Countercultural media is a fickle beast. The edginess that gains you notoriety has a shelf life. And yet, there are a thousand ways for the maturation from that awkward adolescence into adulthood to fail. It happened rather dramatically for the Gawker empire. It appears that it will be in a more Byzantine manner for Vice.
I certainly wondered if after the controversial albeit effective founder (Gaven McInnes) leaving/the firm going public, it was only a matter of time. Perhaps so.
>there are a thousand ways for the maturation from that awkward adolescence into adulthood to fail. It happened rather dramatically for the Gawker empire.
There is Deadspin in the Gawker portfolio which I think was a great example of the natural maturation you are talking about. The style of the site and what they covered definitely matured over the years, but that same defiant ethos stuck around until and was perhaps defined by the very the moment the entire team mass resigned in response to mismanagement. And it is interesting to note that multiple writers who resigned from Deadspin ended up at Vice.
I think the entire Gawker portfolio was absolutely quality, but there isn't too much you can do when Peter Thiel goes for your blood because you made the moronic (albeit one time mistake) of drawing his ire. After the fire sale to Univision, I never expected it to be the same.
Except it wasn't a one time mistake. I can think of at least one other specific instance of them outing somebody, and the Hulk Hogan sex tape situation is equally morally bankrupt. This isn't even counting multiple other pointless invasions of privacy. Gawker got its just desserts, no matter how much Nick Denton cries about it.
One of the many facets I dislike about this story is the "Gawker outed Peter Thiel" claim.
Peter Thiel had used pictures of himself shirtless on a gay cruise as his profile on some social media. To consider that his privacy was invaded because he may not have specifically said the precise words "I am gay" is disingenuous. Not to mention, courts have repeatedly held that billionaires are considered "public figures" by virtue of their "outsized influence and impact on public affairs".
There's a reason Gawker was never successfully sued by Thiel.
Gawker and Hogan _had_ also settled before Thiel got involved. Hogan had settled with the other party, the one who _sold_ the tape, for 0.02% of the claim against Gawker.
Isn't another of the tenets of a justice system the right to face your accuser, not have someone Wizard of Oz behind the scenes bankrolling things because of their own vendetta?
I can dislike Gawker (TMZ, et al) and still see huge flaws in how this all went down.
> Isn't another of the tenets of a justice system the right to face your accuser, not have someone Wizard of Oz behind the scenes bankrolling things because of their own vendetta?
You communicated it better than I. I was somewhat horrified with the outcome because I (perhaps naively) had some belief that this tenet of the justice system had not yet been compromised. But the old adage that we have N justice systems for N wealth buckets (where N in {[rich, poor], [1%, 99%], ...}) seems to be true.
Clearly, it wasn't enough. Denton's fortune, large was it was, paled in comparison to Thiel's by a factor of 100, in pure net worth terms, never mind the social capital. In my eyes, that made it especially noteworthy.
Even Thiel himself admitted exactly this. He helped justify the bankrolling of Hogan's lawsuit by saying "single-digit millionaires" have no access to the legal system. The more money you have the more power you have. It isn't a binary rich/poor.
It's true. It's ironic that he proved the rule by proving that double digit millionaires too can effectively be locked out of the legal system by those with greater financial might. After all, are you really justifying the illegitimacy of the system if all you accomplish is merely swapping the places of who is destroyed?
So if I provide one example of a double digit millionaire beating a billionaire in a lawsuit will you take back this claim? We’d have to go to data then, do you have that data?
I doubt its caused by the traditional counterculture. I would wager their decline is much more attributed to their new PC culture, particularly after Shane (their founder) took a more back seat role as advisor.
In other words, I believe they are in decline because they are trying to be "woke". and as they say when you go woke you go broke.
That is hardly a countercultral media outlet position nowadays
They used to be, that's how they got started. I remember watching their videos in the early 2010s on drugs - including one where the host of the video flew to the Czech Republic to do heroin there.
Now? Yeah, I wouldn't call them counter-cultural anymore.
If it was hipster trash, how did it end up getting to where it ended up in the first place? There were many other mags that were similarly "hipster trash" that could have had the ascent Vice had. Why not them? You must admit that Vice took a similar approach to Gawker, of measured infotainment, that the pulp sold financed the hardboiled detective journalism. The latter elevated and diversified the empire's brand as a whole. Its cofounder (racist and misogynist or not) remained instrumental in launching it and bringing it to critical mass in the first place; to say otherwise would be revisionism.
