Photo by Gian Cescon on Unsplash
Featuring the Fabulous Dadbots: Mark M., Dave S., Mark O., Dennis Curley, and Geoff Carter
Kara, Elon, and the Donald
….in that order.
This may not stick with you, but I’ve just recently discovered Kara Swisher “On Tech” columnist for the Times. Usually a weekly or bi-weekly column, she’s had (3) recently given the Elon-Twitter whirlwind transaction news. A mother of (4)—thus both hip and grounded–I find her writing witty, informative, and concise. Her Sunday piece covered both the Twitter thing at that time but also had some fresh (to me) criminologist insights—from a Russia Capitol Investor expert. For some reason I get these via e-mail with my scrip, so look for (2) forwards, not links. Read or click past as you wish. Below are two snips from yesterday’s column that speculates some aspects of Twitter’s future. I have my own speculations on this but will hold on that for now.
TheNYTimes: With Elon Musk,You Can’t Spell ‘Funding Securted’ Without Fun
….and yesterday’s:
The NY Times: Musk’s Twitter: Weed Memes. Editable Tweets. And the Return of Trump
-Dave
Interesting stuff Dave. I have a comment about the 4 Questions segment. Ms. Swisher has the integrity to state, “I’ve edited his answers“. What that typically entails is eliminating the detail that lends nuance to a story or an interview. This is the NY Times stock in trade in recent decades. They are more cheerleader than reporter, and they don’t announce their editing bias or how they select stories to support their overarching narrative. The “All the News that’s Fit to Print” ethic went out the window long ago.
To paraphrase Noam Chomsky, “I read the Times. It’s the best newspaper in the world. But it’s still terrible.”
MarkO
My “hot takes” warehouse is pretty lukewarm when it comes to Twitter and Musk. It is interesting that Musk is, per Swisher, putting more than just other people’s money on the line. He’s got skin in this game. Twitter is socially a big star in our digital society, but financially it’s not been a great performer. It’s unclear whether it will throw off enough revenue to pay the debt service on the billions of debt financing that Musk has lined up. It just seems like Elon Musk needs to be prominent in everybody’s frontal lobe, and on the tip of everyone’s tongue. There is another guy like that — a former Twitter user. But Elon Musk differs from Trump in that he has actually created value and created technology. Doesn’t make him less obnoxious, but it does make him slightly more bearable. I wonder when Elon Musk will throw his hat in the ring for the ultimate job coveted by attention seekers — the Presidency. (Note: Since Elon Musk was not born in the U.S., he would not be eligible to run for president.)
Turning to the Russian criminologist. The description of the government as kleptocracy, and of all public servants as crooked and corrupt, is something I’ve heard from many Indian co-workers over the years, about their own government. Scratch the surface and Indians betray a deep cynicism toward any government agency or official. Very similar to the attitude of Russians. Despite the deep dysfunction of our own system, we haven’t approached that level of outright thievery and brazen malfeasance.
–Mark M.
Not yet.
–Geoff
Commentators who lean left have pointed out that Elon Musk’s promise to restore “free speech” to Twitter is problematic.
In the context of social media, the term “free speech” has taken on a subtly different meaning. When libertarians and conservatives use the term, they are really referring to unmoderated content. Such unmoderated content includes misinformation, deliberate disinformation, harassment, and vile misogyny. The promise of unmoderated content is a big reason why “alternative” conservative-oriented social media platforms like Parler and Gettr are inundated with porn.
Is it true that Twitter content moderation (eg. the banning of a certain large, orange individual) leans left? That is the very loud contention of the Tucker Carlsons of the world, but I don’t think that has been conclusively proven.
