7 ms·

Your theory about cable television is fascinating. I never really watched TV growing up, but every time I visit my parents now that they're retired, one of them

• UltraSane 5mo ago
  "one of them always has a 24 hour news going " Why didn't you say which one? I bet it is Fox.
  • walthamstow 5mo ago
    It doesn't matter which one. My mother mainlines BBC News which is state-owned, establishment-centrist, has no adverts or profits, but has the same effect of dialing up the viewer's fear of the outside world.
    • Quarrelsome 5mo ago
      sadly forces in the BBC also value "engagement". Idk how we got here, it never used to be like this. This is why cultural stories now are higher than before on the main site. It used to be the case that news was _just_ news. Politics, crime, economics, health, environment, etc. Now culture stories, like puff pieces about the royals or entertainment end up on the front page.
      • red_admiral 5mo ago
        Because the BBC now has to justify its licence fee to the government, so they need engagement metrics and all the rest like what proportion of X demographic they're reaching. Back in the day, both the BBC and universities were funded by the government without the stereotype of a fresh MBA graduate in charge. Back in the day before MOOCs, the BBC produced programmes for the Open University because that was the way to get video content out to the nation. > puff pieces about the royals have been on the front page of the tabloids since way before the internet.
        • Quarrelsome 5mo ago
          > have been on the front page of the tabloids since way before the internet. Yeah but not the BBC. There used to a be a line. :(
    • ffsm8 5mo ago
      While I'm not American, calling bbc centrist in 2026 is just objectively false. It was centrist in 2000s, but it hasn't been in at least a decade.
      • galangalalgol 5mo ago
        Whose interests does it serve now? That is the main thing to understand of you are to get anything out of news.
        • gambiting 5mo ago
          Everyone can agree BBC has an agenda. But it usually looks like no one can agree what that agenda actually is.
        • NopIdoN 5mo ago
          FWIW there's a new Director-general: Matt Brittin, whose CV includes Cambridge rowing team, MBA from LBS, McKinsey, Trinity Mirror (owner of The Daily Mirror) and 18 years at Google. He was the Google boss who said in 2016 that he doesn't know his own salary. Presumably he wants what's best for all of us.
        • ffsm8 5mo ago
          That question is more about identifying propaganda by various actors. While that's a related issue, it's something different to being centrist... Eg it's possible to create propaganda while being centrist, it just can't be left/right wing political.
      • deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
      • Nursie 5mo ago
        I tend to think it's probably doing OK as it gets heavy criticism from both the left and the right. From the left, it gets accused of cow-towing to right wing interests, not holding conservatives and corporatists to account and generally being far to easy on the like of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. From the right it gets called all sorts of names, my dad (unfortunately a convert to GBNews in his 70s) rails at it for being lefty garbage that won't speak the truth about immigration and other 'issues' he has been programmed to care about by the ragebait he watches. Of course part of the hate from the right is to do with Murdoch and his belief that it constitutes unfair competition. Me, I listen to Radio 4 from overseas and generally the coverage is pretty neutral AFAICT, if a little prone to 'bothsides' arguments where one side is clearly nutty as a fruitcake. (Sidenote - it really is sad to watch an intelligent man who was impressive in his globe-spanning career now get angry in front of 'news' services featuring smug, lippy anchors who tell him immigrants in boats are coming for his stuff. They couldn't afford the price of entry to his leafy London-outskirt suburb in the first place...)
    • UltraSane 5mo ago
      It matters very very much. Fox News is much much worse than most news channels. It was created specifically as GOP propaganda.
      • intended 5mo ago
        Unfortunately, pointing this out is not fun. In general, everyone assumes that there is little actual difference between CNN and any Murdoch enterprise. The difficulty in disabusing this position in a few short sentences, is one of the reasons there is such a chasm in American politics.
        • UltraSane 5mo ago
          People don't want to hear that fox news was created specifically to lie.
      • duderific 5mo ago
        Remember when Fox was sued by the voting machine company for libel (or slander, can't remember which), after Fox supported and broadcast claims that the machines were rigged against Trump in 2020, and Fox argued that nobody should take what they say seriously, because they're merely entertainment.
