I'm hoping someone can succinctly explain the hate for the NYT. Didn't get it before, don't get it now. It seems perfectly adequate. Same goes for WSJ, FT, the Economist, WaPo, etc.
>I see it now. I see that information and truth and freedom have been oppressed. I had been silenced. We had all been bound and gagged and silenced, not directly, but indirectly, by a strange, complex, invisible, sinister force. But I see it now. I see it so clearly. There was a "guild of truth" telling us that there was a central narrative of mankind. Truth was branded. We are all being controlled and oppressed and enslaved by the evil octopus of the New York Times.
This I especially don't get. No one has declared themselves the "guild of truth", and there's no paper or institution I can think of that the people have declared to be the "guild of truth". And if someone has, saying so doesn't make it true. But people not liking you, or your writing, isn't a crime.
Because everything they publish is propaganda, you can feel their agenda behind every article and every paragraph.
There is no diversity in their ranks, just conformity and uniformity.
There is no debate of ideas, storms of conflicting concepts, just reaffirmation of the same things they all believe in, the single universal truth they subscribe to with no doubt or consideration to the possibility they may be mistaken.
They do not dispassionately present facts letting the reader make up his mind. They already know what they want the reader to think and they just feed him selected facts to influence him into thinking that way.
They do not write for the world, for the opposition in its diversity. They just write for their own eco chamber, reinforcing preexisting ideas and inflaming the spirits agains the "non-believers".
Unhinged sounds about right, the blog post started out normal but it became increasingly disconnected and unsubstantiated. It read like something someone on adderall would churn out
Frankly, if the Vice article is true (and it seems plausible given the rambling style of this one) he sounds pretty unhinged. Is this the effect of feeding only on Soylent?
It's possible, is there lead content in soylent? Like lots of lead?
The guy sounds dis-associated from reality. A lot of the "everything is fake news" crowd is disjointed...I'm not sure of Soylent is the cause or not, or if they have investors/advisors if so, I'd be having a conversation about moving him out of the company and maybe into a psych ward for observation.
To me, this shows radical leadership, and that he is very unattached to societal norms. Radical leadership meaning that this is kind of the antithesis of a follower mentality. I think it's a kind of genius, but also a personal failing. I really appreciate people who are willing to "question everything", because there are a lot of things we take for granted without thinking about why.
The failures I think this comes from are a form of ignorance and arrogance, and possibly a lack of empathy about how they're perceived. I personally know someone like this that is very intelligent, and thinks that they have all the right answers. There seems to be a mentality of, I have this information facts, given these facts, and that as a goal, *this* is the solution.
With the person I know, a significant problem with their reasoning is that they have important gaps in their knowledge (ignorance). They believe other people just aren't as enlightened as they are (arrogance), and if they were, they would have come to the same conclusion.
For my acquaintance, I believe that the mentality comes from a history of often being right, but also a prolonged social isolation that allowed them to build a myth in their head that they are always right.
The main failing he has, which is clearly on display in the article, is that he utterly ignores all externalities. It is almost as if things don't happen or don't matter if he isn't personally observing them, perhaps it is a type of solipsism or extreme egocentrism.
In his mind, he's not wasting water because he never does laundry, while he totally ignores the environmental impact of having his clothes producing in China and shipped to him.
He refuses to cook and is genuinely offended when the apartment he is looking at has a kitchen, because why would they assume he would want to cook? He finds cooking horrible, bordering on torture, so surely that must be the Correct and Rational way to be.
He seems to think he can just figure out everything from first principles by doing a few web searches and reading through a bit of literature and extrapolating from there.
Every article from (and by) him is an absolutely fascinating and genuinely horrifying look into a mind that is just fundamentally out of whack, but has never faced enough adversity in life to properly recognize that.
My favorite portmanteau for this was "errorgance": "errorgant means to be twice as certain as someone who is merely arrogant while possessing only one-tenth the requisite facts."
