While cleaning out my nursery closet, I was stopped in my tracks while passively listening to a phenomenal video by Sargon of Akkad. If you have a half hour to spare, I highly recommend a look or listen. The video, which is partially about the recent Wall Street Journal hit piece of PewDiePie, is more broadly about the war being waged on alternative media.
The alternative media has grown to such a colossal size partly due to the changing preferences of younger demographics, but mostly due to the narrowing of allowable views by traditional media, the combination of which has created a monster that they are now attempting to slay.
Although the difference between those who follow either tend to be generational (for example: Ken’s teen aged children tend to watch almost exclusively YouTube, Ken watches predominantly cable and Netflix, while I, being between the two in age, watch a combination of all), there has been a massive growth of older generations tuning out as well. This is due to the traditional media’s narrowing of allowable views. As more people feel disenfranchised, alternative media grows by welcoming people with open arms. Instead of successfully indoctrinating more people to their views, they inject growth hormones into an already massively large creature.
I was one of the few people in my circles that predicted a Trump win. Following the alternative media, it was obvious to me. The massive amount of support for the man hidden in plain sight was surprising , yet almost refreshing to see. To those who don’t follow traditional media at all, like Ken’s 17 year old son, it was obvious he was going to win. Yet, to those residing in the traditional media bubble, the idea of him winning was ludacris.. So the mental breakdown of those who have been residing in the traditional media bubble is understandable. They were not living in reality and it came around hit them like a sledgehammer.
With the recent attacks on PewDiePie and Milo, social media tightening control of their user base, and the hilarious backfiring of the creation of the phrase “Fake News” it is becoming quite apparent that traditional media is now waging war against the monster that they unknowingly helped create.
This is a fantastic breakdown of just a two minute clip of Trump’s press conference which shows how the media are being absolute scumbags and are effectively trying to goad Trump into hostile relations with Russia.
Don’t read the comments, however.
That should go without saying for a youtube video.
Wow, a racist with a Pepe the Frog icon – that’s actually the first actual non–ironic example I’ve seen of this phenomenon.
There’s a strong dose of “Poes Law” with the Youtube antisemitism
Half of them are serious, and half of them are proggy trolls littering any of the sites critical to SJW horseshit with racist gibberish.
its not worth it trying to make sense of it; the only rational response is to basically treat anything you read in comments as being about as ‘real’ and significant as stuff you read on the walls of a toilet stall.
You’ve almost got it right. The trolls aren’t proggies though. Quite a few of them are libertarians and anarchists who happen to have formed an alliance with Republicans and other assorted motley factions with only one goal: to annihilate the left. And the scope of it is actually a tiny amount of the racism is real. Of course, real racists are going to come out of the woodwork thinking they’re in good company. But their numbers and influence are insignificant, just like they’ve been for decades.
The strategy is crazier than you might want to believe. One of them I happen to know well refers to it as “LARPing as a Nazi.” They are creating a fictitious threat out of nothing whatsoever in order to trigger SJWs into fits of apoplectic rage. They want the left to be shadowboxing with imaginary fascists so that the world sees them exactly as the insane babbling fools they really are.
They want people to ask the question “with all of this stuff I keep seeing brought up to shriek at, where are the actual Nazis? Where is the violence we’re supposed to be seeing from them?” And every time the left false-flags and gets caught, these guys are laughing their asses off. That is precisely because it is going to plan. It is an Internet campaign that is as oddly effective as it is repugnant. These guys have a slavering national media eating bullshit out of their hands.
I’ve known about this for months now, and kept quiet about it because I’m tired of the left as much as they are. I’ve wanted to let more people in on it, but felt that it would dull the blade. And I have hinted at it, both here and the other site. I’ve more or less come to the conclusion that this strategy is almost an open secret at this point. And, more importantly, the left would write it of as crackpot conspiracy theorizing anyway. They need fascists so badly right now that it is driving them publicly insane, because they have nothing at all left to cling to.
