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I love this article. It’s so hard to find moderate voices, especially when algorithmic curation tends to surface outrage first. As the author puts it: “I don’

I love this article. It’s so hard to find moderate voices, especially when algorithmic curation tends to surface outrage first. As the author puts it: “I don’t object to journalists writing about the trials and tribulations of Amazon employees. I only wish they would do so fairly. Just because a journalist has found an Amazon employee somewhere who got sprayed with bear repellant, that doesn’t mean Amazon employees spend their days in mortal fear of a chemical attack. ...we need fair-minded and accurate reporting about the companies we patronize, not scaremongering polemics preaching a black-and-white gospel of tyranny and exploitation. ”

blueboo 7y ago
Or it’s the kind of vile right-wing strawman-bestrewn ass-covering FUD typical of Quillete. If the sanctimony of this author utterly invalidates the reportage on the consistent testimony of dozens of similarly-suffering employees...well, there’s a lot more available from that outlet (and this author, published numerous times there)
- seibelj 7y ago
  > Or it’s the kind of vile right-wing strawman-bestrewn ass-covering FUD typical of Quillete. This is the precise type of commentary that is extremely off-putting to me. I consider myself a critical reader and what you wrote is the type of argument I immediately dismiss.
  - blueboo 7y ago
    “Don’t tell me what to think” mere moments after > we need fair-minded and accurate reporting about the companies we patronize, not scaremongering polemics preaching a black-and-white gospel of tyranny and exploitation ...the author lectured us on why -all- the previous reportage should be unskeptically dismissed. Context is so...inconvenient if you believe the literal truth is always found on the page. I for one always believed knowing how something is spun and why is part of being a thoughtful reader.
    - seibelj 7y ago
      So why didn’t you say a thoughtful argument with quotes to make your point the first time? Why open your argument with a blanket hysterical statement that immediately makes me question everything else you say?
  - klenwell 7y ago
    Then let me try. I concede the GP's tone is off-putting. I don't watch John Oliver regularly because I generally find him more entertaining than informative. Yet I still think this piece is largely disingenuous claptrap. Kevin Mims is not a moderate voice. He's a unique voice. A white man "in my sixties" with bylines with NPR and the NY Times who works a second job at a small bookstore and still finds time to turn out well-written longish-form essays. This is not a balanced piece. It is a piece with a skillfully deployed pro-Amazon shareholder-friendly anti-organized-labor agenda. As someone who is critical of Amazon and believes it does not pay its warehouse workers a living sustainable wage and works systematically in ways that make society a worse place on balance, I am not surprised by anything Mims writes. I expect most workers get through their shift without getting sprayed with bear repellant or getting physically injured. I expect a lot of Amazon's warehouse employees to be grateful for the work (largely because they're not empowered to expect or demand better). These should be table stakes for any employer, large or small. How long has Mims worked for Amazon? He tells us: > I’ve worked about 70 shifts since I started at Amazon, and I still wouldn’t presume to offer myself as an expert on the conditions of the entire workforce. Between 3 and 4 months? How much longer does he expect to work for Amazon? Why is he swallowing his "litany of gripes"? What happens to him when one of the injury he acknowledges as inevitable ("warehouses are hazardous environments and, somewhere today, an Amazon employee is likely to be injured") finally strikes him? Finally, this article misses a critical dimension of this issue. It certainly matters how Amazon treats its employees, especially those with the least negotiating power. But it also matters how Amazon presses the levers of power that help the market and government set constraints on companies' ability to tyrannize and exploit its workforce. Amazon management works aggressively to cripple unions. It is a topic covered by professional journalists fairly writing about the trials and tribulations of Amazon employees.