Don’t you feel like a robot at this point by just calling someone a racist without any explanation...especially in response to an article that is writing against mindless cancel culture.
> It's hard to come up with a dog whistle that antisemitic
Try with any representation of the Mafia in Italy (also called "the octopus").
Let's stop with this frankly stupid cousin of the "reductio ad hitlerum", where anything that might also be characteristic of anti-Semitism becomes anti-Semitism and allows you to denounce someone as an antisemite.
Because quite frankly they are not in the business of reporting things but in the business of changing the world in a way they see fit and somehow try to paint it as some sort of scientific way of seeing life while it's far away from it.
> No one has declared themselves the "guild of truth"
Get back to me on this in a couple of years, when "fighting misinformation" reaches its peak. All social media already have "guild of truth", and you can be very effectively silenced if you run afoul of this guild. The formal institutionalization of this de-facto arrangement is still in the works, but there's no doubt there is a wide demand for it and wide agreement - at least among politicians, academia, news media, entertainers and big tech companies - that having a "guild of truth", tightly controlling masses' information intake, is a good and vital project.
> It seems perfectly adequate
Adequate for what? It is a partisan propaganda organ including some infotainment content along the way. For people that see the task of the press to be something else, it is abhorrent. For people seeing nothing wrong with a correct-minded propaganda, especially coupled with a bit of fun infotainment, it's perfectly fine.
This article/rant is wrong about what the issues are. I assume the upvotes are the Soylent connection, the headline and an attempt at a solution (ghost.org)
Another comment below answers your question perfectly IMO:
> He feels he has no voice, no power politically and seems to want to lash out at an entity that appears to have both.
I don't understand it, but it's not an uncommon story, especially recently.
Wow. The written equivalent of a YouTube conspiracy video. The factual claims aren't facts, e.g., the NYT had nothing to do with the demise of local papers, if you could point to a single cause it would be the loss of classified advertising. And the accusations are outrageous. Far from "all", nobody at all is "being controlled...and enslaved by the evil octopus of the New York Times."
The link below may overgeneralize, but it dissects the piece in some detail.
>There is a ton of money in newspapers. Have you ever heard of Hearst castle? There is a literal castle in California built by a man that owned newspapers.
I'm not sure that makes sense.... now.
Also the NYT destroyed local newspapers? I'm not sure that is accurate.
>They are the ones that choose the president.
What?
>Write what you want to write. Write what you really think. The truth will come out. And it will come out better if you stop fearing and feeding the octopus.
Is that just an argument to just believe whatever you want and to write a blog about it?
No comment on the rant other than to say that when I read this I thought to myself that given the author is referring to WRH then that’s definitely got to be Xanadu. And Wikipedia has just confirmed that it is!
My point being that should anyone ever want to see this argument made much more cogently (while also getting to appreciate one of the greatest films ever made) maybe give Citizen Kane a watch.
> Do you think this is a bad article? A bad blog post? That it is poorly written or not true or too crazy or paranoid or insane or profane? That is too long or too rambling
This about sums it up, yes.
NYT may have gone downhill, or it may not have ever deserved its status as “the paper of record.” But it’s definitely not an oppressive octopus strangling America’s speech. The NYT isn’t the reason you’re afraid to write a controversial blog post; that’s absurd.
He’s being totally disingenuous by telling journalists to write what they want and damn the consequences, and if they ask him nicely HE will fund them—but only if they “really make [him] believe in” their writing. That’s really no different from saying “go freelance,” and I’d be very surprised if he ever backs this up with action.
As a Non-American, I don't understand the hatred that is found in the article.
I understand the author making the point/assumption that the New York Times, due to its large influence in the United States, has a pervasive sway in public opinion that goes further than just New York City.
However I don't understand why that would be a bad thing, if it's not a monopoly?
To take a more extreme example, there are bureaus in countries like North Korea (country wide news monopoly) or China (less brutal but monopoly nevertheless by the State) dedicated to controlling the narrative that goes on within the country. Anything that goes out of line is suppressed.