This is also why the “alt-right” doesn’t actually exist. Yes, Richard Spencer is almost certainly for real. I’m sure he’s even got a cadre of loons who believe everything he says. But the rest of the “nebulous” alt-right that the media is trying to define and failing so consistently at, it doesn’t fit a mold because it does not want to. You see, GamerGate is the original nucleus of all this. It was the event where these tools were discovered and started being rapidly disseminated. Since then, the prototypes of those tools have been dramatically refined into weapons of memetic warfare initially incubated in 4chan’s “pol” and spread in a diluted form to Reddit’s /r/The_Donald. And the lesson they took from GamerGate is that having a name for yourselves and a clear pattern of behavior leaves you vulnerable to hijacking, and that is exactly what happened to GamerGate. It divided and a big faction tried (and failed) to dress itself up as something more, castrating its own power.
You may hear the phrase “agree and amplify.” That is a strategy for triggering SJWs. You keep pretending to be a “normie” on Facebook or whatever. Everyone thinks you’re a prog. Then, when they start losing their shit in a public freakout, you nurture and feed it and make sure their freakout isn’t some small thing but an epic blubbering mess.
The reason most of us never hear about any of this is the batshit insanity it sounds like, and because most of you “cucks.” Cucks include enemies of the movement (the left), but it also includes establishment Republican normies, neocons, etc. They know there’s a sizable group of libertarians who would never partake of this gruesome knife work. They see that group as weak for being too busy trying to convince leftists to stop freaking out and fight Trump. The other site is truly cuckolded. I suspect a couple of us here of knowing at least part of this story, maybe even all of it.
The guy you’re discussing – he’s a prototypical warrior for Kek. Instantly recognizable by anyone in the know on all this, but he looks just like what he was meant to in the eyes of the normies and the cucks. If you were wondering why you don’t know anyone who seems racist and all the measures say that the KKK and other such groups have laughably insignificant numbers anytime someone bothers to try to get a headcount, but the amount of unbridled bigotry on the Internet seems to be off the charts and it’s always showing up in the places SJWs frequent, now you know. You can all relax your sphincters a bit and have a laugh if you’re so inclined.
My thoughts crystallized a bit more. When I say “the alt-right doesn’t exist”, what I mean by that is: look at it as a bag of tactics, not as a group of people. That is because many of the people are probably not who you think they are.
Our side’s memes are a thousand times better than the progs
Weaponized autism is the best autism.
Zero, thank you for putting a finer point to a discussion we had a few days ago. I do believe that to a large degree the amount of influence the GamerGate trolls has is somewhat overstated. They caught the right wave at the right time. Having said that, they’re methods are clearly effective. I’m a tad disappointed it took me so long to see what was happening, but I must admit it was my age (and I’m not old). So much about mass media and communication has changed in the last decade I might as well be from another century to these kids.
That’s pretty much the point. GamerGate people rallied around a specific cause, they had a name, but there are gamers among the left and right, and the proggies essentially took over a big faction of the movement. That’s why it’s impotent now, but the basic idea that destroying the left by getting it to destroy itself came from an ember of something they saw in GG.
They like to use a variant of O’Sullivan’s First Law to describe the effect:
So the tactics of the “alt-right” are exclusively shit that the left won’t touch. It’s really just a rebranding of leftist culture war memetics (i.e. “weaponized autism”).
The guy has a point – are the media trying to goad Trump into some kind of act of war just to show he’s not pro-Russian?
“President Trump, Putin has his military near our borders, why are you just sitting there doing nothing?”
“President Trump, why don’t you go after Putin, you’re not chicken, are you? Bawk bawk bawk!”
“President Trump, recent studies show that peacenik Presidents who keep appeasing tyrants have small penises…any response?”
I hope they burn in the fire they started.
I hope it doesn’t burn me too.
He’s saying the whole Russia thing is a Rus. A Rus.
Ukrainians: *crosses fingers* Kievan Rus?
And no one can talk to a Rus of course.
That is of course unless the Rus is the famous Mr. Vlad!
Am I the only one that still prefers to read the news?
No – Watching just takes way too long and you can’t just skim. You have to sit through the whole thing and then find out it was a waste of time.
Exactly. I’d read everything in the world if’n I could get my hands on everything in the world. And spoke more than one language. I didn’t even know they had news on Youtube. It’s my MTV.
Absolutely. That’s why I hate podcasts – I don’t want to listen to your fucking banter, I just want the info. A full transcript beats spending 20 minutes listening to people babbling.
ITA
+1
Although, I do download a bunch of podcasts from various international broadcasters that I listen to while I’m doing other things on the computer.
I can’t believe we’re calling YouTube “media” now.
But yeah, I get all my news by reading it.
