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Not just journalists, but politicians, priests, etc. The filtered bubble of their society becomes the pole star of their existence, and the rest of the world ge
by h2odragon 5y ago
Not just journalists, but politicians, priests, etc. The filtered bubble of their society becomes the pole star of their existence, and the rest of the world gets devalued.
Used to be, near any event that generates news coverage, there would be a bar where the journalists hung out. Listening to the conversations there would tell you what the story was going to be, as well as how it differed from the facts. The audience that mattered was the rest of the media clique; the actual paying "audience" was the chum that everyone took for granted.
- Ekaros 5y agoI still remember the gamergate... The secret discussions and the amazing width of pushing the same narrative by publishing same story on multiple platforms... Still probably going on in many cliques...
- curiousllama 5y agoCan often see the same thing on Twitter now - it’s cool to see in real time
- hguant 5y agoI went to high school with a guy who is big in the self described Left-wing journalist Twitter. I remember very distinctly watching an article - well, the ideas core to that article - he'd written percolate from New Republic to The Atlantic to The New York Times over a period of about a month. What was interesting was that in his original article, the concepts he presented were presented as radical, and as a thought experiment. By the time it made its way down to the NYT a month later, those same concepts were presented as obvious solutions that "both sides" should agree on as a matter of course, and any disagreement was just intellectual folly. The conversation about these ideas had already happened on Twitter; NYT was just reporting the score.
- codechad 5y agoIt is interesting to see the overton window slide in real time.
- ChrisKnott 5y agoCan you link these articles? I'd be interested to see this evolution you describe.
- pessimizer 5y agoPeople don't present themselves as extreme. I think what happened is that a lot of people ran this "thought experiment" and it made a lot of sense to them. edit: The New Republic was passed from a famous racist to a founder of facebook to a Democratic party bagman and banking heir. Characterizing it as an extreme left outlet is bizarre, because at times it wouldn't even count as center-left. From the first paragraph of wikipedia: "Through the 1980s and 1990s, the magazine incorporated elements of the Third Way and conservatism."
- hguant 5y agoSo first of all you're responding to what you want to read, not the actual content of my comment. I said that the friend of mine in question was a self described hard Leftist, and that he was big in leftist oriented Twitter. I made no statement about New Republic...which is in fact a hard left publication. When you were looking at Wikipedia, did you skip the part where they were owned by that guy in the 1980s because it came out that the editors and owner were spies for the USSR, EDIT and they were trying to revamp their image /ENDEDIT? Or the bit about their return to their leftist roots since their sale in 2016? Furthermore looking at who owned an institution 30-40 years ago doesn't really add any value to the conversation about what they are today.
- groby_b 5y agoDude. The New Republic isn't a GOP outlet, sure. It might even occasionally slightly hurt centrist sensibilities, which would put it left of the NYT. But if you think that's "hard left", you haven't seen hard left, or even moderate left. Try something like wsws.org, or The Jacobin. The New Republic isn't remotely that.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago> I made no statement about New Republic...which is in fact a hard left publication. What are the actual ends of the spectrum on which you identify the NR's position as "hard left" ?
- 5y ago
- long_time_gone 5y agoIt's the same on both sides. The Hunter Biden "laptop saga" moved from NY Post -> Fox News -> Wall Street Journal. This was after Fox and WSJ passed on the story initially. Once it got traction from NY Post, they ran with it. Sean Hannity even claimed to have the laptop in his possession. Then he said it was stolen. Then he got it back, but couldn't share any of the juicy details cause his "lawyers wouldn't let him" [1]. They wouldn't even let other news organizations look at the incriminating emails [2]. [1] https://news.yahoo.com/sean-hannity-says-lawyers-wont-020500857.html https://news.yahoo.com/sean-hannity-says-lawyers-wont-020500... [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/here-s-what-happened-when-nbc-news-tried-report-alleged-n1245533 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/here-s-what-h...
- MisterBastahrd 5y agoI had a LOL moment when Rudy Giuliani posed with one of the computers on TV, because apparently the Mac guy wasn't smart enough to know the difference between an OSX based Macbook Pro and a Windows based LG.
- password4321 5y agoI've heard rumors a lot of the grouthink happens as Twitter users share lists of accounts to block and coordinate in private Google Docs.
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y agoWouldn’t not witnessing this yourself or similar be a similar kind of groupthink behavior? In an us vs them mentality.
- password4321 5y ago> Wouldn’t not witnessing this yourself or similar be a similar kind of groupthink behavior? In an us vs them mentality. I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying... not doing these things is just groupthink in the opposite direction? Edit: Maybe there's a better word for it: bubble building. Edit 2: I do believe Twitter fosters the 'us vs them' mentality you mention; I tried to point out only the tip of the iceberg is visible publicly.
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y agoI’m saying that “I heard rumors of X” is the same bubble-type behavior that’s being criticized in the conversation flow just towards an out-group (aka a group on a different social media platform).
