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Have many of us have become the useful idiots of the corporate media overloads? I know it's fashionable to blame Facebook for the divisiveness, but I'm old eno

Have many of us have become the useful idiots of the corporate media overloads? I know it's fashionable to blame Facebook for the divisiveness, but I'm old enough to recall Obama's 2004 DNC speech that got him his first national attention. Before there was Facebook, Obama was talking about divisiveness. I firmly believe anger and anxiety is constantly injected into the mainstream corporate media to increase eyeballs and stickiness. One of the side effects of this content strategy is the divisiveness we see now. Yes, Facebook (or twitter) amplifies these, but that's because Facebook provides every one of us a platform to exhale the frustrations we accumulate consuming these anger-laden content. Ingeniously, the corporate media blamed all these on Facebook and whoever is/was advising Zuck really failed to come up with a solid strategy to counter this narrative beyond rebranding FB app icon and some color scheme changes.

anigbrowl 5y ago
The media didn't create divisiveness, although significant parts of it exploit the divisiveness for commercial purposes. We have objective evidence of severe legislative polarization at the federal level going back to the 1980s: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0123507 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  "We have objective evidence of severe legislative polarization at the federal level going back to the 1980s" Political divisiveness in the US goes back much further than that. In the "you think it's bad now" department, I remember reading about the case of, I think it was in the 1800's, of a congressman assaulting another congressman with a cane over some political issue. Of course the most infamous case of political divisiveness in the US was the Civil War.. which, judging by the Confederate flags man conservatives/Republicans proudly fly and the reactions they get from more liberal parts of the political spectrum, and the incomplete desegregation of many parts of the country, discrimination against minorities, vilification/adulation of Confederate statues, etc, still hasn't been fully resolved in many people's minds. Getting to more recent, but still older than 1980's, political events.. it's not like the country was united during the Vietnam era or during that of the 60's counterculture. Or look at the socialist/anarchist unrest and workers strikes (and police/corporate violence against them) or suffragettes of the early part of the 20th Century. Plenty of times in America's history when the country was very divided, and today's divisiveness is nothing new. As long as there's rapid change it's likely to continue, as some people will want to slam on the brakes while others want to go full steam ahead.
  - forgingahead 5y ago
    I remember reading about the case of, I think it was in the 1800's, of a congressman assaulting another congressman with a cane over some political issue. This was the Caning of Charles Sumner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner And yes, you and the grandparent comment are exactly right - this has been going on for ages, precisely because the economic incentives of media have been to create strife and discord for the eyeballs (and now clicks). Even in the days before 24-cable news, I remember thinking it would be nice that if when the nightly news came on, they would just say "All is well today. Have a good night!". And close the program. But they can't - imagine the reaction from their advertising customers? "We paid you for these slots, you jolly well better produce the eyeballs on it!". The mainstream mass media has been a weapon for as long as it's been around. In previous generations the elites and government kept quiet about it, because it served their purpose of cohesiveness and national unity, especially after WWII. (Never mind the consistent denigration of the Russians externally, I'm referring to internal Anglo Western societies). But at some point in recent history, it switched instead from being more profitable to have national unity, to being more profitable with national DISunity. And so all and sundry have become "issues of the day", feeding the beast of the content and advertising machine.
    - pmoriarty 5y ago
      "imagine the reaction from their advertising customers" Imagine the reaction from their viewers! The sad fact of the matter is that the media strategy you describe would be worthless if the viewers didn't lap it up and ask for more. The media's just giving most viewers what they want.
      - forgingahead 5y ago
        True, but there is a reason most human societies (excluding the West in the past 10 years) have had strong restrictions on the excesses of human behaviour. Just because the animal can do something, doesn't mean it should, precisely because society as a whole doesn't benefit when individuals do that. In most societies, you still can't drink to excess and drive, nor advertise cigarettes, nor sell them to minors, nor do all manner of narcotics or have polygamous relationships willy-nilly. All these things are certainly what people would like to if possible, but social norms and laws put a lid on it. There is certainly screeching about some or all of those issues (like by some parties here on HN, Reddit and elsewhere), but by and large those restrictions are good for the functioning of a healthy society. Media consumption, and in fact media production, was regulated, initially by technology (you couldn't broadcast widely before radio) and then by law (The Hays code in the US and its subsequent incarnations). Cable defanged that, and the internet has destroyed it. I'm not for censorship, but harmful media production and consumption should certainly be contained and punished if done with malicious intent. It's not easy though - we all agree that online recordings from certain Middle East groups are inflammatory and can radicalise innocent people into doing foolish things, but we can't see as a society that the same radicalisation has been happening in the Western press as well. The targets are just different.