It’s not a medium?
I meant “news media”, or, “where people find out stuff”.
YouTube is a great resource for those who follow new/alternative media but I could certainly see them cracking down in a manner similar to Twitter and Facebook who have meddled to the point that it’s hurting their business. Unfortunately the monetary bottom line can and will take a backseat to the ideological bottom line if the wrong person ends up in charge and some kind of diversification of platforms is needed.
I can see them totally cracking down on Alex Jones and Stefan Molyneux.
I think Youtube will have problems cracking down too hard. Many estimates say it receives 500 hours of new items every minute of the day. That much incoming traffic is hard to police even if they concentrate on English language videos.
That might be what their “YouTube Heroes” program is meant for. Sure, Google itself won’t have the manpower to find and censor all wrongthink videos, but when they get hundreds of extra helpers from around the world to mass flag videos, that’ll help them significantly.
But who gives a crap about some Animu Nazi with 200 subs and 140 views per video? You just fuck with anyone who breaks out big, and you can do that by hand when the algorithm warns you that, hey, this shit is going up and has lots of people who liked banned stuff liking it.
I don’t watch any cable news, but I still read some of the traditional media (WSJ, e.g). Most of my consumption is alternative. That said, Trump surprised the hell out of me. I was blown away that Minnesota only went to Hildog by a couple points.
In hindsight, there were plenty of signs, but I fell prey to conventional wisdom.
I love that pic, Banjos. My (not so) little girl is a percussionist. She takes great pride at being better than the boys.
She might like Evelyn Glennie, then.
She will love that! Thanks very much, BP!
She should rock as hard as Sara Lund from Unwound : https://youtu.be/ESgkgvDJot0
Fun fact: I was at that show. I had a crush on Sara 🙂
Heavy Meytal.
She’s a damn good percussionist.
TW: She’s a legit cutie. CRUSH ALERT!
You aren’t kidding.
Thanks, guys!
My brother is in love with Meytal Cohen.
Wow. Of course you did. She is awesome!
Btw, Tundra, check out Unwound if you haven’t heard them. Pretty fuckin good.
I will. I’m glad you made your way over here.
That’s Reason when she was only two. My girls are wonderful and never cease to amaze me.
Mine’s 15. She is wonderful and terrifying at the same time!
“…traditional media is now waging war against the monster that they unknowingly helped create.”
They seem intent on a war of attrition. They are burning their own house to the ground hoping Trump will be trapped in the fire. Just like his win was obvious to some and highly suspected by me, I am pretty confident they are going to lose this war. It will be a loss they richly deserve. Hell, just look at Trump’s shit eating grin. He knows he is going to win and how many times has he been wrong? His credibility grows and theirs shrinks daily.
It is time for the American version of the USSR’s Pravda to wither and die and the so called ruling class with them.
Trump was never my guy. Paul was. Looking back I think I made a mistake. I dont think anyone would have taken a wrecking bar to the establishment the way Trump is and it is way overdue.
^this
As long as he is burning the rotten house down, I’ll support it.
Rand was my horse too. At the time I was surprised to find the very principled Stefan Molyneux backing Trump. His rationale was that we’ve tried everything but a genuine outsider that can’t be bought. He was right. As much as I love Rand he became a coward during the Maddow/civil rights incident years back. He should have had the balls to stand up and say that the civil right act went to too far in regulating private businesses. But he backpeddled like a pussy. I just wish libertarians had the same balls Trump has. But they care more about avoiding being called racist than standing up for what is right.
Ann coulter was right when she called libertarians pussies. Libertarians have no fear in fighting social conservatives or publicly arguing our more liberal ideas, but turn into pussies when confronting traditional media on sacred cows like the civil rights act.
I think Rand is a bit too steeped in the traditional view that pols have about what it takes to destroy them via the press. That’s why he wimped out. Rand is a smart guy. I am hoping he is watching Trump and learning. Speak the truth unapologetically even if you come off as crass. People recognize the ring of truth when they hear it. That is what Cruz and the others never got. Calling out the press as liars to their face (something everyone already knew and wanted to have happen) is not the same as a middle school playground insult (small hands? Really?). They watched in amazement thinking “Look! Trump can say anything and get away with it!”, when in fact he wasn’t saying just anything. He was articulating poorly what Joe Everyman was thinking – the press and the pols are liars who shamelessly manipulate us. They would go out and try saying just anything for the sake of being shocking and came off as monkeys who see and then do poorly.