  • nancyminusone 5mo ago
    I had a relative for which it was CNN. We even share the same political views, but watching that stuff or having it on in the background literally from 8 am until midnight is tiring.
    • croisillon 5mo ago
      when in a hotel on vacations we sometimes have a television and hence bbc or cnn... i used to nickname cnn "the fire squad": whatever the topic they're just shouting and hyperventilating... it is tiring indeed
  • malfist 5mo ago
    It's actually CNN, but they flip to local news often too to hear about all the car wrecks and local murders and robberies and other things to make them afraid. Fox and CNN are both bad, but different flavors of bad.
    • UltraSane 5mo ago
      Fox is bad in a way far more fundamental than CNN. It was created specifically to lie to people.
• nancyminusone 5mo ago
  I do find it amusing how on the internet the X and Y can be governments or corporations, or the hosted platform itself. Seems like something a competent "we control everything" organization should be able to prevent. But as long as you do nothing but come back for another helping of rage, I guess they're fine with it.
  • harrall 5mo ago
    Cuz the actual nuanced reality is that it’s structural. (Most) corporations don’t want to control the world but they do have their own self-interests, but because there are so many corporations there’s always some corporation controlling some facet. For another example of a structural problem, California has been trying to add housing for the past few years but it has been one piecemeal solution after another. People who own homes don’t want their lives to change, cities like how they are laid out already, parking requirements exist to prevent developers from skimping at the time, environmental reviews are meant to protect the environment… at no point was anyone thinking “I want a housing problem that leads to job flight and homelessness” — everyone is just solving their own problem at the time but together it creates a major structural obstacle. The people at YouTube don’t actually care about controlling the narrative. They just want to make money while removing problematic content, but they’re not exactly sure what problematic content is and Google tends to invest in algorithms more than support, but the end result is channels get randomly removed sometimes. The world’s problems are hard because not because people are generally malicious, but because everyone is just doing their own thing. That’s why the only fixes are structural, but structural solutions are really hard.
• carlosjobim 5mo ago
  News are for news worthy things - which are things that deviate from everyday life. Wars, disasters, crime, in short things of concern. As well as political struggles, economic struggles, and any kind of conflict. So all is well in that aspect. That's how news have always been, since the first pyres were constructed to light fires to alert neighbouring communities of enemies arriving. But the sickening aspect of cable news is the way the presenters talk. The voice they use to speak to the watcher is pure venom. It's an extremely angry and condescending voice, and the TV watcher is made to feel inferior to the broadcasters and therefore give attention to the "very important" things they are talking about. Weak minds are conditioned to feel respect and reverence to those who treat them with despise, and unfortunately also to feel the opposite to people who they believe themselves superior to. It's completely deliberate, to make people addicted to it. Consider if a well dressed person came to your house and started talking in the same voice as the TV anchors do. You would instantly think it was a dangerous psychopath on the loose, and try to find a weapon swiftly to ward them off. If somebody at a barbecue started talking like the TV anchors, you'd think they were on drugs and tell them to leave. People would call the police. The next time you catch a TV news anchor, picture them being with you in your living room instead of in the TV studio. You will instantly conclude that the person is mentally and spiritually unwell to talk and act like that. You can practically smell the reptilian from them. Do the same thing with politicians and other leaders too. Many of them say things that on paper seem nice, but with a demeanour that you wonder when they're going to break out into "Who is the boss of you!? I am the boss of you!?"[1] And I don't think they can see it in themselves or smell it on themselves, like everybody else with a mind can. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QM_AcLBSQM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QM_AcLBSQM
  • afavour 5mo ago
    > The next time you catch a TV news anchor, picture them being with you in your living room instead of in the TV studio. You will instantly conclude that the person is mentally and spiritually unwell to talk and act like that. They're two different scenarios so it's not exactly a surprise they sound different. Same goes for anyone giving a public speech, their cadence and tone would sound bizarre if they were just say in a room with you. > The voice they use to speak to the watcher is pure venom. It's an extremely angry and condescending voice, and the TV watcher is made to feel inferior to the broadcasters and therefore give attention to the "very important" things they are talking about. I can't say I identify with that at all. I do not hear "pure venom" when I listen to a newscaster. They're usually either trying too hard to be serious or trying too hard to be lighthearted and chummy. But neither is venomous. IMO the biggest problem with cable news is that it runs constantly. News doesn't. So they have to fill endless dead time with hyperbole. One newscast in the evening ought to be enough for anyone, really.