nradov 5y ago
It's well known that foreign intelligence services are active on social media trying to foment divisiveness. They're not even necessarily pushing a specific political goal, just getting Americans to hate each other. The Russians appear to be the most active but other countries play the same game. So before you get drawn into an online argument, ask yourself am I dealing with an authentic person or a paid foreign troll? This isn't even a new phenomenon. Back during the Cold War before there was a real Internet the Soviet intelligence services did similar things by infiltrating political action groups and paying off journalists to write stories calculated to stoke dissent.
- XorNot 5y ago
  The problem is it's not an argument that manipulates you, it's passive reporting and it only has to be echoed by one other real person before it becomes "the rumor on the twittersphere" or whatever. Even the act of people writing debunking articles like "Is shocking X actually true? No." is still doing a little bit of work to inject that idea into your psyche.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    >Even the act of people writing debunking articles like "Is shocking X actually true? No." is still doing a little bit of work to inject that idea into your psyche. I get a chuckle every time I see a social media post about <subject> that's some minor mishap and OP is pretending to be repentant ("if only I had <virtue singling trope that applies to that subject> this wouldn't have happend") and all the commenters virtue signaling to each other along those same lines. Little do they know they're making it seem more normal for people to do whatever sin they're all hating on.
    - stuaxo 5y ago
      This is pretty meta, since "virtue signaling" is just as real as "the culture war" and other myths like the tooth fairy.
      - 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
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lend000 5y ago
People actively self-select for this type of tribalism. Be it sports or politics, it gives average people the feeling of identity and purpose. There was a brief period in the mid 20th century when centralized communication was far superior to decentralized communication, and the populous hadn't had much time to apply selective pressure toward more divisive media, but even then, you had McCarthyism, Jim Crow, pro-war/anti-war, etc. Humans are a tribal species and hate comes easy. You can't blame any single player or small groups of players. It's more of a species level problem. And I'm not convinced the current levels of divisiveness are historically unprecedented, albeit high. Buried in this otherwise mediocre article posted a few weeks back is a visual called "Ideological positions of the major parties" [0]. It can be a proxy for relative internal divisiveness in the country (note that the lowest periods of divisiveness had high international divisiveness). [0] https://www.economicprinciples.org/Why-and-How-Capitalism-Needs-To-Be-Reformed/ https://www.economicprinciples.org/Why-and-How-Capitalism-Ne...
- deleted 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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bostonsre 5y ago
I'm not sure corporate media had much choice in the matter if they wanted to survive. Almost all are for profit companies that lost heavily when eyeballs shifted to social media. Social media companies make money off of ads, so they optimized viewership without being concerned with the consequences. In order for corporate media to stay alive and stop hemorrhaging viewers, they needed to play by the new rules. It's a shit snowball that is growing as it rolls down hill and it doesn't seem like there is anyway to slow it down or stop it. Or maybe it's more feedback loop like, like a closed loop toilet where no plumber is brave enough to confront it.
- titzer 5y ago
  It's an ant death spiral at this point. The only way to be free of it is to unplug and focus on your own life.
  - bostonsre 5y ago
    Yes, individuals can flee to get out of the path of said shit snowball, but their descendants, family, friends, and neighbors are directly down hill from it.
    - snikeris 5y ago
      Individuals can divert said snowball from said people.
      - bostonsre 5y ago
        Do you mean all people? Or a small portion of those people? Maybe building a shit snowball bomb shelter aka cutting internet to a household might be able to save a small portion of those people, but I'm not sure how anyone outside of elected representatives could ever hope to stop it for the wider population when the thing has so incredibly much inertia.
    - anaerobicover 5y ago
      If enough people make the choice, it loses its power. It's the same as what makes voting works.
sjg007 5y ago
Obama's speech was about hope and change, "yes we can". Yes we can elect a black man as President but yes we can change and do better. This was on the back of Bush's destruction of the economy. The divisiveness happened when the tea party took off in 2009 after Obama was elected and the tea party dialed up the oldest trope in the book, race. It was also the only part of the republican party that could oppose the ACA. The ACA was modeled on Romney care after all who was a popular Republican. The republican party reeling from the loss to Democrats basically had to double down on the tea party to have any chance of sucess at the 2010 midterms. So it became about race, death panels and socialism.
- mousepilot 5y ago
  you're right of course, this entire thread seems like trumps "both sides" thing. the video has some merit, but one of the mistakes in the video (in my opinion) is telling us to "politely explain our side", but I've had much more success being deeply curious about the other side and its been very enlightening. If a friend feels differently about politics than I do, I want to be the sort of person to converse about the differences while keeping the friend. Its never too late for me to learn something and learn I have!

