Urban v's the Commentariat
- Thread starter Belushi
- Start date
You are. Self-obsessed animals like cats can't help how they are and you're comparing them to humans who supposedly have a bit more awareness and choice in the matter.
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I've never claimed such a thing.Cats r always wonderful & can do no wrong ever
PoorButNotAChav
Member
Infantilism is a very good description of the mentality but I think I know why it persists.
There have been arguments on the Internet since long before Twitter (which was launched in 2006) and Facebook (2004). The World Wide Web was launched in 1991 but Godwin's Law was established in 1990 and it was inspired by discussions on Usenet (which was launched in 1980). However, because social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter became globally known, were simpler to use and have features such as "like" buttons and follower counts groups and rivalries on those sites grew bigger and faster.
Meanwhile, newspapers and magazines have been struggling as print sales have fallen, more people have accessed their content online and new online-only news sites like HuffPo and Guido Fawkes have sprung up. In their desperation to generate clicks at low cost newspapers and magazines like The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph and the New Statesman have looked for writers who have popular blogs or thousands of followers on Facebook or Twitter and commissioned articles from them or given them columns. Some of them are awful writers who make themselves and their publications look stupid but they generate the clicks.
If you think about the Commentariat in footballing terms Owen Jones is a player who has been signed by The Guardian with a view to replacing the long-serving Premier League left-winger Polly Toynbee when she retires, Laurie Penny is a player who has yo-yo-ed between the Premier League and the Championship and Johann Hari was banned from the game for taking performance-enhancing quotes. The people who get into arguments like the one about Weev or Gamergate are young players hoping that they will be the next to be plucked from the lower tiers of the Commentariat League and asked by The Guardian to write a thousand words about the latest petty argument or the topic about which they have written badly for a few months.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
you know of owen jones so presumably you have read his bbook, Chavs: The Demonization of the working class
So why the username.
So why the username.
8ball
Maximum Facepalm
You make some very good points. I dont disagree with any of them.
However, I think we have to locate some of the blame beyond the media, in wider society. I think people who received their secondary and tertiary education in this century were systematically deprived of historical knowledge, political analysis and philosophical skill. Instead they were fed a diet of superficial, self-congratulatory anti-racism, anti-sexism and anti-homophobia that has rendered them incapable of rational discussion above the level of: "ooh, he said the N-Word! He is such a baddie. Ooh, she looked at me in a creepy way, Im never talking to her again." And so forth. It would be deplorable were it not so hilarious.
DaveCinzano
WATCH OUT, GEORGE, HE'S GOT A SCREWDRIVER!
PoorButNotAChav
Member
My username is the one I used on The Guardian's website in response to a 2008 article by some Fabians who wanted to ban the word "chav". The writers didn't understand the meaning of the word and how people (including working-class people) used it and when I registered I had to pick a username and it was the first thing that came to mind. I've kept it because I don't think I can remember another username for another website.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
its a false division- same as lumpen. We get enough othering done by the middle classes lets not start on ourselves
PoorButNotAChav
Member
Absolutely. I pay very little attention to the news compared to a decade or so ago because even the political debates on the major news, current affairs and political programmes are often about the personalities of politicians, the current status of particular politicians or parties or the tactics of the political game, not the issues or the social problems millions of people face. Newspapers are even worse for this. Politics and journalism have become like team sports and accusations of racism or sexism are often just one side trying to get an opponent like Jeremy Clarkson or Rod Liddle sent off.
The best (almost the only) place to find out what is really going on these days is the business press. Not so much the Wall St Journal, which is crap, but the FT and the business sections of the Sundays. They have to tell the truth, because their readers bank balances suffer if they dont.
Rural
Active Member
Oh god LP is the QPR of the media world
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
#weareallqprnow
PoorButNotAChav
Member
I can believe that. Britain doesn't really have a quality press worthy of the description any more. The Guardian is a bad parody of itself. The Independent newspaper is better than The Guardian but The Independent's website is terrible. The Telegraph becomes more like the Daily Mail every day. The Times is probably the best but it's the best of a very bad bunch and they are all obsessed with serving middle-class readers in London and the South East, whichever overseas market they have decided to target and people who will retweet links to their clickbait.
That's one of the reasons why it took so long for the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal to be uncovered. Once something approaching the full story was uncovered a few months ago the Commentariat had very little to say about it because the story was too complicated to write about quickly, politically too difficult to write about and it didn't affect them.
PoorButNotAChav
Member
It could be worse. We could be Leeds United.
Rural
Active Member
I like QPR, they r my team. I want LP to be someone like Millwall or Arsenal
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
shes dulwitch hamlet fc
Bakunin
I am Noodle's bitch.
Sunday Parks League, more like.
I know. The rare times I look at the British press these days its with a resigned incredulity that it has fallen so far.
The only decent non-business newspaper in the Anglophone world these days is the New York Times.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
Workers Girder, I think you mean
Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
As commemorated in song by the great Amanda Palmer herself.
andysays
Love and solidarity
So does all this make Polly Toynbe Real Madrid?
Fiorentina, surely...
Brainaddict
slight system overdrive
Slightly baffling Richard Seymour piece in the guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/14/why-hostility-immigrants-uk-racism
It flips between saying anti-immigrant feeling has deep historical roots, and saying it is a product of neo-liberalism, while being very vague about both lines of development.
And contains the bizarre assertion (without evidence) that anti-immigration feeling has little to do with negative personal experiences of the impact of immigration.
He sometimes makes sense but this is bordering on gibberish. It all just smacks of "Don't call anti-immigrant voters racist in your way - I know the right way to call them racist."
Can't see why he wrote this except for the money - but cif doesn't even pay very much I'm told.
Edit: perhaps it's unfair to say it was just for the money, but it certainly feels rushed to a deadline. It might have made sense if he'd spent a couple more weeks thinking about it but this is like an email reply to a friend in a lunch break at work, not a well-thought-out argument.
It flips between saying anti-immigrant feeling has deep historical roots, and saying it is a product of neo-liberalism, while being very vague about both lines of development.
And contains the bizarre assertion (without evidence) that anti-immigration feeling has little to do with negative personal experiences of the impact of immigration.
He sometimes makes sense but this is bordering on gibberish. It all just smacks of "Don't call anti-immigrant voters racist in your way - I know the right way to call them racist."
Can't see why he wrote this except for the money - but cif doesn't even pay very much I'm told.
Edit: perhaps it's unfair to say it was just for the money, but it certainly feels rushed to a deadline. It might have made sense if he'd spent a couple more weeks thinking about it but this is like an email reply to a friend in a lunch break at work, not a well-thought-out argument.
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rekil
to menny cranks
Has Paul Mason "lost it"?
If they'd had Max Keiser shouting at them about bitcoins they would've done a bit better?
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
yeh the lecturers and profs have a lot to answer for
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
if only they had used social media they might have won. Like the time anon toppled muburak singlehandedly
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