As Mark O stated in an earlier thread, the social media platforms are in the position of being censors to some of the content. We don’t allow the government to censor our speech– er, unless somebody kneel on an NFL field to protest racism. So why do we allow Twitter and FaceBook to? I’d argue for a couple reasons. First, these are private companies, and they don’t comprise 100% of opportunities for free speech. Second, because social media presents a challenge that’s unique. Gimcrack conspiracy theories have always existed, but they’re now being mainlined directly into minds, many of which are vulnerable. To pretend that social media is just another form of speech, like those offered by newspapers and TV networks, simply isn’t realistic.
Where does content moderation draw the line? Maybe the answer is to repeal Section 230 of the Federal code, which immunizes platforms from being held responsible for 3rd party content. Now THAT would change things.
–Mark M.
Hey Bots,
Sorry it’s taken me so long to respond. I came down with a bad case of Bucks fever—I’m glad it’s not CWD.
Anyway, I agree this Musk takeover of Twitter is worrisome, as is Bezos’ takeover of the marketplace—plus their attempts to turn outer space into a tourist destination—Rupert Murdoch’s attempted takeover of public airwaves. I also agree we cannot trust private corporations to regulate themselves. They’ve tried to sell that bridge a few too many times, and I, for one, am sick of getting the short end of the stick, especially when they’re aided and abetted by government lackies. There’s maybe a new version of the flag in here: “Don’t Trickle Down on Me!!”
Before Reagan revoked the Fairness Doctrine, which guaranteed equal time for opposing points of view, TV was fair and balanced. Killing it gave birth to Fox and all the other politically unbalanced stations. I think we should go back to what worked. Government regulation and journalistic ethics. I know this is problematic. Government regulation works only when representatives actually have the people’s best interest at heart. That’s not entirely true anymore. Secondly, since most media outlets are owned and operated by private corporations, it’s getting more difficult to get professional journalistic objectivity all the time. But it’s there.
And these aren’t new problems. We survived the Hearst empire with its overtly jingoistic yellow journalism. We’re surviving Murdoch. After what, forty years, he only 33% of Americans in his pockets. There’s misinformation out there, sure, but we’ve never stopped calling it out. QAnon and Birds Aren’t Real (are you fucking kidding me?) and the flat-earthers will never go away. It’s hard, but I still have faith in common sense—hundreds of thousands of Twitter users dropped their accounts after the Musk acquisitions. We do need responsible government intervention for social media. Or, if our reps refuse to act, let the sheep(le) start leading the shepherds.
—Geoff
Geoff,
You dropped the bomb at the end of your thesis brother. “Responsible government”. One has to ask responsible to whom or what? I’m afraid our prevailing political culture is responsible to the market. The market for campaign donations, for kickbacks (legal and otherwise), for tax havens, and for future job opportunities via the government-industry revolving door.
I don’t honestly know what kind of threat Elon Musk is to our society and mental health. He says some stuff but he also says he isn’t going to flaunt “the law”, whatever that means. I find him to be one of our more entertaining public figures.
p.s. I heard his ex-wife is dating Chelsea Manning. That’s awesome if true. Sorry to spill over into Entertainment Tonight mode. Please forgive me wise sages.
MarkO
Well, you could—and probably should—call me naive, Mark, but I do think there are elements in our government—AOC, Bernie, Evers, Obama, and even Uncle Joe—who are trying to be responsible and humanitarian. The system itself is corrupt and fucked-up beyond recognition, yet they’re still functioning in it. The same is true of the media, especially the print media, yet I think despite Murdoch and Clear Channel and social media, professional journalistic standards are alive.