anigbrowl 5y ago

The media didn't create divisiveness, although significant parts of it exploit the divisiveness for commercial purposes. We have objective evidence of severe legislative polarization at the federal level going back to the 1980s: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0123507 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

pmoriarty 5y ago
"We have objective evidence of severe legislative polarization at the federal level going back to the 1980s" Political divisiveness in the US goes back much further than that. In the "you think it's bad now" department, I remember reading about the case of, I think it was in the 1800's, of a congressman assaulting another congressman with a cane over some political issue. Of course the most infamous case of political divisiveness in the US was the Civil War.. which, judging by the Confederate flags man conservatives/Republicans proudly fly and the reactions they get from more liberal parts of the political spectrum, and the incomplete desegregation of many parts of the country, discrimination against minorities, vilification/adulation of Confederate statues, etc, still hasn't been fully resolved in many people's minds. Getting to more recent, but still older than 1980's, political events.. it's not like the country was united during the Vietnam era or during that of the 60's counterculture. Or look at the socialist/anarchist unrest and workers strikes (and police/corporate violence against them) or suffragettes of the early part of the 20th Century. Plenty of times in America's history when the country was very divided, and today's divisiveness is nothing new. As long as there's rapid change it's likely to continue, as some people will want to slam on the brakes while others want to go full steam ahead.
- forgingahead 5y ago
  I remember reading about the case of, I think it was in the 1800's, of a congressman assaulting another congressman with a cane over some political issue. This was the Caning of Charles Sumner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner And yes, you and the grandparent comment are exactly right - this has been going on for ages, precisely because the economic incentives of media have been to create strife and discord for the eyeballs (and now clicks). Even in the days before 24-cable news, I remember thinking it would be nice that if when the nightly news came on, they would just say "All is well today. Have a good night!". And close the program. But they can't - imagine the reaction from their advertising customers? "We paid you for these slots, you jolly well better produce the eyeballs on it!". The mainstream mass media has been a weapon for as long as it's been around. In previous generations the elites and government kept quiet about it, because it served their purpose of cohesiveness and national unity, especially after WWII. (Never mind the consistent denigration of the Russians externally, I'm referring to internal Anglo Western societies). But at some point in recent history, it switched instead from being more profitable to have national unity, to being more profitable with national DISunity. And so all and sundry have become "issues of the day", feeding the beast of the content and advertising machine.
  - pmoriarty 5y ago
    "imagine the reaction from their advertising customers" Imagine the reaction from their viewers! The sad fact of the matter is that the media strategy you describe would be worthless if the viewers didn't lap it up and ask for more. The media's just giving most viewers what they want.
    - forgingahead 5y ago
      True, but there is a reason most human societies (excluding the West in the past 10 years) have had strong restrictions on the excesses of human behaviour. Just because the animal can do something, doesn't mean it should, precisely because society as a whole doesn't benefit when individuals do that. In most societies, you still can't drink to excess and drive, nor advertise cigarettes, nor sell them to minors, nor do all manner of narcotics or have polygamous relationships willy-nilly. All these things are certainly what people would like to if possible, but social norms and laws put a lid on it. There is certainly screeching about some or all of those issues (like by some parties here on HN, Reddit and elsewhere), but by and large those restrictions are good for the functioning of a healthy society. Media consumption, and in fact media production, was regulated, initially by technology (you couldn't broadcast widely before radio) and then by law (The Hays code in the US and its subsequent incarnations). Cable defanged that, and the internet has destroyed it. I'm not for censorship, but harmful media production and consumption should certainly be contained and punished if done with malicious intent. It's not easy though - we all agree that online recordings from certain Middle East groups are inflammatory and can radicalise innocent people into doing foolish things, but we can't see as a society that the same radicalisation has been happening in the Western press as well. The targets are just different.

nradov 5y ago

It's well known that foreign intelligence services are active on social media trying to foment divisiveness. They're not even necessarily pushing a specific political goal, just getting Americans to hate each other. The Russians appear to be the most active but other countries play the same game. So before you get drawn into an online argument, ask yourself am I dealing with an authentic person or a paid foreign troll? This isn't even a new phenomenon. Back during the Cold War before there was a real Internet the Soviet intelligence services did similar things by infiltrating political action groups and paying off journalists to write stories calculated to stoke dissent.

