16 ms·

> If there were a secret conspiracy running the liberal media, they could all decide they wanted to raise awareness of racist police brutality, pick the most cl

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
gkoberger 6y ago
> Imagine Moloch looking out over the expanse of the world, eagle-eyed for anything that can turn brother against brother and husband against wife. Finally he decides “YOU KNOW WHAT NOBODY HATES EACH OTHER ABOUT YET? BIRD-WATCHING. LET ME FIND SOME STORY THAT WILL MAKE PEOPLE HATE EACH OTHER OVER BIRD-WATCHING” Oh, 2020... https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/26/us/central-park-video-dog-video-african-american-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/26/us/central-park-video-dog-vid...
- rendall 6y ago
  Knitting... https://duckduckgo.com/?q=knitting%20controversy https://duckduckgo.com/?q=knitting%20controversy Young Adult fiction... https://duckduckgo.com/?q=young%20adult%20literature%20controversy https://duckduckgo.com/?q=young%20adult%20literature%20contr... I wonder if there might be an internet rule: If you can think of it, there are people who hate each other over it
  - api 6y ago
    Look! ^^^ Even these obscure cases just got an iota of precious attention! Do people who don't hate each other over things get attention?
  - EamonnMR 6y ago
    Reddit's Hobby Drama community collects these. https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/enw2kd/running_dentist_who_won_west_wyoming_marathon/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/enw2kd/running_... https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/hj9zt5/tropical_aquariums_arowana_the_fish_that/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/hj9zt5/tropical... https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/a03n68/tamagotchiyes_a_tamagotchi_fandom_exists_and_we/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/a03n68/tamagotc....
  - metafunctor 6y ago
    Not sure if I'd call it an “internet rule”, but a rule of the attention economy (of which the Internet is the primary medium).
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    Length of SSC articles... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23972789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23972789 I'm calling Poe's law, though :-)
- devchix 6y ago
  This was not a story about bird-watching. I don't know if you're drawing the comparison due to the faintest glimmer of similarity or you think it's about bird-watching. This was not a story that divided people. "Everyone" (that is, everyone who had opinions they wished to express) agreed the woman was a liar and a jerk.
generationP 6y ago
That quote only describes our reality if taken out of context. "Something would get done" is referring to police reform enacted with a broad social consensus, not to a stream of escalating sub-terrorist provocations from leftists and from the government. And George Floyd was not "the most clear-cut and sympathetic case" in the presence of (e.g.) Breonna Taylor. The kind of hypothetical conspiracy is just not there; instead we're seeing memetic natural selection at work.
api 6y ago
Someone with a phone camera just happened to record a video of the ideal case: a police officer obviously murdering a black man. It's brutal and pointless, with racism being the most obvious and likely explanation. The thesis of this article has a lot of validity though. There is an escalating "PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!" arms race that has no interest whatsoever in solving problems, only in getting attention.
- afarrell 6y ago
  Do you ever worry that we are building Superhuman Artificial Intelligences with the goal of maximizing the amount of attention paid to advertisements? I'm concerned that they might accidentally either turn the world into paperclips or turn journalists into maximally conflict-driven-story finders.
  - NateEag 6y ago
    The AI can't do that to journalists, because journalists have already done that to themselves.
    - paulie_a 6y ago
      While I don't know of I would call it journalism, computer generated articles are becoming increasingly prevelant
    - ethbro 6y ago
      There have been good and bad journalists since the beginning of journalism.
      - marcus_holmes 6y ago
        This is not about good/bad journalism. A great journalist will turn in a fantastic story, get it approved and even on the front page, only to have it get few clicks because it can't compete for attention with the sensationalist crap. This is about how humans first discovered that, given an infinite amount of reading material, we choose to read things that give us an emotional reaction. Any emotional reaction.
pjc50 6y ago
> If there were a secret conspiracy running the liberal media, they could all decide they wanted to raise awareness of racist police brutality, pick the most clear-cut and sympathetic case, and make it non-stop news headlines for the next two months. Yes ... > Then everyone would agree it was indeed very brutal and racist, and something would get done. No, because there's an entire counter-news faction out there insisting that absolutely every person killed by police deserved it, that it is unacceptable to ever hold police accountable for deaths of anyone under any circumstances, such as shooting a handcuffed guy on the floor or firing blindly into a darkened apartment, and that everyone complaining about racism is some kind of Maoist. Recently I watched some of the Live Aid 25th anniversary coverage. The huge charity appeal was sparked by Michael Buerk's famous report on dead and dying children: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYOj_6OYuJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYOj_6OYuJc I couldn't help thinking that if you filmed that today it would vanish from the social media melee in a couple of days. It was shocking then. It might not even be the most shocking thing somebody scrolls past today.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  Almost everyone, deep into trad Republican groups, agree that the Floyd killing was a sickening murder, a symptom of a broken system, and Something Needs To Be Done. My take is that nothing gets done because Congress is incapable of doing things. At all. There is nothing special about doing nothing on police brutality. It's just one more thing on the pile of unaddressed things. It's been this way for a long time now, and that is why Presidents now try to rule by executive orders.
  - cafard 6y ago
    There are two layers of elected government between Congress and the Minneapolis police, and several layers of administration between the elected representatives and the police on the street. Ever hard-head in Congress could have a conversion experience this week from attending John Lewis's funeral, and somewhere next year some guy with a gun or knee could repeat the Floyd killing.
  - jjcon 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

gkoberger 6y ago

> Imagine Moloch looking out over the expanse of the world, eagle-eyed for anything that can turn brother against brother and husband against wife. Finally he decides “YOU KNOW WHAT NOBODY HATES EACH OTHER ABOUT YET? BIRD-WATCHING. LET ME FIND SOME STORY THAT WILL MAKE PEOPLE HATE EACH OTHER OVER BIRD-WATCHING” Oh, 2020... https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/26/us/central-park-video-dog-video-african-american-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/26/us/central-park-video-dog-vid...