If it was hipster trash, how did it end up getting to where it ended up in the first place?
This isn't a question I was trying to answer, and I don't believe the two are mutually exclusive. My only point is that Vice changed from being some free crap you picked up at American Apparel which most popular part was shaming people's fashion style, to what it is today. How did American Apparel get so large (and where are they now?)? All they did was sell very expensive t-shirts. My guess is fashion trends and marketing - much of that marketing done by, sigh another fairly controversial figure.
Perhaps making fun of people = visitors = website clicks (as their was an online version of this as well) = advertising moneys. I dunno. Someone saw value in that, and trusted this particular person. I could opt that successful businesses with little real worth are built with the hands of sociopaths (but I'm going that far).
Upvoted because I think you have a fair point, and I agree that the two are not mutually exclusive. But that's the point I'm getting at -- the sad truth is that sex sells. People love tabloids, they love controversy, they love sketchiness. And I think your comparison with Terry Richardson is very apt. As a child comment to this one you made says, it does look like the countercultural vanguard moved past this kind of edgy towards a different one that is more concerned with notions of social justice and equity.
Not to derail this thread too much, but I think that one is potentially even more insidious because it's much more spiritually authoritarian and panoptical. But that one too is beginning to elicit fatigue, especially with corporate sponsors that for a while had been attempting to subsume it into a third position that they now believe may have become [1] untenable.
I think that's the case. And in a way, I think this echoes my original point -- how fickle it is when the the entire thing that makes your product desirable is a novelty that has no longevity!
It wasn't a new novelty though - besides PoW there was (and still is) plenty of classist and snobbish people-watching communities and their content, even on reddit - and it isn't anything new: "white trash" is an ancient term that's still in-use, and I don't think many people watch COPS for mundane police encounters.
Oh, for sure. I wonder where we can draw the line. I think that a flavor that is shared by Vice, COPS, PoW and its ilk is a gonzo journalism quality. And you know, now that you mention the classist, snobbish qualities to it, I think there's a key element I was missing in my original point: voyeurism. There's some really specific stuff going on in the way that a class observes the "trashy" mannerisms of a underclass, and it's necessarily veiled because discussion of it is deemed crude, base, or otherwise unbecoming of that class. Would you agree that there's an element of voyeurism there?
He was the best part of Vice along with other early members. They used to have AMAZING stories and documentaries during his time.
Afterwards, the company went straight to shit. Now, we're blessed with quality articles such as:
1)"Nintendo Switch's Joy-con Sync issue is Even worse if you put it in your butt"
2)"Three days of torture in a male chastity device"
3)"How to pick a chastity cage lock with a condom wrapper"
4)"Finally, a new emoji to mock men"
I will be celebrating when Vice (along with BuzzFeed and Vox) file for bankruptcy.
Vice's problem is the same problem faced by smaller fringe media outlets like huffpo, buzzfeed, etc - they are not "authoritative" sources. Once social media started privileging authoritative sources, their fate was sealed.
The irony here is that vice, huffpo, buzzfeed, etc demanded social media censor fringe "alt-right" media and start favoring more established media. They got their wish. Now google, youtube, facebook, etc heavily favors CNN, MSNBC, Foxnews, NYTimes, WaPo, etc. It still shocks me how oblivious these people were. They depended entirely on social media providing an equal playing field to everyone. And yet, they were the ones demanding social media companies play favorites.
At this point, what is there but to just laugh at them. Nobody should feel sorry for these people/companies as they got what they asked for. Censorship and favoritism. The funny thing is that most likely the alt-right media will outlast vice, huffpo, buzzfeed, etc.
A company laying people off is not confirmation that the things you don't like about them are hurting their business. It just might have more to do with the pandemic than their politics.
Many of the famous projects at vice, featuring war coverage, projects involving psychedelics and cutting edge mental health treatment among a few, are not nearly as prevalent now. Further many of the arguably top journalists to join in Vice’s history have gone (many, but not all)
"projects involving psychedelics and cutting edge mental health treatment among a few, are not nearly as prevalent now. Further many of the arguably top journalists to join in Vice’s history have gone (many, but not all)"
These projects are why I started reading/watching Vice in the first place.
