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Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

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I still don't understand why there are trampy magazines in the first place? A woman should keep her body to herself and for her loved one, the same goes for men. I'm so glad that I have dignity and respect for myself, I'd rather die than be a disgusting fake ugly whore!
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good old single issue liberal politics, you get to share bedspace with the opinions such as the above
 
TruXta said:
No you didn't. :p
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funny-pictures-why-i-oughta-cat.jpg
 
Balbi said:
Just saying chaps, but the upcoming 13,000 word pamphlet on Online Misogyny is going to be Urbantastic.

:oops:
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13,000 is pretty much war and peace for this generation. I swear it's becoming impossible for people to write long, sustained arguments, I think the internet has killed people's ability to write more than 20,000 words let alone read that something that size.
 
Delroy Booth said:
13,000 is pretty much war and peace for this generation. I swear it's becoming impossible for people to write long, sustained arguments, I think the internet has killed people's ability to write more than 20,000 words let alone read that something that size.
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How many people regularly write 20000+ words, or did so 10, 20, 50 years back?
 
TruXta said:
How many people regularly write 20000+ words, or did so 10, 20, 50 years back?
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I'm trying to make a point that as a result of Twitter, Tumblr, the blog format, long sustained bits of writing that take a long time to read and work an argument through it over a sustained period are increasingly rare. People don't read long things - they piece together an ideological position from 4chan internet memes, browsing on wikipedia, youtubeb clips, tweets and checking out short articles on blogs. That's how a lot of people today get their information. It conditions them to reading only in little bursts, little chunks here and there, which doesn't lend itself to working out long and complicated arguments.

I find it myself, after being on twitter I would find it hard to read for sustained periods of time, unlike when I was younger when I had no problem in sitting down and reading for hours. Now I'm too easily distracted, too easy to just aimlessly browse. And it's something that I've noticed happening to me over the last 2 years and there's others that have mentioned it.
 
Delroy Booth said:
I'm trying to make a point that as a result of Twitter, Tumblr, the blog format, long sustained bits of writing that take a long time to read and work an argument through it over a sustained period are increasingly rare. People don't read long things - they piece together an ideological position from 4chan internet memes, browsing on wikipedia, youtubeb clips, tweets and checking out short articles on blogs. That's how a lot of people. It conditions them to reading only in little bursts, little chunks here and there, which doesn't lend itself to working out long and complicated arguments.

I find it myself, after being on twitter I would find it hard to read for sustained periods of time, unlike when I was younger when I had no problem in sitting down. Now I'm too easily distracted, too easy to just aimlessly browse. And it's something that I've noticed happening to me over the last 2 years and there's others that have mentioned it.
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i've noticed the same thing, thought it was just me getting old. :hmm:

ETA: Noticed my own inability to read at length.
 
Delroy Booth said:
I'm trying to make a point that as a result of Twitter, Tumblr, the blog format, long sustained bits of writing that take a long time to read and work an argument through it over a sustained period are increasingly rare. People don't read long things - they piece together an ideological position from 4chan internet memes, browsing on wikipedia, youtubeb clips, tweets and checking out short articles on blogs. That's how a lot of people. It conditions them to reading only in little bursts, little chunks here and there, which doesn't lend itself to working out long and complicated arguments.

I find it myself, after being on twitter I would find it hard to read for sustained periods of time, unlike when I was younger when I had no problem in sitting down. Now I'm too easily distracted, too easy to just aimlessly browse. And it's something that I've noticed happening to me over the last 2 years and there's others that have mentioned it.
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47984430_compo1.jpg
 
Delroy Booth said:
I'm trying to make a point that as a result of Twitter, Tumblr, the blog format, long sustained bits of writing that take a long time to read and work an argument through it over a sustained period are increasingly rare. People don't read long things - they piece together an ideological position from 4chan internet memes, browsing on wikipedia, youtubeb clips, tweets and checking out short articles on blogs. That's how a lot of people today get their information. It conditions them to reading only in little bursts, little chunks here and there, which doesn't lend itself to working out long and complicated arguments.

I find it myself, after being on twitter I would find it hard to read for sustained periods of time, unlike when I was younger when I had no problem in sitting down and reading for hours. Now I'm too easily distracted, too easy to just aimlessly browse. And it's something that I've noticed happening to me over the last 2 years and there's others that have mentioned it.
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I get your point, I just don't think it's true. Or if it is true you haven't really given us any evidence apart from some anecdotes. Not trying to pick a fight, but I see this line of argument a lot, yet evidence seems scant.
 
TruXta said:
I get your point, I just don't think it's true. Or if it is true you haven't really given us any evidence apart from some anecdotes. Not trying to pick a fight, but I see this line of argument a lot, yet evidence seems scant.
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Well it's certainly true for me. Unless you think I'm making it up?
 
Delroy Booth said:
Well it's certainly true for me. Unless you think I'm making it up?
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No, not at all. I'm merely questioning the extrapolation to "lots of people/many people". Book sales are up apparently - what does that mean for your hypothesis? Granted, reading an airport novel is hardly the same as a long argument-heavy essay, but it does mean that the long form is far from dead.
 
Delroy Booth said:
I'm trying to make a point that as a result of Twitter, Tumblr, the blog format, long sustained bits of writing that take a long time to read and work an argument through it over a sustained period are increasingly rare. People don't read long things - they piece together an ideological position from 4chan internet memes, browsing on wikipedia, youtubeb clips, tweets and checking out short articles on blogs. That's how a lot of people today get their information. It conditions them to reading only in little bursts, little chunks here and there, which doesn't lend itself to working out long and complicated arguments.