Is the author comparing NYT to that kind of control over the narrative?
If that is not the case, then personally I see how a combination of "free market economy" and "freedom of speech" would mean the ones with resources (power and money) will undubitably have a larger sway in public opinion. That's inherent in the system.
If the New York Times were taken as seriously as The National Enquirer (which never the less occasionally does journalism), few would care. However, the NYT are taken seriously, take themselves seriously and they have heft and sway it to set the tone of public opinion. Why else would so many do things for shitty pay so one day they climb the ladder and have their own bylines? If the NYT says something they get quoted seriously rather than sarcastically, etc.
My guess is exactly because of statements like yours. He makes a good point, and when you can see past the conspiracy theory tone, I think this article is kind of awesome.
Your kind of response making people feel like this article is bad is almost the entire point why he writes in a crazy way.
Does he actually think the NYT is some singular conspirator, plotting the worlds doom? I highly doubt it. Is the NYT a good embodiment of the spirit that he is talking about? I’d say so.
This was my favorite part from his article - “ Invite friends to write on your blog. Start 20 blogs all with fake names of fake people. There are no rules! Start a blog for your cat and your rat and your flower garden. How does your rose feel about all this? Change your style with every post. Contradict yourself. Lie to me. Commit plagiarism. Be really egregious about it. Misquote authors and butcher philosophy. There are no rules! Ok now write some good stuff. Like some really deep look out the window and ponder the truth of the ages stuff. Get drunk and write. Get high and write. Write a message in the snow with your piss. I hope it offends somebody. Does this post offend you? Good! Now offend me! Let’s offend each other. Doesn’t it feel good to feel something?”
Edgy Holden Caulfield vibes will never be a substitute for clarity of thought and evidence for convictions held. Whatever point he is trying to make is lost in the miasma of paranoia and detachment from logic. The existence of Hearst Castle != newspaper economics are healthy and viable, for example.
I read them in that order, and the OP article at least had context that way. It's in part deliberately bad for rhetorical reasons, since it's a call to arms asking for more people to write, just write, good or bad. It's art-prose in the vein of David Foster Wallace. (Edit: I totally meant Samuel Delany)
That and for someone "who loves to write," he really ought to invest in a copy of Strunk and White. It can't all be short, terse sentences, my man! Definitely furthers the impression he's not completely all there.
>I see it now. I see that information and truth and freedom have been oppressed. I had been silenced. We had all been bound and gagged and silenced, not directly, but indirectly, by a strange, complex, invisible, sinister force. But I see it now. I see it so clearly. There was a "guild of truth" telling us that there was a central narrative of mankind. Truth was branded. We are all being controlled and oppressed and enslaved by the evil octopus of the New York Times.
That is true, but it reaches far beyond the NYT. It is pervasive and it has a name. It's called "Cancel Culture". It is a social disease of unapologetic censorship that affects any and all civil discourse and is a form of social cancer.
> Yes there was tons of content.... But they were all the same. Nobody was really saying anything. They were not allowed to.
I played along with Rhinehart's 'Sound of Silence' (Simon/Garfunkle) routine / experiment / message until suddenly: BLAM We are all being controlled by: the New York Times! OF COURSE. It's so simple. How could we have missed it until now?
All cultures have a dark side, as all we humans do. (See for reference:2020) Nature is beautiful, Nature is cruel. 'Best of times, worst of times.' But looking for a single source of darkness in some individual other is ... well, flippo.
'Find a scapegoat and beat up on it' doesn't lead to truth. After a century of war, we're still working on this. And suffering for it.
Why do people take themselves - so seriously. There was a lot of subtlety in this work and I interpreted it as part fiction. Thanks for sharing it, some of his other work was equally good.
It's just an extension of that other social disease called "culture". Bullying and excluding people for saying uncool things has always happened at a small local scale, and people mostly adapted by keeping their mouths shut.