I think the pandemic is going to be used by companies like Vice as an excuse for a failing business model.
FWIW Vice news is now on Showtime... I actually really enjoy their video reporting they do 2 15 minute stories and it's usually pretty unique and interesting reporting.
"A company laying people off is not confirmation that the things you don't like about them are hurting their business"
As already mentioned, they were going out of business long before the pandemic. The Pandemic is just an excuse for their failures.
There are so many news sites dedicated to progressive content that Vice turned into. They lost their edge, competitive advantage, and I would imagine, most of their viewer base. This is why they failed.
Perhaps, but regarding the pandemic, I would assume the pandemic would cause people to read more digital news than before, simply because they have more time to do so.
For example, video game sales have had a really great last quarter.
> Perhaps, but regarding the pandemic, I would assume the pandemic would cause people to read more digital news than before, simply because they have more time to do so.
People may read more during the pandemic, but the advertisers are advertising less:
> Vice Media lays off 155 employees as coronavirus pandemic wipes out ad revenue
> ...The cuts come as the news media industry suffers from an epic drop in advertising revenue as companies cut spending amid the pandemic.
> Digital media companies, including Quartz and Buzzfeed, have slashed jobs, furloughed employees and cut salaries in an effort to survive the outbreak.
People may be reading more news but if ad sales are down because revenue is down at companies who normally buy those ads that it doesn't matter how many views their new stories are getting.
Vice was never anything more than editorialized content pushing some agenda. Way early on they had some interesting stuff like the inside North Korea videos, but those days are long gone.
Edit: Yes I'm still bitter over Bill and Ted being cancelled.
> used to be about cutting-edge reporting and has devolved to fluff pieces
This is the hole all the big news and media houses fell into.
I don't think a lot of these companies really understood what the transaction they were making when they pivoted or expanded. When an outlet like Vice peddles fluff, click-bait and controversy pieces, the transaction is not videos/articles for clicks.
With those fluff pieces, Vice and others were trading away trust and reputation, which is the core product of any information business. In a time where truth and trust are desperately needed, the big media houses should have been making bank (My god, in the information age, why can't the original information businesses make money?).
Instead they bankrupted their core product for quick cash because they accidentally equated their product (Trust) with what they were selling (advertisements), and that lowered the whole industry to the point where they have to share space with the likes of Infowars.
I think something similar happened with Vox Media, where it started with cutting edge presentation and neutral exploration, but ultimately devolved into near total bias in story selection, sources (which research they call out versus which they leave out), and perspective.
Unlike Vice they might actually be fine though, because I think Vox's readers seek out that far left bias, whereas Vice's customers were more mixed. That said, I am largely basing this based on my anecdotal experience and speculating about the overall readership of these publications.
Last Vice thing I watched was about one of their reporters going through the process of getting a gun license and buying a firearm in Canada. Surprisingly nice reporting but still with a progressive tint to it.
This week has been brutal one for media layoffs. Also: Conde Nast, Quartz and BuzzFeed.
And for the bulk of these laid off folks, this will likely mean their time in journalism is done. The odds of there being many opportunities in the industry after the pandemic seem pretty low right now..
> Vice Digital’s teams will be disproportionately affected by the layoffs. Currently, the company’s digital organization accounts for 50% of headcount costs, “but only brings in about 21% of our revenue”
> “everyone will be able to keep their work-issued laptops”
This happens a lot because of logistics costs. Managing inventory means hiring people. The total cost of the laptops is probably less than salary + benefits for a staff to handle it and storage or sell at huge discount
I used to run an all-remote engineering team and even though we had the right personnel in place, it still often ended up that for anything short of a new top-of-the-line device, it would be left with a departing employee as a gift because the cost of shipping and paying import duties to get it to the next most logical person in line to have possession of the device was often more than the value of the device itself.
Even for high-value hardware that might have been financially worth reclaiming at the end of someone's employment, there was always a buyout clause in their hardware issuance agreement and we encouraged people to use it if they liked their laptop. We _really_ didn't want the gear back most of the time.