rendall 6y ago
Knitting... https://duckduckgo.com/?q=knitting%20controversy https://duckduckgo.com/?q=knitting%20controversy Young Adult fiction... https://duckduckgo.com/?q=young%20adult%20literature%20controversy https://duckduckgo.com/?q=young%20adult%20literature%20contr... I wonder if there might be an internet rule: If you can think of it, there are people who hate each other over it
- api 6y ago
  Look! ^^^ Even these obscure cases just got an iota of precious attention! Do people who don't hate each other over things get attention?
- EamonnMR 6y ago
  Reddit's Hobby Drama community collects these. https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/enw2kd/running_dentist_who_won_west_wyoming_marathon/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/enw2kd/running_... https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/hj9zt5/tropical_aquariums_arowana_the_fish_that/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/hj9zt5/tropical... https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/a03n68/tamagotchiyes_a_tamagotchi_fandom_exists_and_we/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/a03n68/tamagotc....
- metafunctor 6y ago
  Not sure if I'd call it an “internet rule”, but a rule of the attention economy (of which the Internet is the primary medium).
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Length of SSC articles... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23972789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23972789 I'm calling Poe's law, though :-)
devchix 6y ago
This was not a story about bird-watching. I don't know if you're drawing the comparison due to the faintest glimmer of similarity or you think it's about bird-watching. This was not a story that divided people. "Everyone" (that is, everyone who had opinions they wished to express) agreed the woman was a liar and a jerk.

generationP 6y ago

That quote only describes our reality if taken out of context. "Something would get done" is referring to police reform enacted with a broad social consensus, not to a stream of escalating sub-terrorist provocations from leftists and from the government. And George Floyd was not "the most clear-cut and sympathetic case" in the presence of (e.g.) Breonna Taylor. The kind of hypothetical conspiracy is just not there; instead we're seeing memetic natural selection at work.

api 6y ago

Someone with a phone camera just happened to record a video of the ideal case: a police officer obviously murdering a black man. It's brutal and pointless, with racism being the most obvious and likely explanation. The thesis of this article has a lot of validity though. There is an escalating "PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!" arms race that has no interest whatsoever in solving problems, only in getting attention.

afarrell 6y ago
Do you ever worry that we are building Superhuman Artificial Intelligences with the goal of maximizing the amount of attention paid to advertisements? I'm concerned that they might accidentally either turn the world into paperclips or turn journalists into maximally conflict-driven-story finders.
- NateEag 6y ago
  The AI can't do that to journalists, because journalists have already done that to themselves.
  - paulie_a 6y ago
    While I don't know of I would call it journalism, computer generated articles are becoming increasingly prevelant
  - ethbro 6y ago
    There have been good and bad journalists since the beginning of journalism.
    - marcus_holmes 6y ago
      This is not about good/bad journalism. A great journalist will turn in a fantastic story, get it approved and even on the front page, only to have it get few clicks because it can't compete for attention with the sensationalist crap. This is about how humans first discovered that, given an infinite amount of reading material, we choose to read things that give us an emotional reaction. Any emotional reaction.

pjc50 6y ago

> If there were a secret conspiracy running the liberal media, they could all decide they wanted to raise awareness of racist police brutality, pick the most clear-cut and sympathetic case, and make it non-stop news headlines for the next two months. Yes ... > Then everyone would agree it was indeed very brutal and racist, and something would get done. No, because there's an entire counter-news faction out there insisting that absolutely every person killed by police deserved it, that it is unacceptable to ever hold police accountable for deaths of anyone under any circumstances, such as shooting a handcuffed guy on the floor or firing blindly into a darkened apartment, and that everyone complaining about racism is some kind of Maoist. Recently I watched some of the Live Aid 25th anniversary coverage. The huge charity appeal was sparked by Michael Buerk's famous report on dead and dying children: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYOj_6OYuJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYOj_6OYuJc I couldn't help thinking that if you filmed that today it would vanish from the social media melee in a couple of days. It was shocking then. It might not even be the most shocking thing somebody scrolls past today.

BurningFrog 6y ago
Almost everyone, deep into trad Republican groups, agree that the Floyd killing was a sickening murder, a symptom of a broken system, and Something Needs To Be Done. My take is that nothing gets done because Congress is incapable of doing things. At all. There is nothing special about doing nothing on police brutality. It's just one more thing on the pile of unaddressed things. It's been this way for a long time now, and that is why Presidents now try to rule by executive orders.
- cafard 6y ago
  There are two layers of elected government between Congress and the Minneapolis police, and several layers of administration between the elected representatives and the police on the street. Ever hard-head in Congress could have a conversion experience this week from attending John Lewis's funeral, and somewhere next year some guy with a gun or knee could repeat the Floyd killing.
- jjcon 6y ago