This is why they are dying and why they cant figure out the cause. They cant emulate Trump because they have lived in a parallel bizarro world so long they have no understanding of what he is doing. Everytime they bash Trump they are bashing Joe Everyman. Even if they dont understand that Joe sure as hell does.
Good riddance to them.
My guy was Paul and I’d still prefer him but he would have been eaten alive if he’d managed to get the nomination. Trump’s good enough as far as I’m concerned and he certainly seems to have the right enemies.
Paul will still get there…2024 it’s happening! I would say 2020 but the way the media is making Trump look he will probably win in a landslide.
They won’t win. They have no mission statement of any kind or intellectual upper hand to bring to the people. They prefer to burn the bitch down rather than debate as you point out. It truly is troubling and sickening. I’ve come to loathe the Democrat party of the United States and the Liberal party of Canada.
Their antics remind me of Elton John’s ‘Burn down the Mission’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdEQkRq_xrw
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn_Down_the_Mission
Really? That seems strange to me. Wasn’t it young college age women crying and shocked? Isn’t that the demographic that does social media the most?
The UK bookies had Hillary as a 3-to-1 favorite. I wish I’d had access (and money), because while I was nowhere near certain, I knew those odds were crazy.
4-1 at one point when I looked!
Sadly I thought those were right odds and didn’t take a flutter.
i had her in a solid win for about a year and a half. I also said at the time that I am spectacularly wrong on such matters and that some weird one would win. This is document several times at TSTSNBN. So….I am a Murpy’s law kinda guy. Unfortunately it isn’t recursive.
I was sure it was going to be Hillary too. In fact, the only reason Trump won is because i put $100 on Hillary winning. Y’all can thank me at any time.
did you get paid early?
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/09/after-paying-out-early-on-a-clinton-win-trump-victory-costs-irish-bookmaker-5-million.html
Going from my experience on the edge of that group, they are heavy social media users, yes, but they’re also very isolated in their own curated social media garden in which any little weed of wrongthink gets pruned, so they hear only what the DNC machine tells them. And their main source of ‘news’ tends to be Colbert and his ilk, at best.
Feelz. It was “their turn” for the presidency and nobody they knew at their university was voting for him. I would be interested in seeing how the vote broke down on campuses versus what self reporting of the vote on the same campuses. Think back to August 1974. How easy was it to find Nixon 72 voters even though he won in a landslide?
Who knows where the media business is going, but we know *whence* its going…away from the MSM/lamestream media/establishment media/whatever you call it.
The sense of guild privilege and entitlement is enormous – and I’m not really comparing them to the medieval guilds because the latter were local and actually trained their members in useful skills. But as I noted in an earlier thread, the MSM actually got some legal privileges based on the idea that they’re “the press” mentioned in the 1st Amendment. Special treatment under the late unlamented Fairness Doctrine – assuming the networks were fair while subjecting small stations and broadcast networks to harassment for “unfairness.” Special treatment under the “campaign finance” laws so that a giant media corporation which spends its corporate funds to promote a candidate isn’t subject to restrictions like icky non-media groups.
All that is being outpaced as the courts get wise to the 1st Amendment. The MSM/= “the press” and technology overtakes the legal fixes which try to keep the MSM in a privileged position.
Oh, and I almost forgot my traditional link to the New York Times Company Certificate of Incorporation
“The Traditional Media Is Waging War”
And losing badly.
You know who else lost badly?
Well, I can’t say “the Chicago Cubs” any more…
The Decepticons?
No one in a strip poker game?
The Panthers?
They don’t understand their enemy whatsoever. The cannot succeed on their own. The only hope they have it to get the social media giants to go along with their agenda.
You can add the blatant attack on Milo to this. Sargon hits the nail on the head and it’s something I’ve been saying for a while. Traditional media feels threatened by the new competition both economically and ideologically. They were building up to their fake news attack for months if not the last year or two, but that blew up in their face so they returned to what they do best – hysterical, manipulative, and unethical character assassination.
Sargon is great at breaking progressive ideology down in a rational, entertaining way. I don’t agree with all he’s said but most of the time he is spot on.
Yup, completely agree. Love Sargon’s videos.
