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I read the Guardian's top articles every morning, and then listen to either BBC, NYT or a Vox podcast and a couple of never-Trump "center right" podcasts on eco

I read the Guardian's top articles every morning, and then listen to either BBC, NYT or a Vox podcast and a couple of never-Trump "center right" podcasts on economics and foreign policy. Once in awhile I'll read something on a Murdoch-owned property. Of all of these, I find the Guardian to be the most viscerally alarming and the most consistently hysterical on every subject. Every Guardian article about a pollutant, about the climate , or about any judicial decision thay goes against what they believe is given the same treatment of elevating it to the level of apocalyptic clickbait and then doubling down with four paragraphs of boilerplate about how it disproportionately affects marginalized communities. I've stopped reading the last four paragraphs, because they're always the same regardless of the subject matter... this saves me some time in the morning. I used to think it was only the crazy far right who preyed on people's fears... but now it's just alarmist clickbait left right and center. I just got done being extremely annoyed with John Podhoretz on a podcast claiming that aspartame can't cause cancer because he needs to imbibe it and because other artificial sweeteners were prematurely vilified and banned, which is a reductionist, reactionary, emotional and stupid argument. Personally, I still believe saccharine causes cancer, I've always assumed aspartame did, and I never eat or drink anything with artificial sweeteners. But I'm so sick of the hyperbolic screeching on both sides of every single fucking thing from gas stoves to coke baggies in the white house to abortion rights to Disney and Target and Bud Light to how climate change will kill us all to PFAS in my dental floss to how nuclear war or AI Holocaust is imminent... I just wish they would all shut up. Stop. Just stop finding new things to for me to fucking worry about. Go away.

BenFranklin100 3y ago
The Guardian is regarded as a joke. About a third of their of their journalist/editors are nincompoops who sole function is to throw read meat to the rabid Left. I still donate $50/yr to the Guardian because about 5% of their reporting provides a useful counter perspective.
- noduerme 3y ago
  Absolutely agree they are a useful counter perspective... that's why I read them daily. I just wish they would dial down the rhetorical hysteria in whatever attempt it is to counterbalance the hysteria on the other side. [edit] I'm also of a time where the concept of 'throwing red meat to the left' raises serious cognitive dissonance for me, because prior to Twitter, or at least through the 90s and 00s, red meat style feasting and crowing behavior was exclusively for the right. For awhile it seemed almost axiomatic to me that the left didn't need to resort to fear mongering or hyperbole in communicating their points, because objective truth and logic was on their side. I don't think that was just my own blind bias; it was a major selling point of the left to rid these issues of religious-type appeals to emption, and drill into facts in a way that made the opposition look hypocritical at best or mendacious at worst. By adopting the hysterical and emotive tactics of the right, I feel that the Guardian, et. al, have ceded the high ground.
  - BenFranklin100 3y ago
    Yes, sounds like we have similar perspectives. While there always was a fringe left, I felt that in the 90s and 2000s the left to center left could at least be depended on to be rational. Not so much anymore. I partly blame Congressional Republican’s intransigence after Obama was elected. Many on the left figured why be reasonable if the opposition is going to refuse to compromise? Things have deteriorated since then and gotten far worse under Trump who has fed the extremes on both sides. It’s a mess nowadays.
    - noduerme 3y ago
      What happened to "when they go low, we go high"? Just a loss of faith in general intelligence? I don't buy the argument that this has been A/B tested to a point where there's no use arguing against its effectiveness.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]

BenFranklin100 3y ago

The Guardian is regarded as a joke. About a third of their of their journalist/editors are nincompoops who sole function is to throw read meat to the rabid Left. I still donate $50/yr to the Guardian because about 5% of their reporting provides a useful counter perspective.

noduerme 3y ago
Absolutely agree they are a useful counter perspective... that's why I read them daily. I just wish they would dial down the rhetorical hysteria in whatever attempt it is to counterbalance the hysteria on the other side. [edit] I'm also of a time where the concept of 'throwing red meat to the left' raises serious cognitive dissonance for me, because prior to Twitter, or at least through the 90s and 00s, red meat style feasting and crowing behavior was exclusively for the right. For awhile it seemed almost axiomatic to me that the left didn't need to resort to fear mongering or hyperbole in communicating their points, because objective truth and logic was on their side. I don't think that was just my own blind bias; it was a major selling point of the left to rid these issues of religious-type appeals to emption, and drill into facts in a way that made the opposition look hypocritical at best or mendacious at worst. By adopting the hysterical and emotive tactics of the right, I feel that the Guardian, et. al, have ceded the high ground.
- BenFranklin100 3y ago
  Yes, sounds like we have similar perspectives. While there always was a fringe left, I felt that in the 90s and 2000s the left to center left could at least be depended on to be rational. Not so much anymore. I partly blame Congressional Republican’s intransigence after Obama was elected. Many on the left figured why be reasonable if the opposition is going to refuse to compromise? Things have deteriorated since then and gotten far worse under Trump who has fed the extremes on both sides. It’s a mess nowadays.
  - noduerme 3y ago
    What happened to "when they go low, we go high"? Just a loss of faith in general intelligence? I don't buy the argument that this has been A/B tested to a point where there's no use arguing against its effectiveness.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]