Last time I turned in a laptop (which was about 6 years old--wasn't my day-to-day system), I had to go through the whole routine of reformatting, cleaning stickers and the like off as well as I could, and shipping it to our IT department. I'm sure it was just recycled when it arrived.
with leasing however it comes back into focus as an asset you have to recover. Many companies have turned to leasing programs where hardware is rolled over every three years.
In my experience in the field, media companies are typically super slow to upgrade tech, so I'd guess at least half of these laptops are refurbished, at least three years old and only half functional from constant overuse (if you work in digital media, you know the job is way more than 40 hours a week).
The entire media industry has been doing layoffs/furloughs.
It's a function of revenue pipelines and forecasts even despite diversification; it is not correlated to the specific content/brand of a media company.
I’m still wondering how the stock market is assuming that tech cos that rely heavily on digital ad spend like Google and FB are effectively recession proof even though media outlets with the same business model are clearly not.
I work in a business that's tied to our customer's online advertising for a very broad set of verticals and our business hasn't gone down at all. It actually kept growing since COVID hit...
For every vertical that went down (ie, mortgages, local small business ads) there's plenty of others that go up (ie, health insurance, consumer ecommerce).
I don't think media buys on newspapers are a significant amount of Google et al's ad business, adwords (ie, search based ads) is much bigger than adsense (display advertising). Search for any major keyword and you'll still find the SERP flooded with ad results. I'd imagine generally it's gone down for Google but I doubt it's by much total.
This is a big question for me too. I mean, the next quarterly results are going to be brutal, everyone knows that. The end of the pandemic is going to be a slow recovery like every other slow recovery, everyone knows that too. There's no magic way to make an economy "bounce" when doing that would entail getting a whole bunch of shuttered businesses back up and running.
Yet the market just doesn't show it. And I've seen no good explanations.
For myself, btw: I'm mostly in bond funds and cash accounts at this point. There just has to be another severe crash coming in the next few months.
Gold took a tumble in March but it was nowhere near as bad as the DJIA and the charts bear this out. Also the monetary supply has significantly increased since then which and gold is not strongly dependent on retail consumer demand or other short cycles where uncertainty is injected. While Apple still has to operate and sell phones during the pandemic, Gold just sits there with all of its glorious potential.
The answer is Direct Response (aka performance) advertising where they only pay if there was a directly measurable action taken (e.g., app install, or online store purchase).
During recessions, companies are going to move their ad spend from places with questionable ROI to those they can directly measure the impact on.
Reducing both business models to 'advertising' is a vast oversimplification. Google/Facebook provide platforms and services, and have zero content creation cost. They are also way more diversified. Conde Nast isn't investing in telecommunications infrastructure or self driving cars.
Ok sure but these companies are trading near all time highs. I imagine digital ad spend is somewhat correlated with changes in consumer demand. If demand drops significantly, how does Google and FB stay at a valuation identical to a pre-Covid Economy?
The market probably also thinks that a good chunk of the additional consumer use can be captured by google and fb post-covid.
If you think the same for click bait media companies they would be a great buy. Actual reader demand is through the roof - they just aren’t readers who are willing to buy anything.
Given PPP and other covid unemployment funding programs, %5 of staff seems like an opportunistic easy win to churn out the expensive and/or older staff, with the option of picking up new cheaper staff in this buyers market for talent. The demographics of the layoff would be interesting. The sympathetic tone of that CEO letter is the insult to injury for them.
I know large chain retailers who have laid off all retail staff and only kept operations, marketing and digital, so this doesn't register as a big story. That something to do with Vice isn't really news is perhaps par for the course, but as the shutdown progresses, there could be waves of layoffs like this to show a bump in their Q3 results.
Considering revenue has driven off a cliff, 5% cuts doesn't seem like that much. Even with PPP and COVID unemployment, I still think this was a relatively good outcome, seeing as how 100% employee retention after getting slammed by a giant profit meteorite was never realistic.
I don’t like to see anyone lose their job but the Internet if not the entire world will be better off without Vice, Buzzfeed, Upworthy, HuffPo, Gawker and all similar trash clickbait outfits
It was pretty huge in late 90s / early 00s New York as a physical entity/product. It seemed to die down for about 5 years or so before bouncing back as a big digital/video property.