It worked for them for so long that they don’t know anything else to do.
The entire industry is mired in the mid 20th century. Their business model no longer works, the people are figuring out they can get news without the spin elsewhere, and they have lost the public trust. But, they are locked in, and just dont know what else to do.
Being what they have been pretending to be would be a decent start. They should try telling the truth, see how it goes over.
Eh. Meh. Bleh. The 4th estate of the past is dead. The institutional media is manned by products of journalism schools, products who think that they are speaking truth.
They all wish to be heroes, they all wish to reveal the next Watergate.
They are like the protesters: in search of dragons to slay in an era when the dragons are on the endangered species list.
“…in search of dragons to slay…”
I believe someone earlier referred to them as ‘civil rights re-enactors…”
Gold.
??
The entire industry is mired in the mid 20th century.
Can’t wait for the fucking Boomers to be pensioned off.
Somewhere Nick Gillespie shakes his fist, “I was saving that one for a special occasion!!”
Given his pop culture habits, he wouldn’t use it until 2028 anyway.
Touche
i was trying to figure out how to sneak in that same idea, but i am lazy
Ludakris is a dope new band. For rizle.
Have now made the switch over to this fine site… even though I haven’t really commented much at H&R since I’ve been working during the AM/PM links.
Reason has fallen so far since I started reading it circa 2012ish. It is sad to see as I really loved that place and its spirit of “Free Minds and Free Markets”. In any case, I am really enjoying the content and comments over here. So, to whichever one of you set this site up, great work! I wish prosperity to you and your orphan underlings!
Hey! Don’t get the orphans thinking they are real people!
Nothing gives their tears such sweet flavour as crushed hopes!
Hey Joe, good to see you here.
Old Man With Candy’s wife (SP) set it up and did a hell uv’ a job. I am not sure who all is at the helm but OMWC, Sloopy, Trshmnstr, Swiss….
It looks like just about everyone is gravitating here. It appears that liberty is a light in the dark. What does that make us? Bugs?
I mentioned often in HyR’s comments what an amazing woman I’m married to. Now everyone can see exactly what I mean.
And she even wades in here from time to time.
Uhh dude…it is a fiduciary and gastrointestinal obligation to mention SugarFree has editorial control. You can’t just omit that.
Can you hook this place up with some ATOM-POWER?
Such dreamy eyes.
*swoons*
I’m giving the sargon thing a listen.
I think he makes a decent argument that the recent media-blitz on the subject of “PewdiePie” & “Milo” is basically part of a broader agenda by the MSM to try and destroy anyone who happens to be popular in “alternative media”
He’s a bit long winded (i’ve always found him that way); i think this piece here might have benefited from a brief text summary of his case. Just a thought! (dont kill me moderator-god please)
I don’t know how much of this is actually all this new; there is and has always been a very intense degree of competition by news media against one another. And the ‘new media’ like Sargon himself (and others) does spend most of its time showing what a shit-show the MSM is. It is understandable that they would eventually strike back when opportunity presented itself.
I think a good point made by Sargon was that both the video where PDP made his (so-called) antisemitic jokes, and the interview where Milo confessed to having sex with an older dude when he was 14…. had literally millions of views between them, and were both over a year old.
If there were anything genuinely “outrageous” or “controversial” said by either in their content, you’d think the general public might have decided this for itself long before the MSM decided it was essential to destroy these people in the Public Interest.
Its for that reason that i think that this sort of thing will ultimately serve the legacy media poorly. The short term gains made by hit-pieces against these personalities really has no longer term benefits. I think the news media will continue to decline and continue to become more like Tabloids. And younger people will never see them as any more credible than they do already. I think its a natural evolution that has probably happened many times before when media gets shaken up; its just happening faster and more dramatically now.
I think because of that speed of change, that the flailing of legacy media is going to get more dramatic in the immediate term. And i think the new pattern is going to increasingly look like the way the “Russian Hacking” story looked in Dec/January.
Basically, “invented narratives” are going to become far more prevalent. Jackie was just the start. And if anything it was just a lesson to the media on ‘what not to do in the future’; not that the lie was the problem; the problem is that the lies were *so easily debunked*.
‘Better lies’ in the future will be less about distorting the facts of the matter, and more about “spreading misconceptions/misinterpretations of those facts”. The Russian-Hacking thing remains the perfect example, because even though there wasn’t a single story that claimed ‘russia had changed vote counts’? A plurality of people had come to actually believe that. What’s imputed actually becomes more important than what’s reported.
