3 ms·

I flagged it because every comment I read on it was stupid. There was nothing intellectually curious about the topic-- just poking people's political identities

I flagged it because every comment I read on it was stupid. There was nothing intellectually curious about the topic-- just poking people's political identities. Here, someone in close proximity to a reasonably significant historical event used social networks to broadcast his observation of said event. If this has happened before, it hasn't been very many times, and it's undoubtedly been only quite recently. We are witnessing a new historical phenomenon that will undoubtedly be worth a line in a history textbook. Moreover, importantly, the comments on this article don't completely suck. There's some meta-noise like this, but much less complete political stupidity.

lotharbot 15y ago
My reasoning was similar. Yes, UBL's death is significant to just about everyone. But it's not really intellectually gratifying or interesting, nor was much of the commentary surrounding it in the previous thread. There was lots of unfocused complaining about fallout from 9/11 including the TSA, DHS, wars, and political changes, but very little of it was new or enlightening. Definitely worthy of a flag. Here, I find it tremendously interesting to see a (distant) eyewitness account of a significant historical event, given in real time over social media and not filtered by any other entities after the fact. Much more of the commentary here is intellectually gratifying as well. This was worthy of an upvote.