The hard magazine was distributed for free at every American Apparel (and numerous other places) for a few years. When hipster retail consumerism was at its peak the advertisements and content in those magazines definitely had a cultural influence, albeit short lived.
> Laid-off journalists and their supporters have seen their Twitter mentions littered with a phrase that some are suggesting is part of a targeted anti-media harassment campaign.
It was pretty well documented that buzzfeed-style news sites were casually promoting the idea that any laid-off worker could just learn to code and make that their new job. Proposing that journalists do the same is the ultimate “proof of concept” that it’s not quite so easy.
It’s a mistake to ridicule this turnabout as some kind of anti-media or alt-right thing.
> It was pretty well documented that buzzfeed-style news sites were casually promoting the idea that any laid-off worker could just learn to code and make that their new job.
Where?
> It’s a mistake to ridicule this turnabout as some kind of anti-media or alt-right thing.
It'd only be a turnabout if they were ridiculing specific people who made a claim that "any laid-off worker could just learn to code." But this seems to be generalized harassment against and entire class of people.
>It'd only be a turnabout if they were ridiculing specific people who made a claim that "any laid-off worker could just learn to code." But this seems to be generalized harassment against and entire class of people.
IOW, it's fine to ignore when those nebulous other people at my journal ridicule coal miners with unrealistic expectations, but when it starts to affect me, then you've suddenly crossed an impermissible line.
(Edit: sorry for the late update for that last section, selection; they somehow broke test highlighting in iOS 13...)
I don't see anything examples in there showing journalist telling laid off people to "just learn to code". Unless you believe that writing stories about people switching careers is actually an implied demand that people switch careers, which seems like a strange takeaway.
Every story has a framing, and this one's an implication of typicality. By the way they were framed, the clear implication was that it's no big deal for anyone to learn to code as a very late second career. It's (also) a mistake to say that, because they didn't explicitly say that view, they weren't promoting it by their choice of framing and emphasis.
> Could you really say readers won't go away thinking "hm, guess this seems like a viable post-coal career"?
I could see readers going away thinking it's a possible post-coal career for some, but that's a far cry from "a clear implication was that it's no big deal for anyone to learn to code as a very late second career."
Would you walk away from this article thinking that participating in triathlons is a viable hobby for senior citizens?
>I could see readers going away thinking it's a possible post-coal career for some, but that's a far cry from "a clear implication was that it's no big deal for anyone to learn to code as a very late second career."
Then I'm glad to hear you're unusually hype resistant.
>Would you walk away from this article thinking that participating in triathlons is a viable hobby for senior citizens?
No, that's clearly framed as an out-of-the-ordinary feat for an individual (nickname indicating uniqueness, "and still finishes"), and about a hobby rather than a new core income source.
Not taking sides in the argument, but it appears to be verified that Joe Biden directly addressed coal miners at a New Hampshire rally, saying “Anybody who can go down 3,000 feet in a mine can sure as hell learn to program as well... Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for God’s sake!”
>>It's not just framing. At least some of it originated on 4chan as deliberate harassment
> So? If you’re going to judge every argument by its slimiest advocate, then every argument can be dismissed without a thought.
What argument? Just to be clear: we're talking about people taunting the recently laid-of with messages that they should "learn to code." At best, it's just a mindless meme.
>>> It was pretty well documented that buzzfeed-style news sites were casually promoting the idea that any laid-off worker could just learn to code and make that their new job.
>> Where?
> Where to start? It was pretty thoroughly discussed. From a quick search:
I read that article. I don't think it supports your idea that Buzzfeed or any other outlet was "casually promoting the idea that any laid-off worker could just learn to code." The article cites:
1. A Buzzfeed article that appears to be mocking the idea of out-of-touch techies encouraging people to "learn to code" as some kind of cure all solution: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/should-... (Should You Learn To Code? Find out if there's been an article written telling you specifically to code or not.)
2. An article about Mike Bloomberg criticizing out-of-touch techies like Mark Zuckerberg encouraging people to "learn to code" as some kind of cure all solution: https://gigaom.com/2014/04/09/michael-bloomberg-you-cant-tea... ("You’re not going to teach a coal miner to code. Mark Zuckerberg says you teach them [people] to code and everything will be great. I don’t know how to break it to you . . . but no.")
