Around the hour mark CJ just… goes off on doing what you can do in the world that actually exists… it’s pretty great…
You could always cross post in multiple threads! It would fit in all of those nicely.
[ETA] Reading the post now… very interesting… here is the podcast mentioned in the intro…
https://sites.middlebury.edu/feminismfascismfuture/
Y No Onebox!!!
Another “I don’t know where else to put this”.
Enshittification? Is there a Media Literacy thread?
Anyway: Tiktok via Marshall McLuhan.
The medium is the message, and the message is “I’mma put your brain in a blender now, 'k? Nothing means anything when everything is a firehose of snippets all screaming ‘WITNESS ME!’”
More musings on poptimism and cultural decline…
Sadly, FAFO seems like a new way to describe a general journalistic trend in crime reporting. The right-wing use of crime as a tactic for promote fear and disgust is a major reason they are celebrating news stories about detention or deportation. The linking of certain groups of immigrants to illegality and immorality is not new. The goal is to sway public opinion and gain support using “anti-crime” or “pro law & order” platforms/promises. We can find examples of TPTB using the media to smear those who have been arrested, justify brutality, or excuse excesses in sentencing by a quick look back at coverage of the Black community.
We should not treat the lives of people as mere pawns in a partisan game. People’s lives, after all, are the only reason politics matters in the first place.
Really? What’s interesting to note is concerns about it going too far mainly seem to come up when the folks involved look like the ones pictured here. Readers are encouraged to consider humanity when victims or perpetrators are considered to be white. The tactics described above used to influence public opinion against POC are instead used to justify or minimize what led to arrests, explain why readers should empathize, and decry any penalties applied as being too harsh.
Now we’re supposed to believe pointing out how people’s choices led to a specific outcome is a ‘“gotcha” game,’ as the author defines it. Glossing over that part or refusing to include it because that would be “depraved” just sets up people to never connect the dots. How can lessons be learned if the press is determined not to bring up certain mistakes or confirm whether or not they were ever made?
A great one from Belle about the point of society (for those who lean into nostalgia for the past and/or complain about anyone who receives assistance):