As for Musk, he kind of reminds me of a dopy kid who’s trying really hard to be cool, like one of those characters in Stranger Things. Challenging Putin to a one-on-one duel? Really? But then he turns around and offers Ukraine thousands of Starlink internet kits to keep them hooked up to the world. He’s brilliant, but you’re right, I have no fucking idea what he’ll do next,
—Geoff
‘bothood:
Yet another selfless, I read it—you don’t have to distillation from yours truly. Sunday Times had a short but exhaustive analysis of Tucker Carlson’s descent into pure toxicity (white supremacy defense to name but one). Exhaustive/short in that it was a modern news piece involving video and visual shortcuts to quickly get their points across. Thus, it was as much looking and listening as it was reading. Pretty confident there was NOTHING in there that would surprise ya’ll. Nonetheless here’s my distill:
- Exhaustive in that they read and counted every word—via shows and transcripts. (I accepted as true—since it seems obvious—however I have NEVER watched an entire Fox-cast—save for Packers vs Bears….maybe I should….my bias disclosed….seems like my only exposure is some business trip…clicking through the channels….hear Hannity, or O’Reilly or Tucker ranting…I stop….listen for a few seconds, put them in the looney category and click onward. I’m thinking to become a better person I’ll zip tie self to a chair in order to watch an entire episode. In balance, a friend once recommended the Rachel Maddow show—this I watched a little bit longer since I lean that way, but alas, I could quickly see she was skirting the facts, taking cheap shops, not much different than the Fox bubbas…would rather watch a Bruce Willis movie for the 4thtime….
- The Times pointed to several recurrent themes, then bombard you with Tucker’s repetition to prove their point (the audio part).
- Themes being: They and You (they being the ruling class—and they have a nice gallery of all of his frequent targets—about 30 of them, an alphabet soup ranging from AOC to Bill Nye the Science guy—which I’ll get to in a minute.
- Other themes: White—he says white as often as most people say “the, and, anduhmm.” Another: Watering down of our whiteness—immigration is the tool to win elections. “They” want white men gone. (And oh btw, men usually follows white in tuckerspeake.
- And there is the usual, they want you to pay for everything, yet they have some serious indulgences of their own. I forget, but there is a Nancy Pelosi (?) indulgence that sounded damning. (IMO: To be fair both sides play this card. John McCain had (7) houses, Bernie Sanders wealth is something that would raise comrades’ eyebrows).
- In terms of stats and visual graphics, the Times concluded (and proved if you trust them), that Tucker’s former MO of debate with guests not of his way of thinking—e.g.: Bill Nye the Science guy used to be, a regular. The dots on the visual graphic was one my bigger takeaways—those days are long gone…what used to be a value add (IMO….debate between folks at opposite ends of the spectrum), is long gone. Carlson’s uses his show simply as a bully pulpit. More like a Baptist preacher than a journalist.
- Further evidence of this was the graphics showing the increasing length of his monologues—looked like the omicron surge graphs. Again—unlikely this surprises ya’ll. Story link below if you want to read/watch/listen yourselves. I now see there maybe (3) installments to this story—I only waded through the below.
NYTimes: Tucker Carlson Tonight
Depressing this descent we have entered into. Civil debate is waning. Twitter enabled that—since 28 words seldom is enough ‘evidence’ to prove a point…other than “you’re short” (Trump’s way of defeating Marco Rubio). Cruz, DeSantis, Hawley, Carlson have all sunk into this shallow but effective mode of winning hearts and minds. Will Elon play a role in turning this around? Will he make it worse? Will we ever have honest, adult debate again? And there are of course many other vile forces out there—internet trolls of all sorts…Qanon. I think we all have our doubts. But I remain hopeful.
One interesting question ahead: will it be Trump or DeSantis in 2024? The don’t say gay and socially sensitive math book banning took me by surprise. How swift it went into Florida law. Decentralized government has its benefits…but occasionally a state goes rogue…fortunately we have SCOTUS and lawmakers to correct these forays into lunacy. But then again… just last night we hear, SCOTUS is overturning Roe v Wade. So much for the backstop.
…Uhmmm….have a good day?
–Dave
Dave, nice summary of the Tucker article. I had read the text but hadn’t gotten into the graphics and video. I will be doing that. I’m with you in terms of the inability to sit through an entire Fox News show. I have tried Laura Ingraham, but her constant sneering putdowns of the libs just grate on me. My brother refers to her as one of the “Cruel Catholics” — mean spirited pundits of the Catholic persuasion who just grind their conservatism & moral integrity into your face. Newt Gingrich is another. Throw away the zip ties, Dave. You won’t be improved by an hour of these jokers.
