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The Insurrection Will Be Live Streamed: Notes Toward a Theory of Digitization
- ilaksh 6y agoFascinating points. I hope people will also put this in the broader context of human psychology. Check out this book: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt.
- hhhhxxx 6y agogood
- xjwm 6y ago"The revolution will be televised. It'll fade to black before out eyes. The black and white of static snow will blend into a single glow. And colors on the telescreen will flood our rooms in brilliant schemes. And everything will be as one. The story ends a smoking gun." Closing stanza, 'Robot Candidate' by Ben Krieger (2008)[0] [0] http://www.songfight.org/songpage.php?key=robot_candidate http://www.songfight.org/songpage.php?key=robot_candidate
- alexisread 6y ago:) I was thinking more that this was covered in The Diamond Age (Neil Stephenson) with phyles
- op03 6y agoWhat are you guys even upvoting these days :)))
- formerly_proven 6y ago)
- ceilingcorner 6y agoReally not trying to pick a side here, but to pontificate on the Capitol events without even mentioning BLM, CHAZ, or any of the other civil unrest of the past year just seems unnecessarily biased. Almost all of that was organized, enabled, and inflamed by the exact same technologies. Can anyone recommend a commentator on recent political events that isn’t deliberately biased? Or maybe the lack of such a person is merely a reflection of the ideas the author is trying to explain.
- AnHonestComment 6y agoSocial media has purposefully censored such people, for example YouTubers having to use phrases like “beer bug” to refer to COVID or “the nameless party” to refer to Amber Heard — or face the censor bots. Automated narrative enforcement is built into platforms like YouTube already. Dave Rubin might be a good option; he’s a former Democrat and what I’d describe as “mild right”.
- msgilligan 6y agoMatt Taibbi is outstanding. Example: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/we-need-a-new-media-system https://taibbi.substack.com/p/we-need-a-new-media-system
- letstalk7 6y agoNobody is perfect and can have both good and bad work. I think Matt is a very gullible person who has bought into many conspiracy theories, some of which are Russian propaganda unfortunately
- mistermann 6y agoCan you provide two or three of the very best examples of conspiracy theories Matt has bought into which are Russian propaganda?
- bob33212 6y agoTaibbi openly says that Trump is incompetent and is taking advantage of his idiot supporters. I doubt that Trump supporters will consider him objective.
- blargmaster42_8 6y agoWhat insurrection? Some larpers keeping inside the ropes are not insurrectionists.
- breck 6y ago> barring any large scale and unforeseeable changes to our digital media environment. #AbolishCopyright. Truth is nature's natural state. It wasn't until symbols were invented that we got lies. But information in the long run likes to settle into true states. Copyright slows down the spread of truth and makes it harder for information to resolve into true states. When lies have it so easy, you see the catastrophic effects like we did on January 6th.
- vharuck 6y agoI don't follow. Facts aren't covered by copyright, so how do copyright laws hinder their spread? >It wasn't until symbols were invented that we got lies. This is probably a loose slogan, but it's not correct. People used to share greatly embellished stories with oral traditions before written language. Even before spoken language, chances are people deceived one another. Deception only requires recognition that others have different knowledge and a willingness to exploit that.
- breck 6y ago> People used to share greatly embellished stories with oral traditions before written language. Ah, this is a good point, thanks! Will need to tweak my terms.
- anewaccount2021 6y agopseudo intellectual drivel. at what point do people finally realize that "thought pieces" on substack just don't mean shit in the real world? this is what Lenin would have derided as "bourgeoise intellectualism"...sitting in your herman miller chair, sipping craft bourbon, writing postmodern pablum on your M1 macbook....wow feel the winds of change
- ceilingcorner 6y agoMeet the new Medium.com. Exactly the same as the old Medium.com.
- iambateman 6y agoI didn’t see this in the article but I was surprised to see how many insurrectionists had their phones out streaming video while committing a crime. It struck me that the instinct to show off to online followers is more powerful than the instinct to hide from the consequences of the crime. In that sense, the promise of online notoriety seemed to propel the mob as much as, or more than, any deeply held ideology.
- iambateman 6y agoIt’s not lost on me that I’m writing this comment hoping for upvotes.
- ceilingcorner 6y agoSame reason that people were streaming themselves burning down buildings and looting stores last summer: in-group morality. When your social group thinks you’re doing the right thing, you have no reason to hide your actions.
