Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by api 1513 days ago
Virtually all modern media exists to push a narrative, usually a Right Wing(tm) or Left Wing(tm) narrative. I'm not convinced you can get to the truth by "triangulating" since this assumes at least one party is actually saying something valid.
1 comments
jjoonathan 1513 days ago
Blanket cynicism is really easy to manipulate: you don't have to do a good job yourself, you just have to convince the cynic that the other guy is just as bad, which is easy.

"Both Sides" cynicism feels centrist but it actually kills centrism because it turns centrism into a losing media strategy.

Listening to both sides is important to avoid selective information bias, but refusing to pick a winner or, worse, always picking the midpoint is a terrible policy that is responsible for enabling the current degradation in the public discourse.

link
somenameforme 1513 days ago
Imagine you were tasked with deciding the greatest film of all time. And after some opaque process over which you have no meaningful influence, you were presented with your choices, the "sides:" "Generic Superhero Movie #1" or "Generic Superhero Movie #2".

Of course you are right that one may be objectively better than the other, but I'm also right in that such a choice ought be rejected on principle because neither deserves the validation of participation in such a charade.

link
jjoonathan 1512 days ago
...and then audiences stop reading your opinion, because snobbery isn't useful for picking which movie to see on Friday night, and then producers and directors stop paying attention to you because you have no audience, and now you have traded away your ability to effect change for the self-indulgent fantasy of being above the fray.

> neither deserves the validation

Huffing your own farts is poor debate strategy.

link
somenameforme 1512 days ago
Look to the media. They sold any and all principles they once held in pursuit of "effecting change". And what happened? Everybody knows everything they say is worthless, they're further than ever from affecting, let alone effecting, anything and now they struggle, with no small degree of contempt and jealousy, to attract the viewership of a mid-tier YouTuber.

And this tale of modern media is not some new one. History and humanity endlessly repeats the same stories over and over, with little more than technological improvement offering a change in scenery. This is where the countless parables analogous to selling your soul to the devil come from: observing humanity. The moral being that it doesn't end quite like how you might have imagined.

link