Tucker’s emphasis on US and THEM is striking. Really, it’s white panic. One of my recurring themes is that racism is the pillar underlying Trumpism and the current conservative backlash. Tucker gets THIS close to out & out admitting it.
Our current situation of siloed partisan news outlets actually has been more commonplace in American history, compared to the sober & nonpartisan journalism that was more common in our boyhood and young adulthood. At least that’s what I read in history books. I think that a “return” to “actual debate” is not in the cards. Social science has shown that virtually nobody is persuaded by debate, anyway. It tends to harden positions.
–Mark
Scientic American: How Political Opinions Change
If anybody is interested in pursuing the kind of a tangential question of “do debates change minds?”, check out the link.This is Science (TM), baby.
I didn’t make my blanket assertion with the Presidential debates in mind. As Dave points out, those are not really debates. I meant more generally that people are fairly hardened in their positions, and don’t change easily. That certainly is my own anecdotal experience. No matter how loud I yell or how red my face gets, people never agree with me!
The article concurs with that opinion, and describes a clever experiment that tricked people into changing their opinion. It’s all about making people think the idea is their own.
–Mark M
Ok….covering human nature today.
First: This is tardy—the topic was (in a nutshell) how hard is it to change hearts and minds. Good Sci American article MM, thanks for sourcing it–its link is still below. The trick is interesting, but I thought the examples were sort of ‘meh’ choices and thus ones a person is likely to flip on. We all try ideas on for a while to see if they fit…(literally, like the pants of different colors example, ay).
I must admit I LOVED Psych 101 and all the frailties of human nature it exposed. Those, what 6-7 common defense mechanisms. I found it liberating…we all don’t have to feel so guilty about being so flawed—everyone is!. Our flaws are complex…some of them a consequence of basic things like survival. The experiment reminded me–in a reverse way–of one of Maslow’s characteristics of self-actualized people—the indifference of adopting or abandoning “conventions”. I’ve noticed small minded people—I work with dozens of them, engineers are the worst, are not typically creative thinkers…always turn to same-old—same-old (i.e. convention). So rare, but inspiring when you meet someone that has reached self-actualization. Like that most interesting man in the world. No, not the Dos Equis dude, rather, see attached. The rest of us just have to keep at it…someday we might get there.
MM: Did you ever watch Blood Money—the Theranos/Liz Holmes story? Similar to the Sci American…how to make humans flip, they had a great bit in there on how to make humans lie. Explained by Eastern Euro shrink, with a thick accent and some sort of facial glitch. Sometimes eccentric—e.g.: an English accent, connotes credibility…expertise. Often for no good reason.
Take Fresh Air the other night, Terry Gross had what I thought would be an “interesting expert” ….wrote a book about Russian Oligarch money in London. Some call it Londongrad. Book snip below. Her first question was how are they funding the war in Ukraine via London? Non answer. Her 2nd, 3rd, the same. Just kept saying it’s complicated, impossible to track…but he knows about mansions, countryside estates, super yachts and fine art. Went to that refrain (3) many times before I turned it off. No meat whatsoever. I imagine Terry was fuming at her underlings for not properly vetting this smarmy Brit. To be fair to Terry, she’s had (2) tour de force interviews recently, one with CNN International anchor, Zain Asher and another with Michelle Yeoh (Everything, Everywhere, All at Once—we’ll screen it tonight on the big one—watch for my review). I’ll only spoil one bit from the Zain Asher interview—it has several OMG!…moments….her famous—thought dead, actor brother (12 Years A Slave)–being pulled off a morgue wagon in Nigeria—but her mum is the star of the story. If you get chance, are driving cross country…can’t stand the suspense of Buck vs Celtics…etc. … check it out.
–Dave S.