- iambateman 6y agoI think you’re right about in-group morality. I’m curious: do you see categorical similarity between the events of January 6 and the events of the summer of 2020?
- ceilingcorner 6y agoAbsolutely. Again, I’m not choosing a side here, just trying to observe phenomena. My own politics don’t fit neatly into a box. I think one could accurately describe both as explosions of long-standing resentment, legitimate reasons to be upset, and lack of trust in institutions, finally ignited by social media making it easy to construct exaggerated or outright false narratives.
- iambateman 6y agoInteresting. Thanks for your thoughts! To me, they are categorically different. One has “answerable” policy objectives, the other does not. One is mostly peaceful, the other mostly violent. One invites a broad base of support, the other is more isolated.
- Ericson2314 6y agoCan substack offer editors? This long piece really felt like it was written in one pass.
- yowlingcat 6y agoI had the exact same thought. Volume often detracts from rather than contributing to expression -- certainly in this case.
- sandworm101 6y ago(1) The availability of digital streaming increases the political 'temperature'. Everyone at the capitol was grandstanding for the digital audience. Look amongst the flags as the crow pushes past barricades. See the selfie sticks. Crazy gets clicks. (2) But the availability of streaming also reduces the number of participants. People are lazy. If they can, they will participate from their couch rather than walk in the street. If they can scream on twitter, and feel validated as that screaming makes news, they won't bother to march in the streets. (3) Commentators ignore the FOMO that drove mass protests in the past. Many, especially young people, would turn out to a rally or protest not because they much cared about the subject but because they wanted to see what was happening. They were curious. But digitization means we all have intimate knowledge of everything in real time. So much of the motivation for non-crazy participants, the curiosity of the masses, is gone. So .. while the digitization of protest has resulted in an increase in the number of extremists, imho we aren't seeing the truly massive turnouts of decades past. Those who do show are more likely to riot, but the majority will riot from behind their keyboards. That is something very different than historical protest movements.
- newacct583 6y ago> (1) The availability of digital streaming increases the political 'temperature'. I see points like this made a lot, and it seems to fail to my mind for Occam's razor reasons. Media makes a difference at the margins, sure, but clearly the reason for the higher "temperature" is the more extreme rhetoric from our leaders. Trump led his followers into the pit of a Big Lie about evil people stealing an election, and much of the republican party and its media ecosystem followed him there. (And this was just the final expression of a rhetorical style and relationship with the truth that he had applied through the whole administration.) Why can't that be the primary reason for the high "temperature" and not some abstract idea about media? If we want people to behave like grownups we need to put grownups in charge, basically. If you tell people that the presidency is being stolen they're going to try to steal it back.
- mistermann 6y ago> If we want people to behave like grownups we need to put grownups in charge, basically. This seems to be a very popular idea, I hear it recommended quite regularly. But what does it really mean? The word "grownup" in this context, if we were to unpack that into extremely high dimensionality (attributes, behaviors, etc), what would that look like? And, would the description have no objective flaws?
- maroonblazer 6y agoFrom the final paragraph: > While the events of January 6th were the result of a confluence of factors that were in large measure independent of digitization, the event itself could not have happened apart from the general context created by digitization. I don't think we can claim that. Imagine a media environment akin to the late 90s - largely broadcast media, post-revocation of the Fairness Doctrine - and a president who enjoyed the appreciation of a lower/middle-class conservative constituency that was pro-2nd Amendment. The President claims the election was fraudulent. That the opposition was stealing power - a violation of the Constitution and everything the country stands for. It's not hard to imagine getting a similar reaction to 1/6/21.
- yowlingcat 6y agoWhat a decidedly mealy-mouthed, tepid waste of words. 13 observations, each addressed hastily and with questionable conclusions. People have forgotten how to write. I cannot discern an overarching theme or point. This is the substack equivalent of a tweetstorm. It needs serious editing before it's ready for others to read. With that said, I think there's a kernel of an interesting idea in point 7. The author mentions Marshall McLuhan but doesn't really make a connection I thought would be made with the invocation, which is that McLuhan's famous exhortation that "The medium is the massage" warned and foretold of the incredible psychic power of owning the means of media production. One could easily extend this into an examination of the manifold global power brokers who power the online dissident right, as well as the origins and applications of right-wing accelerationism. But to do that, one would need to actually study the people that make them uncomfortable from their own eyes, rather than engaging in rote application of one's pet theories and theorists. I hope the author eventually gets to that point.