So I wrote a script to download it each day and drop it in my inbox. It goes back about 10 years.
What I found was that the front page is different, it makes judgements and is opinionated. I wonder - am I reading articles that I have self-select and agree with?
If you're trying to sell the idea that a newspaper - known not only for its content, but as a reference for style and prose - is somehow obsolete, then maybe you should avoid writing like an 11 year-old on meth.
> The internet was no longer a safe place for self expression, which was the whole point of the internet.
He means for himself, certainly not anyone else, apparently.
The entire approach in this article is awful. It just builds up a boogeyman, demonizes it, sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph, a lot of strong words, yet with virtually no substance.
It seems like copypasta written by AI that’s been digesting Facebook.
Not sure why someone would spend effort on dropping a turd like this into the world. I guess his aim is to elevate himself by tearing down something else? Become a source of truth by attacking a source of truth?
It almost got me to cancel my NYT subscription, but at the last moment I remembered I never had one, or wanted one. I wonder why the author assume everyone has it?
tldr, Rob is growing away from the mainstream. He feels he has no voice, no power politically and seems to want to lash out at an entity that appears to have both.
I don't understand it, but it's not an uncommon story, especially recently.
I don’t think you really need to start a brigade against NYT here, they’re already a dying bunch because the American dream of the “middle class city liberal” they were catering towards is rapidly eroding away. Their main source of articles (Trump) has now been depleted, and soon they’ll have to resort to much desperate measures to keep eyeballs in, such as this one. (The writer doesn’t even seem to be passionate about writing this, it seems rather forced.)
Interesting to see the intersection of the right wing anti-media agenda with a new appreciation for cancel culture. If you don’t like something don’t buy it, but starting a campaign against it makes me think your not interested in a free and open discourse. For the same reason I’m not going to condemn a blogger for a couple of poorly considered comments or a podcaster for an exaggerated story about his daughter, I’m not going to endorse campaigning against the NYT because of some cockamamie idea they dictate public discourse.
Cancel your subscription, stop trying to stoke up a mob.
I dream about buying the nytimes and shutting it down. I’ve thought of this so many times. As a nice daydream.
In the same whimsical tone of the article.
I honestly feel like I share the emotion of the author. I could write for hours about it. There are many other news networks and papers but still, I feel something draws me back to the nytimes as the true spawn point for all that is wrong in the world. It’s this “grey lady” notion. The “paper of record”. It’s not like the others that are unabashedly biased and know that they are.
The times is like an emperor blessed with the divine right to rule over truth and culture. The tone of the writing. The tone of their podcasts. Even in attacking it you must pay your respects to it as Trump did. You must leave the room without turning your back on it.
It doesn’t just evoke the need to reform itself. It evokes such a strong sense of...it needs to be killed and die.
Rob has completely lost his already tenuous grasp on reality. The entire concept and execution of Soylent, his mission to "correct" his gut biome in order to be 100% efficient and produce no waste, his ridiculous idea of being "sustainable" by never doing laundry and instead mass ordering clothes produced overseas, are just a few of his "ideas".
Add to this that nutritionally complete meal replacement shakes have been available at every corner store and drug store since the 1970s. His grand "invention" is a bad reimplementation of a wheel that already existed in a better form. Typical SV myopia.
Why anyone listens to a word he says, is a mystery. He's clearly completely off his rocker.
>I see it now. I see that information and truth and freedom have been oppressed. I had been silenced. We had all been bound and gagged and silenced, not directly, but indirectly, by a strange, complex, invisible, sinister force. But I see it now. I see it so clearly. There was a "guild of truth" telling us that there was a central narrative of mankind. Truth was branded. We are all being controlled and oppressed and enslaved by the evil octopus of the New York Times.
This I especially don't get. No one has declared themselves the "guild of truth", and there's no paper or institution I can think of that the people have declared to be the "guild of truth". And if someone has, saying so doesn't make it true. But people not liking you, or your writing, isn't a crime.