• joseda-hg 5mo ago
  In defense of 'How money works' I don't think there's much in the way of positive anything to cover for his format/field, not for current times in particular His most famous videos are on the topic of bullshit jobs, the movie Wolf of wallstreet, various X is collapsing and a Money Laundering Explanations
  • SpicyLemonZest 5mo ago
    There's lots of positive things to cover. He made a video 2 weeks ago about tourism, his first ever as far as I can tell, and there's plenty of interesting things a general Youtube audience could learn about how money flows around in the context of tourism. But he chose to instead talk about "The End Of Budget Tourism", believing (perhaps accurately!) that a negative framing would help get people to click on his video.
    • jandrese 5mo ago
      YouTube is ruthless in promoting clickbait headlines and thumbnails where it's someone's face with a shocked expression and an attention grabbing byline. You don't play by their rules the algorithm will bury you. Content creators are a slave to the algorithm. It's so easy for Google to just not show put your video on the feed, even your subscribers. That's why every video looks the same now, if you refuse to play you don't get views.
• PaulHoule 5mo ago
  One of my in-laws who immigrated from Italy with a big family has a "command center" with a computer he trades stocks on and a few TVs and it drives me nuts when he watches Fox News and they are talking about the dangers of "chain migration" which is exactly what his family did to great success. YouTube is all over the place. You really can get great stuff but are you always a few clicks from blackpill hell: "men suck", "women suck", "famous consumer brands that have lost their way", "it all sucks", ...
  • malfist 5mo ago
    Absolutely. It's a very thin line to go from "just pointing out a problem" to "everything is a problem" to "everything is broken" to "nothing I can do will change anything" and then people disengage in the process and politics and everything else becomes the domain of whoever can shout the loudest with volume, rhetoric, or money. To quote Mon Mothma in Andor: I stand this morning with a difficult message. I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest. This Chamber’s hold on the truth was finally lost on the Ghorman Plaza. What took place yesterday… what happened yesterday on Ghorman was unprovoked genocide! Yes! Genocide! And that truth has been exiled from this chamber! And the monster screaming the loudest? The monster we’ve helped create? The monster who will come for us all soon enough is Emperor Palpatine!
    • dottjt 5mo ago
      I think the "nothing I can do will change anything" is actually a predominant theme that's emerged over the past decade. I don't know if you've watched any of Adam Curtis' documentaries, but his documentary HyperNormalisation explores this in great detail (most of this documentaries have a similar theme I've found). Edit: Apologies, I think I mean his documentary: Can't Get You Out of My Head. Essentially it asserts that all revolutions fail, because the people who attempt to overthrow simply become the new guard.
• frantathefranta 5mo ago
  I'm probably a heavier user of reddit than most but I recently deleted the reddit app on my phone because it's just too much. I still use the site though, but now I use an iPad with old.reddit to make using it as difficult as possible.
  • justonceokay 5mo ago
    Reddit is fun for a while but there is a strong “lowest common denominator” problem that plagues almost every subreddit.
    • malfist 5mo ago
      There's a very strong hive mind there. It takes very little to grassroots a subreddit. Just like at the biking subreddits and tire recommendations. It's almost always the GP 5000 that is recommended. Which, don't get me wrong, it's a great tire. But it isn't always the best, and there are tires out there that beat it. The community has just latched on to the one true tire and that's all you'll ever see recommended. Most subreddits that do any sort of product recommendation have the same problem. For a while, the pilot metro was the fountain pen de jure, or Stronglifts the default recommendation for weightlifting (and now it's never recommended). If they hive mind rallies around products like this, it also rallys around other ideas, policies and whatnot. Just look at the politics subreddit and see nonstop "Israel bad" "Chuck Schumer is feckless" or "jews control the funding of the democrats" everywhere. Even where it doesn't make sense. You can have one of those muckraking websites that run an article like "Schumer didn't vote against [insert house bill]" and it gets to the top and the narrative is relentless against schumer, even though he literally can't vote against a house measure since he's in the senate. Is he feckless? Absolutely. Does that mean everything he does or doesn't do is a sign of his fecklessness? Absolutely not. In the hivemind, there's no room for nuance, it's all "look at that bitch eating crackers"
      • ryandrake 5mo ago
        Reddit is a pretty extreme example, though, where mods are basically subreddit dictators. For whatever reason, Reddit gave enormous amount of censorship and conversation-shaping power to mods, to the point where a handful of like-minded mods can enforce in great detail what is allowed to be discussed and what isn't. Pretty sure if you unmasked the subreddit mods, the reason for the "circling around a particular brand recommendation" observation would become clear.