The one I gave in my first comment here, the one apparent to most people following the history: "hey, I guess it really isn't so easy to just learn to code after a layoff and make that your new job."
If I can summarize the rest of your comment, it sounds like you're saying that, after ignoring context, history, and subtext, and focusing solely on the three words, then there's nothing to the argument. And then, because the coal miner story didn't explicitly say "oh, hey, this must be something every coal miner can do", then obviously the publication is 100% innocent of promoting a zeitgeist of everyone easily slipping into coding no matter what their previous career.
And then, because I go in, interpreting the events with such context, history, and subtext, then I'm less informed than you, someone who is deliberately filtering out such subtext and framing.
There's a lot I could say about that, but it's probably enough to say: no, that's not generally "how it works", and I would be tremendously surprised if you approached any other story with such filters.
> The one I gave in my first comment here, the one apparent to most people following the history: "hey, I guess it really isn't so easy to just learn to code after a layoff and make that your new job."
Two points:
1. No one's disagreeing with you on that. Certainly not me, and probably not any of the journalists who wrote any of those stories or who were laid off
2. That's not the argument that's being made by these drive by "learn to code" comments (and if the commenters think they're making that argument, it's about as cogent as me arguing against your non-existent Stalinist political beliefs).
> If I can summarize the rest of your comment, it sounds like you're saying that, after ignoring context, history, and subtext, and focusing solely on the three words, then there's nothing to the argument.
Apparently you can't summarize it. I was just showing that you didn't show that "that buzzfeed-style news sites were casually promoting the idea that any laid-off worker could just learn to code and make that their new job."
Edit: I think it's pretty clear that at one time many out-of-touch techies (and probably some business types) advocated for blue collar people to "learn to code" as a solution to a lot of economic dislocation. I wouldn't be surprised if journalists also reported those ideas. However, I'm not at all convinced that journalists, or any journalistic sub-group of note, themselves advocated for that idea. I also wouldn't be surprised that some people's fallible memories conflated the journalists with the out-of-touch techies they reported on, and misremembered the former as acting like the latter.
>>"hey, I guess it really isn't so easy to just learn to code after a layoff and make that your new job."
> No one's disagreeing with you on that. Certainly not me, and probably not any of the journalists who wrote any of those stories or who were laid off
Wait, what? I wish you had made that clear before. If you agree with that, then wouldn't you say it's pretty irresponsible to publish articles that very suggestively imply that claim, even if they don't say so explicitly? If so, then it sounds like we're in agreement on the broad points, just not the particulars.
>Apparently you can't summarize it. I was just showing that you didn't show that "that buzzfeed-style news sites were casually promoting the idea that any laid-off worker could just learn to code and make that their new job."
That ... still sounds like a pretty good summary of your comment actually.
"Aha, this article didn't explicitly say that so you must be wrong, because obviously no one is ever misled by the suggestions or framing."
That's my core point. It's not enough that they didn't explictly spell out the implication. Most people -- yes, probably even you when you're not really trying to argue for a preferred conclusion -- read articles with a context, being aware of the history and subtext. Yes, cool, you can show that they didn't explicitly say the words. So what? Obviously there's more to consider.
Late edit:
>That's not the argument that's being made by these drive by "learn to code" comments (and if the commenters think they're making that argument, it's about as cogent as me arguing against your non-existent Stalinist political beliefs).
Where do you get that? Obviously a huge portion of people (it's obviously to me at least) feel like these publications were being casual about this idea, and in that case, yes, "a word to the wise" is enough -- or three words, as the case may be.
> That's my core point. It's not enough that the didn't deliberately spell out the implication. Most people -- yes, probably even you when you're not really trying to argue for a preferred conclusion -- read articles with a context, being aware of the history and subtext. Yes, cool, you can show that they didn't explicitly say the words. So what? Obviously there's more to consider.
All right then. Find an article and walk us through it, in detail (because the devil can be in the details). Prove your point.
But, you were claiming that "that buzzfeed-style news sites were casually promoting the idea that any laid-off worker could just learn to code and make that their new job," with the implication that justified drive-by "learn to code" comments targeted at laid off journalists. We're getting a long way away from "casual promotion" when we're analyzing (for instance) the coal miner story in Guardian for subtext.