He’s a bit long winded (i’ve always found him that way); i think this piece here might have benefited from a brief text summary of his case. Just a thought! (dont kill me moderator-god please)
*Writes long winded Gilmore-esque wall of text*
Moderator God is pleased.
Sargon’s video is 35mins dude. reading my ‘wall of text’ i think takes about 30 seconds.
if you want to cut to the part of Sargon’s vis where he substantiates his case, <— helpful link (16:10s, 19:30 or so)
If you want an idea of what i think the above post could have used? something along the lines of =
Sigh
2*(&@#$*( link
I’m just busting your balls. I think Sargon’s long-winded too, but I think part of it is his oratory, which can be really slow.
I take it you aren’t a fan of his 7 hour livestreams, then.
God, no. I even tried once. I don’t understand who the hell participates in that shit. I can’t type and listen to other people talk the same way i can w/ music. If people talk, i end up typing what they say.
This is why God made “2x speed” in the Youtube settings.
Gilmore – can I get a brief text summary of this comment?
SAN DIMAS HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL RULES!!
Excellent.
Clicks “report spam” REPEATEDLY
HEY FUCK OFF!!! That got me banned at TSTSNBN for like 6 months.
that was sad
Yeah, thanks for killing any desire I had to make a smartass response. This is accurate and I don’t see much hope once it gets rolling properly. Any wide-distribution alternative channel isn’t an “alternative” if it’s widely used, so a bit of corporate censorship and we’re there. We can piss in the wind here, but something about dogs and caravans comes to mind.
If you look at the “Milo” thing that was circulated today…. most people are reporting some version of what Nick said in his own piece =
“[Milo] defends pedophilia”
… the evidence being a video where Milo spends a substantial amount of time bragging about how he utterly destroyed other people’s attempts to defend pedophilia
The best thing you could say about Nick’s spin is that “well maybe he didn’t watch the video”; the more realistic conclusion is, “he knows that merely repeating what others say provides him cover from criticism”.
That’s basically how they do it; as long as everyone spins the story in *the same way*, the misconception becomes fact; in their later reporting they might modify or downplay the original claims, never actually admitting that anything’s changed… and voila – job done.
I am pretty sure this was how they handled aspects of Benghazi in 2012, fwiw. Even as late as early 2013 they were still saying, “it was unclear whether or not a Youtube video was involved” (after CIA had offically said, “no, it had no role”), and they were still describing this covert outpost as a “Consulate”, to make it sound like it was just a “protest” rather than an attack.
If stuff like that works on ‘big stories’ where millions of people are (supposedly) paying close attention, how fucking easy is it to do with piddling character-assassination?
That said – i don’t think even if all the news media ‘get worse’ before they ‘get irrelevant’… that it will necessarily be a bad thing, or much worse than it is. All its doing is grooming a generation of total media skeptics.
The bad thing is that i think it leaves more room for a small “10%” (up from 3%) of Truther Types, who cross the line from skepticism to pure conspiratorial batshit Infowars gibberish. Meaning, i think there will be more of that “WAKE UP, SHEEPLE” stuff everywhere. And you will find that people you thought were otherwise reasonably smart start letting little bits of it into their worldview. (*i’ve already seen it with some of my peers; coincidentally, most were bernie voters)
Like the idea that intelligence agencies would record the private conversation of a civilian and then leak said conversation to the media after said civilian became National Security Advisor in order to force him out? That kind of conspiracy?
How about the conspiracy theory that a foundation run by a former POTUS and current Presidential candidate would accept multimillion dollar donations from foreign governments?
I don’t put anything past these people at this point. WikiLeaks and the like have only deepened my distrust. If that makes me a conspiracy nut, then pass the Kool Aid.
Well, we know SOMEONE won’t be getting their bowl of gruel from the Righteous Kleptocracy™.
You have a point. And i was actually thinking this as i typed the above
(or more that, “the real existence of low-level shitty behavior by govt will serve to validate some of the dumber ‘high-level’ conspiratorial thinking)
I do still think there’s a line between ‘obvious corruption in govt’, and institutions becoming compromised by political influence (think Lois Lerner, Loretta Lynch, etc)…. and the “Gay Frogs”/New World Order/(((zionist media white-genocide-agenda))) sort of stuff.