    - seibelj 7y ago
      The article was about how exposes describing Amazon warehouses as urine soaked hellscapes were gross, fantastical exaggerations and the vast majority of employees are in reality happy working there. In regards to all of the anti-union stuff, that is an entirely separate issue and unrelated to the article. You can hold two ideas in your head at once - that Amazon is a safe, decent place to work while understanding that Amazon, and nearly all major corporations, prefer their workers are not unionized. I think the article was a great explanation as to why Amazon warehouses are actually nice places to work, which is the opposite of nearly all other commentary. I like the counterpoint!
- voldacar 7y ago
  Please explain how this article was: 1. vile 2. right-wing 3. strawman-bestrewn 4. ass-covering 5. spreading FUD thanks
  - ashleshbiradar 7y ago
    https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/quillette/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/quillette/ welcome
    - ralusek 7y ago
      The source you just linked to, claiming to be an unbiased arbiter, is itself immediately biased. On Quillete: > they report favorably on Jordan Peterson who has made several anti-Feminist statements and has called for “enforced monogamy” Eric Weinstein absolutely destroyed this position. The New York Times initially criticized Jordan Peterson for the usage of the term "enforced monogamy," only for Weinstein to dig up multiple instances of the Times using the exact same phrase to describe exactly what Peterson meant. Enforced monogamy is literally a phrase that means "the social pressure to engage in long-term monogamous behavior." He used it in the context of describing why there was an uptick in "incels," essentially destructive men who are reproductively unsuccessful and increasingly unhappy with society. He wasn't even advocating for enforced monogamy, he was literally stating that the social move away from monogamy increases the number of involuntarily celibate men, which is empirically true. Every dating site has converged on the now infamous 80/20 statistic that demonstrates precisely this. So please, check your own sources. What they've criticized Quillete for is a well debunked criticism of one of their contributors.
    - ajxs 7y ago
      I can't be the only person who finds these kinds of so-called 'fact check' sites more sinister than the so-called biased media they're trying to spotlight.
burlesona 7y ago
Why would we expect journalists to write fair articles? They’re in the infotainment business and need to sell clicks. Reporting that working at a warehouse is “hard work but mostly okay,” is not going to advance that reporters career or help the publication make money. But finding a shocking and at least mostly true story, and ignoring whether or not it’s a 1% outlier, just might. We shouldn’t be surprised by this. What we ought to do is ignore it. I think the biggest problem is that most people want to be genuinely well-informed, won’t accept that this isn’t actually possible, and thus accept a lot of commercial infotainment because it provokes strong feelings, makes for good shared outrage dinner chats with “in the know” friends, and helps you imagine that you are well informed.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  > Why would we expect journalists to write fair articles? They’re in the infotainment business and need to sell clicks. Because if journalists stop writing fair articles in the longer term our societies will lose a lot more than just a bunch of $ in the coffers of the press owners.
- wideasleep1 7y ago
  "We shouldn’t be surprised by this. What we ought to do is ignore it." Impressive challenge. Rush Limbaugh was a voice for Gen-X neocons much in the same way John Oliver is today for Millenial neo-libs. In their time, they are hard to ignore..it's the diet being consumed.