I find it myself, after being on twitter I would find it hard to read for sustained periods of time, unlike when I was younger when I had no problem in sitting down and reading for hours. Now I'm too easily distracted, too easy to just aimlessly browse. And it's something that I've noticed happening to me over the last 2 years and there's others that have mentioned it.
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I have had this experience dealing with some younger people involved in activism asking my opinion on a certain subject or whatever, I'd reply with about a page or two pages giving my opinion on something only to be told that the length was unacceptable and they'd need a week to get back to me. Interestingly the same person who needed a week to get back to me was happy to link me to articles from the ISR which were many times longer than what I had wrote, I suspect that the individual hadn't actually read what they were recommending to me.
 
J Ed said:
I have had this experience dealing with some younger people involved in activism asking my opinion on a certain subject or whatever, I'd reply with about a page or two pages giving my opinion on something only to be told that the length was unacceptable and they'd need a week to get back to me. Interestingly the same person who needed a week to get back to me was happy to link me to articles from the ISR which were many times longer than what I had wrote, I suspect that the individual hadn't actually read what they were recommending to me.
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I don't think this is a particularly new phenomena - I just think that it's far easier to do/source nowadays.
 
The work of liberals in the first half of the nineteenth century paved the
way for that era of demagogic oppression which is now dawning. Those
who demanded the equality of all citizens before the law certainly did
not envisage the privileges the masses now enjoy. The old special jurisdictions have been suppressed, but the same thing in a new form is being
instituted: a system of arbitration which operates always in favor of the
workers. Those who demanded the freedom to strike did not imagine
that this freedom, for the strikers, would consist of beating up workers who want to continue working, and of burning down factories with
impunity. Those who sought equal taxation to help the poor did not
imagine that it would lead to progressive taxation at the expense of the
rich, and to a system in which taxes are voted by those who do not pay
them . . . (Pareto 1966: 157).
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oh no, "demagogic oppression"!
 
TruXta said:
How long were Olde Tyme propaganda pamphlets? Bet you they weren't 20K words long.
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I've never really read any. But Notes From Borderland is still going strong and I'll wager each edition is in the region of 20,000 words long. At least :hmm:
 
TruXta said:
No, not at all. I'm merely questioning the extrapolation to "lots of people/many people". Book sales are up apparently - what does that mean for your hypothesis? Granted, reading an airport novel is hardly the same as a long argument-heavy essay, but it does mean that the long form is far from dead.
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This is a stupid discussion. "Book sales are up apparently" doesn't count as evidence of anything either, especially when it's not sourced and there's no qualification (what type of books, how long are these books, I mean Laurie Penny's Meat Market is a book and it's 90 pages long, this next one will be a "pamphlet" of 13,000 words which is a total rip-off more than anything else, that Kindle single's thing looks like an adaptation to this too)

The point I'm making is a fairly obvious one, and of course it's anecdotal, but so what? How does that disqualify it? If I jumped into a massive pot of boiling water to test the hypothesis that I would get scalded, and as I'm screaming "Aaah it burns it burns" all the people stood around watching say "ah but that's your personal anecdote, where your evidence that it's actually hot?"

If I find that the little nuggets of information you get used to reading on twitter make it harder for me to concentrate on reading over a long period, then isn't it logical to assume that I'm not the only person on planet earth experiencing it. I used to see people on twitter whinge about this all the time as it happens but that's anecdotal too so I suppose that doesn't count.
 
Delroy Booth said:
This is a stupid discussion. "Book sales are up apparently" doesn't count as evidence of anything either, especially when it's not sourced and there's no qualification (what type of books, how long are these books, I mean Laurie Penny's Meat Market is a book and it's 90 pages long, this next one will be a "pamphlet" of 13,000 words which is a total rip-off more than anything else, that Kindle single's thing looks like an adaptation to this too)

The point I'm making is a fairly obvious one, and of course it's anecdotal, but so what? How does that disqualify it? If I jumped into a massive pot of boiling water to test the hypothesis that I would get scalded, and as I'm screaming "Aaah it burns it burns" all the people stood around watching say "ah but that's your personal anecdote, where your evidence that it's actually hot?"

If I find that the little nuggets of information you get used to reading on twitter make it harder for me to concentrate on reading over a long period, then isn't it logical to assume that I'm not the only person on planet earth experiencing it. I used to see people on twitter whinge about this all the time as it happens but that's anecdotal too so I suppose that doesn't count.
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http://www.theatlantic.com/business...ep-turmoil-book-sales-are-on-the-rise/275217/

US figures, but still. Your point may be obvious, doesn't make it true. And your analogy with jumping into scalding water is frankly fucking laughable. As any fool knows, the plural of anecdote is not data.
 
My experience in left-wing politics is that a lot of people lie about how much and what they've read. Two reasons spring to mind: small bit of social power within your local/regional/national group and that leadership that accrues to being the one on top of theory and second rank of the parties are dominated by academics and people like that, people paid to be concerned with reading and critique and so on, who then shape - consciously or not - the culture of the parties into one where it's important to be seen to be up to date, to have read key works and so on - when it's plain from what they say that a lot of them haven't/can't. Which itself is an indication of a huge gap between the class and people who think they are/aim to be the class's political instrument. The internet has meant those same people who used to pretend to read can now read little reviews or short articles and pretend more effectively now. They can also be caught out more effectively as well.
 
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