- password4321 5y agoThanks for taking the time to clarify. How would you recommend initiating a conversation to discuss when 'the actual paying "audience" was the chum that everyone took for granted' but one actually can't 'see the same thing on Twitter' except due to intermittent OPSEC/OSINT failures?
- r-zip 5y agoI don't know about journalists, but given the idiotic replies to the posts of the computer scientists I follow on Twitter, I'm not sure I blame them for producing content for other top computer scientists.
- curiousllama 5y agoOne day some rando really will solve P=NP and they'll show you! (Divide by P and N=0 obviously)
- achenet 5y agoUh... you mean N=1, unless P=0... :p
- curiousllama 5y agoI said what I said
- ajsnigrutin 5y agoYep, just look at the covid lockdowns and superstars posting crying videos, wanting sympathy from regular people, for being locked in ther multimillion dollar villas with tennis courts and swimming pools. Bubbles are bad... but if you don't want to escape from one by yourself, you'll stay there forever, your bubble won't move by itself.
- moffkalast 5y agoBubbles eventually burst, just ask an economist.
- throwaway2037 5y agoAustralian housing? Not yet. It's been... forever. Never burst in modern times. They even managed to ride the Global Financial Crisis tsunami in 2008. The income-to-sale-price multiplier is simply mind blowing. I do not understand it! Ref: https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/price-indexes-and-inflation/residential-property-price-indexes-eight-capital-cities/latest-release https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/price-indexes-and-...
- xxpor 5y agoSupply constraints are powerful things
- ajsnigrutin 5y agoAlso hoarding something, that has limited quantity.
- mc32 5y agoWhat happened to the wealthy? They used to keep these things amongst themselves rather than announce everything to the public. They used to use hidden signals of wealth to show themselves to each other but not reveal themselves to the public —but now it’s a contest for crass popularity. I guess Robin Leach opened the crack and Instagram et al opened the floodgates. It’s a bit pathetic. What the hell happened to the “millionaire next door” types? Someone who had wealth but you’d never know it?
- syshum 5y agoThat bar has now been replaced with Twitter, and other social media, but it is hard to listen to the conversations because of the number of voices all speaking at once...... the truth is out there, just hard to find. "Authoritative Sources" are not the solution either, which is what most social media companies seem to be banking on as the solution to "fake news" but their chosen authority are just as prone to reporting non-sense as some random guy with a blog
- paulcole 5y ago> Used to be, near any event that generates news coverage, there would be a bar where the journalists hung out Just curious, how old are you and what year do you believe this “used to be” ended? I’m 40 and my guess is that this time is 25+ years gone by?
- h2odragon 5y agoI'm 49; and i dunno about "ended". Its no longer required to attend a physical place to "cover a story," but I'm sure that bar is still there at every big event.
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y agoMy understanding (based on some podcasts I’ve heard on) is that journalism has developed journalists not being by in a physical place except at very big events is due to newspapers closing/lack of money. There simply isn’t enough funding to have a well-considered reporter report on a specific subject or region where they then are in a place and regional education to then comment when something major happens. Now national newspapers ship reporters out to major events who simply don’t have the know-how of on the ground context and therefore can come away with drastically different conclusions than the people who actually live there.
- Archelaos 5y agoI am living near a medium sized city in Germany; here journalists from the local newspaper are very present at events, may they be cultural or political. A few days ago an incident made international headlines. After a few hours the place where the incident happend was full of journalists.
- pjc50 5y agoIt's been replaced with various private whatsapp groups. A surprisingly large amount of UK politics coverage is Laura K and Robert Peston reading out messages they have been sent by various leakers.
- 5y ago
- analog31 5y agoComputer programmers too. My irony meter went off scale when this article hit HN. "You tell me where a man gits his corn pone, and I'll tell you what his 'pinions is" -- Mark Twain
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoComputer programming is a high status, low wage job? I'm not sure about the "high status" part, and I'm even less sure about the "low wage" part. It pays pretty well, even if you're not at a FAANG.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- xxpor 5y agoIt's somewhat the opposite in fact (not exactly low status, but not on the forefront of a cool job either). It's the wordcel vs shape rotater meme/discourse.
- tartoran 5y agoWhat is that meme about?
- xxpor 5y agohttps://roonscape.substack.com/p/a-song-of-shapes-and-words https://roonscape.substack.com/p/a-song-of-shapes-and-words https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/wordcels-numbercels-definition https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/wordcels-numbercels-defi... tl;dr think NY Times writer vs nerd programmer
- randomopining 5y agoIt's def a low-mid status but high paying job. Nobody cares, they just say "wow you must be smart" and that's it.
- jseliger 5y agoNot just journalists, but politicians, priests, etc Yes: https://jakeseliger.com/2019/11/19/have-journalists-and-academics-become-modern-day-clerics/ https://jakeseliger.com/2019/11/19/have-journalists-and-acad.... Journalists, and academics in the humanities, have become more cleric-like.
- tomjakubowski 5y agoEconomists are even more priestlike than humanities professors.