XorNot 5y ago
The problem is it's not an argument that manipulates you, it's passive reporting and it only has to be echoed by one other real person before it becomes "the rumor on the twittersphere" or whatever. Even the act of people writing debunking articles like "Is shocking X actually true? No." is still doing a little bit of work to inject that idea into your psyche.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  >Even the act of people writing debunking articles like "Is shocking X actually true? No." is still doing a little bit of work to inject that idea into your psyche. I get a chuckle every time I see a social media post about <subject> that's some minor mishap and OP is pretending to be repentant ("if only I had <virtue singling trope that applies to that subject> this wouldn't have happend") and all the commenters virtue signaling to each other along those same lines. Little do they know they're making it seem more normal for people to do whatever sin they're all hating on.
  - stuaxo 5y ago
    This is pretty meta, since "virtue signaling" is just as real as "the culture war" and other myths like the tooth fairy.
    - 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

lend000 5y ago

People actively self-select for this type of tribalism. Be it sports or politics, it gives average people the feeling of identity and purpose. There was a brief period in the mid 20th century when centralized communication was far superior to decentralized communication, and the populous hadn't had much time to apply selective pressure toward more divisive media, but even then, you had McCarthyism, Jim Crow, pro-war/anti-war, etc. Humans are a tribal species and hate comes easy. You can't blame any single player or small groups of players. It's more of a species level problem. And I'm not convinced the current levels of divisiveness are historically unprecedented, albeit high. Buried in this otherwise mediocre article posted a few weeks back is a visual called "Ideological positions of the major parties" [0]. It can be a proxy for relative internal divisiveness in the country (note that the lowest periods of divisiveness had high international divisiveness). [0] https://www.economicprinciples.org/Why-and-How-Capitalism-Needs-To-Be-Reformed/ https://www.economicprinciples.org/Why-and-How-Capitalism-Ne...

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

bostonsre 5y ago

I'm not sure corporate media had much choice in the matter if they wanted to survive. Almost all are for profit companies that lost heavily when eyeballs shifted to social media. Social media companies make money off of ads, so they optimized viewership without being concerned with the consequences. In order for corporate media to stay alive and stop hemorrhaging viewers, they needed to play by the new rules. It's a shit snowball that is growing as it rolls down hill and it doesn't seem like there is anyway to slow it down or stop it. Or maybe it's more feedback loop like, like a closed loop toilet where no plumber is brave enough to confront it.

titzer 5y ago
It's an ant death spiral at this point. The only way to be free of it is to unplug and focus on your own life.
- bostonsre 5y ago
  Yes, individuals can flee to get out of the path of said shit snowball, but their descendants, family, friends, and neighbors are directly down hill from it.
  - snikeris 5y ago
    Individuals can divert said snowball from said people.
    - bostonsre 5y ago
      Do you mean all people? Or a small portion of those people? Maybe building a shit snowball bomb shelter aka cutting internet to a household might be able to save a small portion of those people, but I'm not sure how anyone outside of elected representatives could ever hope to stop it for the wider population when the thing has so incredibly much inertia.
  - anaerobicover 5y ago
    If enough people make the choice, it loses its power. It's the same as what makes voting works.

sjg007 5y ago

Obama's speech was about hope and change, "yes we can". Yes we can elect a black man as President but yes we can change and do better. This was on the back of Bush's destruction of the economy. The divisiveness happened when the tea party took off in 2009 after Obama was elected and the tea party dialed up the oldest trope in the book, race. It was also the only part of the republican party that could oppose the ACA. The ACA was modeled on Romney care after all who was a popular Republican. The republican party reeling from the loss to Democrats basically had to double down on the tea party to have any chance of sucess at the 2010 midterms. So it became about race, death panels and socialism.

mousepilot 5y ago
you're right of course, this entire thread seems like trumps "both sides" thing. the video has some merit, but one of the mistakes in the video (in my opinion) is telling us to "politely explain our side", but I've had much more success being deeply curious about the other side and its been very enlightening. If a friend feels differently about politics than I do, I want to be the sort of person to converse about the differences while keeping the friend. Its never too late for me to learn something and learn I have!