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>In the 1860s, Charles Baudelaire bemoaned what we might now call doomscrolling: [...] The poet’s revulsion was widely shared in 19th-century France. Amid rapid
by aredox 2y ago
>In the 1860s, Charles Baudelaire bemoaned what we might now call doomscrolling:
[...]
The poet’s revulsion was widely shared in 19th-century France. Amid rapid increases in circulation, newspapers were depicted as a virus or narcotic responsible for collective neurosis, overexcitement and lowered productivity.
On one hand, one could think "oh, the current social network bashing is just the same doom and gloom reaction to more communication, it will pass".
On the other hand, if you know well the period, the newspapers of the time - which were closer to the tabloids of today, but worse - did a lot to stir hatred of foreigners, of Jews, of Poor, and contributed massively in causing wars, colonialism and pogroms.
Emile Zola published "J'accuse !" in a newspaper, but it was newspapers who stirred rabid antisemitism everywhere.
- dbtc 2y agoThey had opium, we have fentanyl. It's not all bad but it's more potent now by far.
- inciampati 2y agoPoetry with a heavy dose of truth.
- jazzyjackson 2y agoI haven't been able to back this up and I'm afraid I'm making trumpesque accusations, but Chinese manufactured fentanyl always seemed to rhyme too well with the flood of American opium back in the day (second only to the English, not for lack of trying) I would suspect Chinese kingpins wouldn't be operating without the Party's blessing, but everyone seems too shy to point fingers, easier to blame the addict. Still, someone's getting rich off it, now as then. Long before the Sacklers appeared on the scene, families like the Astors, the Peabodys, and the Delanos cemented their upper-crust status through the global trade in opium. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/american-old-money-opium-trade-fortunes/ https://www.thenation.com/article/society/american-old-money...
- portaouflop 2y agoIf you look past ideology this is the key: > someone's getting rich off it, now as then
- lazide 2y agoDo you see the Chinese really trying to crack down all that hard? I’m sure they appreciate the irony.
- pessimizer 2y agoI still can't get over the fact that there were Dreyfusard and anti-Dreyfusard bicycle racing newspapers. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_V%C3%A9lo https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_V%C3%A9lo https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'Auto https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'Auto The anti-Dreyfusards won, put the Dreyfusards out of business by starting the Tour de France, and eventually went on to support Vichy. edit: https://blog.nli.org.il/en/tour_de_france/ https://blog.nli.org.il/en/tour_de_france/
- TeMPOraL 2y agoAnd on the grasping hand, one could think they were right - so instead of defending social media by pointing at the past and saying it's "just the same doom and gloom reaction to more communication, it will pass", or - conversely - instead of claiming social media is a new and uniquely bad thing, we could perhaps consider that their observations were valid then, and are even more valid now; that we've been going down the wrong road for the past 100+ years, and social media is merely an incremental worsening of a mistake made so long ago, we can't even conceptualize correcting it now.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoBut it wasn't continuously bad, or at least that's the impression I get. Yellow journalism reached it's heyday in the 1890's but started turning things around towards respectability in the 1900's.
- amanaplanacanal 2y agoAnd then returned in the 1990's with the 24 hour news networks.
- conception 2y agoMore the removal of the fairness doctrine.
- maroonblazer 2y agoI don't think this gets mentioned enough. Rush Limbaugh was the result of the doctrine's abolition. You can draw a straight line from Limbaugh to Fox News, et al.
- dredmorbius 2y agoWNYC's "One the Media" have done just this: "How Rush Limbaugh Paved The Way For Trump" (2021) <https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/how-rush-limbaugh-paved-way-trump-repeat https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/how-rush-l...> Audio: <https://chrt.fm/track/53A61E/pdst.fm/e/dts.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/waaa.wnyc.org/e68b6750-ddde-4b56-8121-be01a1922ff5/episodes/d06b88bb-cf33-4f37-87fe-13f9967d85db/audio/128/default.mp3 https://chrt.fm/track/53A61E/pdst.fm/e/dts.podtrac.com/pts/r...> (MP3)
- gunian 2y agoAny idea where I could get my hands on such records? Lately my voracious reading appetite has been encouraging me to seek out first hand accounts
- zozbot234 2y ago> the newspapers of the time - which were closer to the tabloids of today, but worse - did a lot to stir hatred of foreigners, of Jews, of Poor, and contributed massively in causing wars Sure, but this is just as true of the earliest printed works in the 16th and 17th centuries. So this really is a fallacious argument unless you also think that we should be dispensing with freedom of the press in general.
- theendisney 2y agoSeems a great idea. The trash on social media is some how less trashy than the papers. We should ban it for one or more years then give them their freedom back conditionally, under supervision. We should elect the supervisors.
- plastic-enjoyer 2y ago>oh, the current social network bashing is just the same doom and gloom reaction to more communication, it will pass One might ask if it wasn't just down hill from the tabloids to social media in our current time. I tend to think that the development from tabloids to radio, television and social media is actually a consistent and logical development. The aim has always been to generate as many readers / listeners / viewers and engagement as possible, and the possibilities have become increasingly effective and efficient thanks to digital information processing. However, the side effects that each new medium introduces are becoming more extreme.
- jncfhnb 2y agoI’m totally fine saying newspapers, conceptually, are just net negative. They are a tool that can be used for good or evil but largely inevitably end up in the hands of selfish commercial or political interests.
- onemoresoop 2y agoConceptually they’re just a medium. Social media is just a medium. But there’s a big difference in how they operate, the former had to be paid and had many competitors, the latter is paid by advertisor and there are just a few who own the whole landscape.
- lm28469 2y ago> On one hand, one could think "oh, the current social network bashing is just the same doom and gloom reaction to more communication, it will pass". I never understood this argument. It's obvious that the pace and scale of "progress" increased dramatically, making things much harder to contain/study and making them much more potent to a much larger group of people Were was he proved wrong that tabloids made people more stupid? Humans are very adaptable, the fact that we're still here doesn't invalidate his opinion. The logical progress from these things gave us 24/7 opinion news channels and they definitely make people stupid, much more than paper news. Finally even if he was wrong, there is no logical way to use it to prove that a tiktok ban is wrong, someone being wrong about something vaguely related in the past doesn't automatically make every future vaguely related opinions wrong for eternity
- lazide 2y agoTabloids have been everywhere for a very long time. Near as we can tell, people are smarter now than they were. Does that prove tabloids make people stupid? Or disprove it? Good luck. But I’m pretty sure hunting down tabloids isn’t going to be on anyone’s priority list if they are tasked with ‘making society smarter’ today.
- onemoresoop 2y agoTabloids aren’t really news, they’re more like rage baiters and celebrities salads.