3 ms·

The transformation of all news and opinion into a steady stream of Everything Is Bad is something that I think we'll enjoy reading about half a century from now

The transformation of all news and opinion into a steady stream of Everything Is Bad is something that I think we'll enjoy reading about half a century from now. My experience is that everything is fine and better than ever. We went to a nice restaurant this last week, we ordered on Door dash for game night, I picked up from a chain (Zareen's) when I went down to the South Bay, and we will go to a restaurant we've been to many times that's across the street this week. All of these experiences have been good. I know it is traditional in this genre of media to fire up a litany of complaint (the food isn't meant to be X, the delivery drivers aren't paid enough, etc. etc.) but I'm happy with the food I paid for and the delivery drivers are glad they've got the job. There is a religious chanting aspect to the way people keep talking about things in the world. "Outrage culture in the media is ruining the world" while simultaneously subscribing to that. Take a critical look at yourselves.

cal_dent 1y ago
I am also very interested in this change. Is it just a second order effect on engagement targeting on a wider scale? Like it's always been the case news and the Internet slants towards the negative ends of things I think but the gap between the world represented there vs the world represented in actual real life seems so much larger now than I can remember it being. There's also a small thought niggling away at me about if it's mainly because network effects have made the world mentally a much smaller place. All news is sort of global, rather than local, and you can always find something that's pretty shitty in the world at all times and that gets injected into everyone's narrative because whatever news you consume is all connected now to global,or at least national, consciousness if that makes sense? It'd be interesting to see over time how much the content of news as transformed over time in terms of the local, national, global proportion of coverage/content in the average news media

cal_dent 1y ago

I am also very interested in this change. Is it just a second order effect on engagement targeting on a wider scale? Like it's always been the case news and the Internet slants towards the negative ends of things I think but the gap between the world represented there vs the world represented in actual real life seems so much larger now than I can remember it being. There's also a small thought niggling away at me about if it's mainly because network effects have made the world mentally a much smaller place. All news is sort of global, rather than local, and you can always find something that's pretty shitty in the world at all times and that gets injected into everyone's narrative because whatever news you consume is all connected now to global,or at least national, consciousness if that makes sense? It'd be interesting to see over time how much the content of news as transformed over time in terms of the local, national, global proportion of coverage/content in the average news media