I don’t know anything about gay frogs, but the New World Order is not some kind of fever swamp conspiracy theory. When a sitting US President is using the phrase, it’s not exactly a The post Cold War era has been all about transnationalism. The UN running World Police For Justice type missions. The transfer of power to Brussels. This has been openly pushed by the powers that be, they call it the global village and talk about how collective problems require collective solutions. It’s why they’re so big on climate change, it’s the perfect stalking horse for their ultimate goal of one world government. Like, why is it such a nutty conspiracy theory to believe that people who are ideologically fixated one the magic power of central government to fix everything actually do want to see a global government at some point. It’s completely consistent with their worldview, and it fits the facts in evidence.
White genocide is overstating the case, but it’s a fact that the left in both the US and Europe has the explicit goal of increasing immigration from the Third World in order to make the West more diverse, and less white. Personally, I think that they wish to do this because it will give them more votes, and there have been leaked documents that spell out that this is in fact the exact strategy. The plan was to simply change the electorate into one that would give them a permanent majority.
I’d say your problem is confusing facts which have lots of banal reasons for being true…
…as facts that have only these specific (conspiratorial) reasons for being true.
I’m not sure the media is any less reliable than it’s ever been. It’s just that we have ways to fact check them now like we didn’t before.
Before everybody had Google in their pocket, the guy who won the argument in the bar, the lunchroom, the dorm room, or the dinner table was the guy with the best reputation and who spoke his facts with the most confidence. If he was full of crap, no one had the time or resources to check. Being a knowledgeable listener was more important back then, but nowadays everyone can fact check each other in real time.
Back before Google, which has only existed for 20 years, the news media was always the guy with the best reputation who spoke his facts with the most confidence. There were three networks, one cable news channel, and unless you were in a huge city like New York or Chicago, there was only one newspaper. If any of those news reports got it wrong, how would anyone ever know?
Anybody else remember the monkey fishing story from 2001? The interesting question to me wasn’t about how a reporter could get away with making stuff up like that for so long. The interesting question at the time was how someone could get caught. That was new!
When I see the coverage of Trump today, it reminds me of what I read and saw on TV back when I first started paying attention to the news as a kid–back when Reagan took office. The press hated Reagan.
Nowadays, apart from people having the tools to fact check the press, I’m not sure the press is much different now than it ever was. It’s just that over the last sixteen years, we had eight years of a president they adored, and for eight years before that, we had a press that was too afraid to criticize Bush in the aftermath of 9/11, etc.
It seems to me that the press is simply reverting to form with Trump. They were probably always this bad! It’s just that average people couldn’t tell because they didn’t have the tools. I bet Sam Donaldson and Dan Rather were just as full of shit as anybody is today, but back then, how would anyone have known?
If you’ve listened to anything Dan Rather has been saying of late, he’s left no doubt how full of shit he has always been.
I’ve always had a Google in my pocket
+1 Cliff Claven
He even wades into the controversial issue of circumcision.
Before everybody had Google in their pocket, the guy who won the argument in the bar, the lunchroom, the dorm room, or the dinner table was the guy with the best reputation and who spoke his facts with the most confidence. If he was full of crap, no one had the time or resources to check.
This, of course, was the origin of the Guinness Book of World Records.
very On Topic with this story =
Trump Tweets =
(*WaPo stands out for its absense. hmm)
NYT runs a “Letters to the Editor”-story about it.
The first one made me laugh out loud =
Subtle.
$120 (American!) per yr for home delivery of birdcage liner seems a bit high, especially since I have no birds, nor birdcages.
Unless “birds” is British slang.
Nice to see a two week old concern has “archives”.
I keed, I keed! Good job, great work!
Serously: you guys (and ringmaster girl making it all happen) are doing great!
I’m really enjoying this site. Again: wonderful!
Cue Harry Shearer and his LA Dog Trainer cracks.
One of my coworkers is convinced Trump is an idiot and a dupe, surrounded by traitors beholden to Russia who control him, and anyone who believes otherwise is due to getting their news from Fox and Breibart.
Most Libertarian Canadian song?
Interesting video. I’ll have to download some podcasts and listent to them on the way to work. My grandmother who gobbled up the MSM for decades finally realized how full of shit they are in the past couple of years. She went from a lifelong Dem to a Republican with heavy libertarian sympathies quite quickly.