Also, the edit I made before your reply may be relevant.
Reply to late edit:
> Where do you get that? Obviously a huge portion of people (it's obviously to me at least) feel like these publications were being casual about this idea, and in that case, yes, "a word to the wise" is enough -- or three words, as the case may be.
Your word choice is getting towards my thoughts on this. If there's any genuine belief behind these harassing comments, it's a feeling that something false is actually true.
>All right then. Find an article and walk us through it, in detail (because the devil can be in the details). Prove your point.
Now it feels like you haven't read my comments, including the part that you just quoted.
My entire point is that an article wouldn't say (and doesn't have to say) that "This means that any of y'all out there can do the same thing as these coal miners that created a tech shop." So it would be pretty pointless to "walk through" an article and "prove my point" by finding such a line; that sounds like the challenge you would make if you wanted to sound like you were being rigorously evidence-based but also weren't aware of the points I had just made.
>We're getting a long way away from "casual promotion" when we're analyzing (for instance) the coal miner story in Guardian for subtext.
No. "Look at this success story, probably a trend" is exactly what counts as casual promotion! Again, do you hold to this standard on any other issue? Do you deliberately ignore any subtext, and ridicule everyone who reads such subtext into an article? Or is it just for this one issue?
>Also, the edit I made before your reply may be relevant.
Sure, that would be a fair point, that this zeitgeist was actually misreading the reporting of their own biases as journalists promoting it. If you had made that point, then I would at least agreed that that would be a reason that "learn to code" ridicule was misdirected. So why start by pretending the entirety of the history was a 4chan campaign, when you had much better substance to contribute?
>Your word choice is getting towards my thoughts on this. If there's any genuine belief behind these harassing comments, it's a feeling that something false is actually true.
Yes, but it's also possible to promote such a feeling while maintaining the plausible deniability -- that you seem to buy into! -- that "oh, hey, we just reported one obviously-atypical tech shop started by coal miners, not our fault you generalized from that".
> My entire point is that an article wouldn't say (and doesn't have to say) that "This means that any of y'all out there can do the same thing as these coal miners that created a tech shop." So it would be pretty pointless to "walk through" an article and "prove my point" by finding such a line; that sounds like the challenge you would make if you wanted to sound like you were being rigorously evidence-based but also weren't aware of the points I had just made.
I wasn't asking you to find a line or a pithy quote. I was asking you to explain how you thought a particular article proved your point in detail, with examples of what the article says and the subtext you claim is there, rather than just insisting one exists that does. Basically, you're talking in vague abstractions that I don't think are true in the case, and the way to deal with that disconnect is to talk about the specific reasoning.
But this is all a digression. Even if some journalist somewhere wrote an article that consisted entirely of "Those stupid coal miners need to stop complaining about their lost jobs! They should all quit their bitching and learn to code!" repeated over and over, it wouldn't justify the harassment of all journalists as a class with the phrase "learn to code" like has happened here and elsewhere. That's the real topic of this thread.
> No. "Look at this success story, probably a trend" is exactly what counts as casual promotion! Again, do you hold to this standard on any other issue? Do you deliberately ignore any subtext, and ridicule everyone who reads such subtext into an article? Or is it just for this one issue?
Eh, not necessarily. Reporting on something is not promotion, it's reporting. Reporting on something that looks like a trend is not promotion, it's reporting. It's journalists' job to report a lot of varied things: good, bad, and neutral; novel and familiar; human interest stories and world changing events. To be more specific the actual journalistic articles I've read in this thread read as reporting, not promotion.
Also, sometimes that "subtext" is just the interpretive bias the reader brings, and nothing more.
> Yes, but it's also possible to promote such a feeling while maintaining the plausible deniability -- that you seem to buy into! -- that "oh, hey, we just reported one obviously-atypical tech shop started by coal miners, not our fault you generalized from that".
Yeah, it's possible, but don't you think that's a pretty conspiratorial way of looking at it? Maybe the Guardian (to use a specific example) just reported on that company because it was an interesting story that people might want to read about?
I certainly wondered if after the controversial albeit effective founder (Gaven McInnes) leaving/the firm going public, it was only a matter of time. Perhaps so.