• anal_reactor 5mo ago
  I've noticed that I watch much less funny shit and much more "you should be afraid" but I really don't know how to change this.
  • somenameforme 5mo ago
    Is it not also possible that you should be, at least figuratively speaking? I think it's fairly obvious that not only are we at an inflection point in society, but we're at numerous inflection points happening all simultaneously - geopolitics, economics, tech/social media/"AI", fertility/sustainability, and much more. We're even at presumably happy inflection points like with progress into space. But the point of this is that in a relatively short period of time, the world is going to look far different than the overwhelming majority might ever expect. This is because most expect the status quo, in some form, to indefinitely persist, yet of course it never does. And it seems we're on the cusp of major shifts across many different domains, all at once.
  • cloudshock 5mo ago
    [dead]
  • bijowo1676 5mo ago
    anxiety is what creates uninformed consumerism, which drives the capitalism
• chasd00 5mo ago
  > but every time I visit my parents now that they're retired, one of them always has a 24 hour news going and it's just non stop "you should be afraid" and "you should be angry" told to you by pretty faces smiling the whole time. Don Henley wrote a song about that kind of news: "We got the bubble headed bleached blonde Comes on at five She can tell you 'bout the plane crash with a gleam in her eye It's interesting when people die Give us dirty laundry" https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/donhenley/dirtylaundry.html https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/donhenley/dirtylaundry.html
  • dredmorbius 5mo ago
    Great song. And long before that, Yellow Journalism: Journalism historian Frank Luther Mott used five characteristics to identify yellow journalism: 1. scare headlines in huge print, often sensationalizing minor news 2. lavish use of pictures, or imaginary drawings 3. use of faked interviews, misleading headlines, pseudoscience, and a parade of false learning from so-called experts 4. emphasis on full-color Sunday supplements, usually with superficial articles and comics 5. dramatic sympathy with the "underdog" against the system. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism>. The same or highly similar tactics apply equally in the 2020s as they did in the 1880s (and before). What many people don't realise: the "prestigious" journalistic prize, the Pulizter, is named for one of the most infamous low-quality yellow journalism publishers, Joseph Pulitzer. This is an early example of successful greenwashing of a reputation.
    • Anthony-G 5mo ago
      Upvoted your comment but my inner pedant can’t help but point out that’s more an example of whitewashing rather than greenwashing (which itself is a derivative of whitewashing).
      • dredmorbius 5mo ago
        Fair point ;-)
  • trumpdong 5mo ago
• nunez 5mo ago
  I know this works on YouTube Premium, but I have my watch history turned off and use the desktop app with UnTrap for YouTube so that it turns off all of the distracting nonsense I don't use (Shorts and recommendations)
  • everdrive 5mo ago
    A bit of a tangent, but Google is doing everything they can to stash more "recommendations" everywhere. Even now, you need a browser filter to keep them out of the subscriptions view.
• Anthony-G 5mo ago
  I used to only rarely look at Youtube (repairs, cooking, the odd live concert) but since I started looking at it more often (for guitar and piano tutorials), I’ve found its UI to be too distracting. I added the following custom uBlock filters to make it less annoying: ! Remove the "Up next" sidebar (the #secondary container) so that the main content area (#primary) takes up the full width. youtube.com##ytd-watch-flexy #secondary:remove() ! Ensure the video takes up the full width when playing full screen. youtube.com###panels-full-bleed-container:remove()