of keeping everyone tied up in a culture war while I picked their pockets.

photojosh 8y ago
I try to post in-depth and reasoned comments to this exact point whenever someone in my social circle posts ranty "news" articles, but they just get completely flat-out ignored. I've never seen anyone argue that this elite vs the rest pickpocketing isn't actually happening and (what we call) the culture war is the real battle. It would be helpful if there was, because then I could try to understand the mindset behind the dismissal of our view— it's driving me crazy.
- yourbandsucks 8y ago
  Trying to rise above it is more offensive than taking the other side :) After all, they can understand fellow addicts on the other side.

shsbr5392 8y ago

This is dangerously naive with respect to how marketing works in the era of social media. Questions you should be asking yourself... Who controls the influential twitter account or blog? Do they make money from it either by posting sponsored content or do they run ads? Could someone who controls a botnet or clickfarm manipulate them by either granting or withholding likes, traffic, and clicks?

ChristianBundy 8y ago
> This is dangerously naive with respect to how marketing works in the era of social media. I was going to point out that this makes the assumption that they're consuming corporate social media, but we're on HN so I suppose that's implied. I should probably delete this account too.
- TheRealDunkirk 8y ago
  You can't.

slg 8y ago

I don't know what you are intending to mean with your first point. Yes, you can change a word in my comment to a word with a different meaning and it will change the meaning of what I said. That doesn't mean what I said isn't true. Healthcare is really too big and broad of an issue to really highlight what I am saying here. There is no way not to at least be aware of it if not interact with it and it has been one of the biggest political issues in this country for decades. However you can take a look at certain pieces of that to see my point. For example, a tiny minority of people reading this have any reason to know the price of a month's supply of insulin is over $450 or that 1 in 4 people with diabetes are rationing themselves insulin in order to afford the drug. But more and more news stories are highlighting this issue which is leading to political pressure to address it. Just today there was a congressional hearing on the subject. I have no idea if something will be done to reduce the costs of insulin, but I know the price wouldn't go down if people just ignored every news story about it.

old-gregg 8y ago
> I don't know what you are intending to mean with your first point. > Yes, you can change a word in my comment to a word with a different > meaning and it will change the meaning of what I said. > That doesn't mean what I said isn't true. By using the inflammatory vocabulary, you've re-framed the issue as a class conflict, pushing the proposed solution (ignoring the news) out of scope. This is a classic move straight from Animal Farm. I simply suggested to re-read your comment using less polarizing language. This re-focuses us back on the original proposal, and suddenly we may realize that not listening to sponsored "suggestions" proposed by the media may have us voting for (using my example) a working healthcare system, which would be great for all people, disadvantaged or not.
- shrimp_emoji 8y ago
  >suddenly we may realize that not listening to "suggestions" proposed by the media may have us voting for (using my example) a working healthcare system, which would be great for all people, disadvantaged or not. Maybe, but what are the odds of that vs. being kept in a state of aloof hypocognition that reinforces the status quo though? Without hearing of disasters or San Franciscan homeless slums from the news, I'd barely know about them because I don't go out of my way to research things like that -- the time and interest isn't there. Left entirely to my own perspective, the biggest problems in the world are the ones I'm facing -- usually programming or computing related.

durability 8y ago

You are an awful human being.

dang 8y ago
Yikes, posting like this will get you banned on HN. We're trying to do better than internet default when it comes to nastiness. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when posting to HN from now on?