3 ms·

Thank you for pointing out the bias and the advertising aspect of this article. I just cancelled my Guardian subscription.

by hkeide 7y ago

me_me_me 7y ago
Out of curiosity who else do you subscribe to? Routers and Guardian are my only go to sources where I don't have to outright be suspicious of anything they write (with some caveats for guardian).
- hkeide 7y ago
  Only financial newspapers, Bloomberg, WSJ and the like. I like The Atlantic, but don't subscribe. I wish I could subscribe to a collection of them, since it gets expensive. Reuters seems reliable and don't seem to want to perpetuate partisanship in the way that The Guardian has lately. Having an agenda is fine, having that agenda be perpetuating pointless conflict with "the others", and proving how intelligent we in the in-group are is not very useful. This article was just the final straw. I come from Norway which isn't a two-party nation so I think this enters into my dislike for the black and white thinking that seems to be growing in the Anglosphere where I currently live.
Rexxar 7y ago
Why is it a problem here ? It's clearly indicated at the end and I see books as a natural complement to newspapers. I generally dislike advertisement but this seems to be one of the rare legitimate case.
- hkeide 7y ago
  I honestly don't know exactly why it rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe because he's railing against capitalism (I can't even count the number of assertions in the article, and very little explanation or evidence is offered) and then procedes to try to sell his book based on what I personally think is a shallow understanding of the subject matter. In general, complaining that the pop culture version of something is shallow and ineffective compared to a full understanding (which ironically, the author lacks), could be generalized without lack of accuracy. If you did that, it would be hard to find some ideolical construct to point a finger at, which seems to be his main objective. Pushing your opinion is obviously okay in a newspaper. That's his right. I just won't be paying for it. I've lately noticed a gradual decrease in the "detached analysis" coming out of The Guardian in favor of more idealist in-group circle-self-satisfaction. This probably feels good for some people but I don't think it's the way forward.
  - thesz 7y ago
    As I see it, he does object to narrowing the thinking which is imposed by capitalism as the one and sole viable human society operation mode. That narrowing is induced by neoliberal ideology, as he thinks. I do too, by the way. He even introduced me to "disimagination" neologism which I greatly admire, and I am not even done with the article.
thinkingemote 7y ago
As an aside and I truly believe you in your case but I really want to do a Twitter / social media bot which counts the number of times people say "I'm unsubscribing" (from e.g. GitHub, Blizzard, Netflix, political party, media outlet) and compares them to the actual number of subscribers. I suspect that any patterns wouldn't be that visible as people can be dissatisfied for many reasons but for major events it might be interesting. I also want to do a bot that counts on "why am I being downvoted" "not sure why you are being downvoted" comments here and on Reddit! The bot could reply based on analysis of the user, if they are newbies, if they are troll, if they do actually know why but are just registering support etc ...

Thank you for pointing out the bias and the advertising aspect of this article. I just cancelled my Guardian subscription.

by hkeide 7y ago

Thank you for pointing out the bias and the advertising aspect of this article. I just cancelled my Guardian subscription.

me_me_me 7y ago

Out of curiosity who else do you subscribe to? Routers and Guardian are my only go to sources where I don't have to outright be suspicious of anything they write (with some caveats for guardian).

hkeide 7y ago
Only financial newspapers, Bloomberg, WSJ and the like. I like The Atlantic, but don't subscribe. I wish I could subscribe to a collection of them, since it gets expensive. Reuters seems reliable and don't seem to want to perpetuate partisanship in the way that The Guardian has lately. Having an agenda is fine, having that agenda be perpetuating pointless conflict with "the others", and proving how intelligent we in the in-group are is not very useful. This article was just the final straw. I come from Norway which isn't a two-party nation so I think this enters into my dislike for the black and white thinking that seems to be growing in the Anglosphere where I currently live.

Rexxar 7y ago

Why is it a problem here ? It's clearly indicated at the end and I see books as a natural complement to newspapers. I generally dislike advertisement but this seems to be one of the rare legitimate case.

hkeide 7y ago
I honestly don't know exactly why it rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe because he's railing against capitalism (I can't even count the number of assertions in the article, and very little explanation or evidence is offered) and then procedes to try to sell his book based on what I personally think is a shallow understanding of the subject matter. In general, complaining that the pop culture version of something is shallow and ineffective compared to a full understanding (which ironically, the author lacks), could be generalized without lack of accuracy. If you did that, it would be hard to find some ideolical construct to point a finger at, which seems to be his main objective. Pushing your opinion is obviously okay in a newspaper. That's his right. I just won't be paying for it. I've lately noticed a gradual decrease in the "detached analysis" coming out of The Guardian in favor of more idealist in-group circle-self-satisfaction. This probably feels good for some people but I don't think it's the way forward.
- thesz 7y ago
  As I see it, he does object to narrowing the thinking which is imposed by capitalism as the one and sole viable human society operation mode. That narrowing is induced by neoliberal ideology, as he thinks. I do too, by the way. He even introduced me to "disimagination" neologism which I greatly admire, and I am not even done with the article.

thinkingemote 7y ago

As an aside and I truly believe you in your case but I really want to do a Twitter / social media bot which counts the number of times people say "I'm unsubscribing" (from e.g. GitHub, Blizzard, Netflix, political party, media outlet) and compares them to the actual number of subscribers. I suspect that any patterns wouldn't be that visible as people can be dissatisfied for many reasons but for major events it might be interesting. I also want to do a bot that counts on "why am I being downvoted" "not sure why you are being downvoted" comments here and on Reddit! The bot could reply based on analysis of the user, if they are newbies, if they are troll, if they do actually know why but are just registering support etc ...