blueboo 7y ago

Or it’s the kind of vile right-wing strawman-bestrewn ass-covering FUD typical of Quillete. If the sanctimony of this author utterly invalidates the reportage on the consistent testimony of dozens of similarly-suffering employees...well, there’s a lot more available from that outlet (and this author, published numerous times there)

seibelj 7y ago
> Or it’s the kind of vile right-wing strawman-bestrewn ass-covering FUD typical of Quillete. This is the precise type of commentary that is extremely off-putting to me. I consider myself a critical reader and what you wrote is the type of argument I immediately dismiss.
- blueboo 7y ago
  “Don’t tell me what to think” mere moments after > we need fair-minded and accurate reporting about the companies we patronize, not scaremongering polemics preaching a black-and-white gospel of tyranny and exploitation ...the author lectured us on why -all- the previous reportage should be unskeptically dismissed. Context is so...inconvenient if you believe the literal truth is always found on the page. I for one always believed knowing how something is spun and why is part of being a thoughtful reader.
  - seibelj 7y ago
    So why didn’t you say a thoughtful argument with quotes to make your point the first time? Why open your argument with a blanket hysterical statement that immediately makes me question everything else you say?
- klenwell 7y ago
  Then let me try. I concede the GP's tone is off-putting. I don't watch John Oliver regularly because I generally find him more entertaining than informative. Yet I still think this piece is largely disingenuous claptrap. Kevin Mims is not a moderate voice. He's a unique voice. A white man "in my sixties" with bylines with NPR and the NY Times who works a second job at a small bookstore and still finds time to turn out well-written longish-form essays. This is not a balanced piece. It is a piece with a skillfully deployed pro-Amazon shareholder-friendly anti-organized-labor agenda. As someone who is critical of Amazon and believes it does not pay its warehouse workers a living sustainable wage and works systematically in ways that make society a worse place on balance, I am not surprised by anything Mims writes. I expect most workers get through their shift without getting sprayed with bear repellant or getting physically injured. I expect a lot of Amazon's warehouse employees to be grateful for the work (largely because they're not empowered to expect or demand better). These should be table stakes for any employer, large or small. How long has Mims worked for Amazon? He tells us: > I’ve worked about 70 shifts since I started at Amazon, and I still wouldn’t presume to offer myself as an expert on the conditions of the entire workforce. Between 3 and 4 months? How much longer does he expect to work for Amazon? Why is he swallowing his "litany of gripes"? What happens to him when one of the injury he acknowledges as inevitable ("warehouses are hazardous environments and, somewhere today, an Amazon employee is likely to be injured") finally strikes him? Finally, this article misses a critical dimension of this issue. It certainly matters how Amazon treats its employees, especially those with the least negotiating power. But it also matters how Amazon presses the levers of power that help the market and government set constraints on companies' ability to tyrannize and exploit its workforce. Amazon management works aggressively to cripple unions. It is a topic covered by professional journalists fairly writing about the trials and tribulations of Amazon employees.
  - seibelj 7y ago
    The article was about how exposes describing Amazon warehouses as urine soaked hellscapes were gross, fantastical exaggerations and the vast majority of employees are in reality happy working there. In regards to all of the anti-union stuff, that is an entirely separate issue and unrelated to the article. You can hold two ideas in your head at once - that Amazon is a safe, decent place to work while understanding that Amazon, and nearly all major corporations, prefer their workers are not unionized. I think the article was a great explanation as to why Amazon warehouses are actually nice places to work, which is the opposite of nearly all other commentary. I like the counterpoint!
voldacar 7y ago
Please explain how this article was: 1. vile 2. right-wing 3. strawman-bestrewn 4. ass-covering 5. spreading FUD thanks
- ashleshbiradar 7y ago
  https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/quillette/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/quillette/ welcome
  - ralusek 7y ago
    The source you just linked to, claiming to be an unbiased arbiter, is itself immediately biased. On Quillete: > they report favorably on Jordan Peterson who has made several anti-Feminist statements and has called for “enforced monogamy” Eric Weinstein absolutely destroyed this position. The New York Times initially criticized Jordan Peterson for the usage of the term "enforced monogamy," only for Weinstein to dig up multiple instances of the Times using the exact same phrase to describe exactly what Peterson meant. Enforced monogamy is literally a phrase that means "the social pressure to engage in long-term monogamous behavior." He used it in the context of describing why there was an uptick in "incels," essentially destructive men who are reproductively unsuccessful and increasingly unhappy with society. He wasn't even advocating for enforced monogamy, he was literally stating that the social move away from monogamy increases the number of involuntarily celibate men, which is empirically true. Every dating site has converged on the now infamous 80/20 statistic that demonstrates precisely this. So please, check your own sources. What they've criticized Quillete for is a well debunked criticism of one of their contributors.
  - ajxs 7y ago
    I can't be the only person who finds these kinds of so-called 'fact check' sites more sinister than the so-called biased media they're trying to spotlight.

burlesona 7y ago

Why would we expect journalists to write fair articles? They’re in the infotainment business and need to sell clicks. Reporting that working at a warehouse is “hard work but mostly okay,” is not going to advance that reporters career or help the publication make money. But finding a shocking and at least mostly true story, and ignoring whether or not it’s a 1% outlier, just might. We shouldn’t be surprised by this. What we ought to do is ignore it. I think the biggest problem is that most people want to be genuinely well-informed, won’t accept that this isn’t actually possible, and thus accept a lot of commercial infotainment because it provokes strong feelings, makes for good shared outrage dinner chats with “in the know” friends, and helps you imagine that you are well informed.

jacquesm 7y ago
> Why would we expect journalists to write fair articles? They’re in the infotainment business and need to sell clicks. Because if journalists stop writing fair articles in the longer term our societies will lose a lot more than just a bunch of $ in the coffers of the press owners.
wideasleep1 7y ago
"We shouldn’t be surprised by this. What we ought to do is ignore it." Impressive challenge. Rush Limbaugh was a voice for Gen-X neocons much in the same way John Oliver is today for Millenial neo-libs. In their time, they are hard to ignore..it's the diet being consumed.