4 ms·

Frankly, I think it's even simpler than that. It's a tattle-tale culture. Did someone post wrongthink in your comments? "I'm telling!" Do you have a different o

Frankly, I think it's even simpler than that. It's a tattle-tale culture. Did someone post wrongthink in your comments? "I'm telling!" Do you have a different opinion about some outrage du jour? "I'm telling!" Did you make an offhand mention of some ideas from a bad scary man? "I'm telling!" In the past few years at the NYT, all of the old-school journalists in leadership positions have been railroaded by the tattle-tales. Millenial and Gen Z apparatchiks have largely taken full reigns of the paper. In general these generations are broadly more supportive of limits on free speech and open discussion[1]. Even more so among journalists specifically. We're a long way from the era of journalists like HL Mencken or Tom Wolfe or Hunter S Thompson. But we do have world class tattle-tales. [1]https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/20/40-of-millennials-ok-with-limiting-speech-offensive-to-minorities/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/20/40-of-mille...

kmeisthax 6y ago
Right, but you also have to acknowledge the elephant in the room that the market really, really likes tattle-tale stories. They share well on Twitter, which itself is a strange attractor of this kind of reporting. And it's not even a liberal thing or a social-justice thing. Conservatives and status-quo warriors do this all the time, and I'd argue more maliciously. Project Veritas's entire reason for being was to construct tattle-tale narratives around whatever organization conservatives were expected to hate this week.
- dcolkitt 6y ago
  Completely agree. Being a tattle-tale is just plain fun. Which is why young children pick it up so easily. It's not inherent to any ideology, but any ideology can adopt it to score easy points. It's great for getting re-tweets. What's it's not though, is a constructive way to make meaningful change in the world.

kmeisthax 6y ago

Right, but you also have to acknowledge the elephant in the room that the market really, really likes tattle-tale stories. They share well on Twitter, which itself is a strange attractor of this kind of reporting. And it's not even a liberal thing or a social-justice thing. Conservatives and status-quo warriors do this all the time, and I'd argue more maliciously. Project Veritas's entire reason for being was to construct tattle-tale narratives around whatever organization conservatives were expected to hate this week.

dcolkitt 6y ago
Completely agree. Being a tattle-tale is just plain fun. Which is why young children pick it up so easily. It's not inherent to any ideology, but any ideology can adopt it to score easy points. It's great for getting re-tweets. What's it's not though, is a constructive way to make meaningful change in the world.