3 ms·
Well put. I think the cause of the decline is this: The narrative used to be set by newspapers. Now, the narrative is set by a subset of Twitter/Fediverse user
by concinds 3y ago
Well put. I think the cause of the decline is this:
The narrative used to be set by newspapers. Now, the narrative is set by a subset of Twitter/Fediverse users: the "respectable" users that journalists follow and are followed back by. These people determine the "respectable-views" Overton window, which is very narrow. Step outside of it, and the "respectable-people" mob will say that you're "amplifying bad-faith talking points"; do it too much and you'll be seen as tainted and ostracized. So the pressure to uphold this "respectable-views ideology" is huge.
I think does contribute to real anxiety in some people, because this intense "us-versus-them" is very obvious in everything they write. And just like it would be toxic in a personal relationship, it turns the national narrative "toxic", so people who don't derive entertainment from it tune it out, because, like every other kind of toxicity, it makes them feel like shit.
- motohagiography 3y agoI think calling it anxiety elevates the issue as though the people writing were somehow peers. For me it's not anxiety, it's just disgust. In presenting themselves as underdogs, they diminish themselves as a means to self-license to behave in ways that are not to the standards and conventions of normal men and women. It's a kind of intellectual and political perfidy, where these writers affect some grand social injury as a means to appeal to our tolerance and kindness, and then use the attention to inject their ridiculous beliefs. It's abuse, hence disgusting.