Aww, poor lamb.
🙁
The emoji is hyperlinked.
The chimney sweep has a baguette.
John has a long mustache
Ahhhh, the actual resistance actually putting their lives on the line fighting actual National Socialists.
The fat man walks alone.
I now understand why ISIS. At some point, only sane response to the insane world is to start cutting throats (can’t be arsed to look up Mencken quote).
Or you could move to a place where no one knows you and quietly enjoy your life without bothering anyone. That seems to be working well for me.
Just sayin’.
Have no doubt: the virus will find you. There is no refuge. It will turn your friends. It will enlist your enemies. It will infect your family.
It will take you. In the final moment, at the very end of your life, you will praise it. That’s how it rolls.
Okay, that’s dark.
“It will find you”
And then wish it had not.
Oh…now I have to build two of these:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfCBL57TsTo
Hint: Second grandchild on the way. I cant wait.
I figure it will take a week to frame them up, a week for the hulls, a week to finish out the details on the frame. Installing the throttle, wheel, tank, seats two days. I haven’t done fiberglassing before so…we will see. Probably a year to get both finished.
Paint these colors; http://www.alexseal.com/resources/color-selection/metallic
(3,2) peppermint blue and (4,3) venetian red
Plus a smaller motor than the one in the video is outfitted with.
I have about 6 years to get it done.
OOOOOOO.
You can get a black flag cut to order at any Jo-Ann or So-Fro fabrics. There’s no real barrier to entry.
Hoist that mofo and start slitting throats.
Things hadn’t been going so hot for Eaglevale for some time, with the firm suffering big losses after betting, thoroughly incorrectly, on the Greek economy to improve.
Wow, did they disclose they were being run by idiots who refused to pay attention to the happenings of the real world?
I’m sure the plan was that his MIL the POTUS would make sure his fund was first in line for bailout money, because of his noble choice to believe in Greece.
While this is how the Vanity Fair piece described it….
…when i looked at Eaglevale about 9 months ago, the impression i got was the following =
The fund was just an off-books location for a few institutional investors to dump their existing Greek Sovereign debt holdings, and then trade options against the future volatility of those bonds, effectively doing arbitrage on potential outcomes of an EU-bailout.
What they gave a shit about were actually “the size of the haircut” that the paper was going to take; not any future rebound in bond values
Eaglevale did actually have a prospectus that offered people the opportunity to go long on a greek-debt based speculative fund.
But i’d guess the clients who took them up on that offer were the same people who had unloaded the paper on them in the first place. IOW, to own both sides of the trade; aka ‘to hedge’, albeit keep the short-options on their books, and the long side as an outside investment. They had “fewer than 10” clients (and only 4 reported owning their fund- which is probably the real #) You don’t stay in business w/ ‘4 clients’ unless you are functioning as a prosthetic of one or 2 of those clients.
Even shorter = the fund was most likely intended/expected to lose money (on its net assets – naturally its employees were still handsomely paid, which is how that shit works). I’m quite sure he did his duty like a good financial soldier, and will be granted some role in future boondoggles of similar design.
Which is more plausible =
a) that people in 2013-2016 were actually aggressively going long greek debt in large sums? (they had $300-400m+ split between 4 clients)?
Or
b) that a few banks built a temporary vehicle to ‘reduce our expected losses’ and also employ and handsomely compensate the son in law of the next president?
I should have known given the amount of obfuscation, equivocation and outright falsehoods peddled in that article. I only made it about 1/3 of the way through before skimming and then giving up. There was nothing to learn in there.
Interesting.
Never trust Greeks bearing bonds.
Just an occasional commentor, making his way in the commenting world (seriously, just checking it out over here, like what I see.)
Thanks for setting this up, guys and gals. May you receive more rewards from me than did “Amukadari,” creator of the extension “Reasonable” (I know I’m butchering the spelling).
Is there a non-paywalled version of the WSJ article on Pewdiepie? I mean, I can’t imagine who would have a problem with him. He’s seemed harmless from viewing (an admittedly limited) selection of his game videos.
Thanks again.
PS: Why wasn’t migration over to grylliade an option?
And not once in the article did you mention (or poll) millennials.
Very well done, Banjos.
To be sure, that is a massive oversight.