Populist political movements face fierce opposition from the establishment press everywhere they exist, with unrelenting hostile coverage across all public and private media.
I used to respect Tucker Carlson as a reporter until he went "independent" and soon drove the bus off the road. Your explanation of this as a result of social media's structural incentives makes perfect sense. "Eugyppius' Razor."
Agreed about Carlson. I still watch an occasional interview of his, when it looks like somebody I might find interesting to hear from. But more and more, I'm choosing to ignore his stuff. For my money, the last really good interview he did was with Vladimir Putin---and how the hell long ago was that?!
I agree on Tucker; I have cancelled my January renewal and stopped checking his site. Having been born in DC in January 1939 and stated school four months before the Normandy invasion, been a young teen for Korea and did my eight-year Army Reserve obligation including an alert for activation for the second Berlin Crisis. I find all this stuff silly and totally uninteresting. With the exception of being a great fan and supporter of Eugyppius.
Eugyppius, many thanks for this explanation. I have only very recently become a free subscriber to D.R. and so far have received only two posts. The first was the essay you refer to and, not knowing any of the background, I found it incomprehensible. I thought I was a just being especially dumb today, but now feel slightly reassured.
On the broader point of alt media and the 'Right', internationally.
There are few authors that do what eugyppius does with each essay.
Unlike eugyppius, most content creators shuttle between sensationalism and pragmatism, which is not reliable nor useful.
Simply telling the truth is getting harder every day.
As the Chair of Story Telling at Cambridge in the UK (Prof. J'son Arrrrdaaaay) said, 'he preferred a form of narrative telling' instead of solid, well-researched content. It is a remarkably common defect.
I think it would be interesting for eugyppius to engage on some of these platforms. I say that as a fan and with gratitude for all he did in the dark times of the pandemic.
Some of the alt platforms are disappearing up their own backsides.
The massive assumption on their part is the audience will applaud whatever they publish.
It's time for a better grounded, debate driven, considered approach. There are too many things going wrong to do anything else. Serious content for times of deep crisis.
Old Saying: "the man with just a watch knows the time: the man with many clocks is never certain." When there was just a MSM, everyone knew just what the Governments wanted us to know and all was right with the world and the US engaged in dozens of conflicts around the world in the name of democracy, fairness, justice, and other tropes, managed by billionaire donors, banks, MIC, etc. Now, we are conflicted by alternative information sources. The truth is more visible to more people than at any other time in history, but you still need to search to find the "needle in the haystack". I know: too many metaphors. LoL
Nope, I love this trope. The meme with all the Homburged commuters in the train car, reading exactly the same newspaper, with the text decrying the death of uniform American opinion. It's like a Norman Rockwell painting of a covertly dysfunctional family.
It would be gloriously enjoyable if we here in the US didn't have crucial elections coming up that the Warriors of the Right seem determined to hand to the Lunatics of the Left on tarnished but quite serviceable platters.
And Lindsay. That idiot has quite the affinity for Deaf Girls of Expertise who go off the deep end with maximum drama.
Anyway we keep learning through painful experience how much the higher-functioning autistics require an extremely firm managerial hand and when they don't have that, chaos will bust out all over.
“Deaf Girls of Expertise.” Goddammit — I am 95% certain I know who you’re talking about, which is my signal to get off social media until at least Michaelmas.
Oh, it's just that the bucolic fields of Substack ain't always as bucolic as hoped for. But they're spacious enough to allow one to bypass the gassy bits.
A timely and extremely necessary article exposing so much of the rot that pervades social media, even with non-bad actors. Whether people will become more circumspect about what they are digesting, and moreso, who they decide to swear fealty to, I’m not optimistic.
So very much of all this nonsense is evidence of and the consequences for the absolute cratering of trust that has occurred across the spectrum in society at large in our times. Don’t know when, how or if that can ever be repaired or retrieved.
'I fear that those who follow social media personalities strictly for content are in a minority; vastly greater numbers want to be active spectators in a kind of political sportsball.'
I maintain my sanity by avoiding all forms of social media. I regret to say that I am in the extreme minority in this regard but that is probably typical of people like me who grew up in the Pleistocene Era.
Law is a quagmire for the non-lawyer. Whether it's gun law, family law, self-defense law, commercial law, or you name it -- the less you are versed in it, the scarier it is. Hell, most of us drive every day and yet still don't understand points of traffic law that we probably violate routinely.
Classified information law is designed, on top of that, to be extra scary. Classifications, categories, clearances, needs-to-know... even things that aren't quite "real" classifications but are "sometimes Y", like FOUO and NOFORN. ("Not for public release" isn't even on the radar, but how does Joe Sixpack know that?)
The case law is even murkier. The Supreme Court here has formally established that a journalist who publishes even truly classified information cannot be found guilty of violating the national security laws, only the leaker who was legally privy to that information and provided her with it. It's also well-established that "freedom of the press" isn't a freedom restricted to a particular licensed professional class, it applies to everybody, even #justabloggers.
The fairest analysis of this kerfuffle is that Data Republican made a public fool of herself by not knowing the territory, then going public about her anxieties rather than consulting an appropriate legal expert.
Yes, the info-tainment aspect is undeniably part of the ecosystem that's evolved. But most popular media is similarly rooted (NPR, NBC nightly news, etc.). It's also true that the info-tainment providers often advance the story beyond what's available in MSM. See for instance, the C. Kirk assassination -- whatever your view, it's undeniable the streamers have marshalled into public view a significant part of what's understood as the evidence.
Honestly, I don't know that we need any sweeping theories of social media. DR doesn't have a history of trying to cash in on her following or create drama to build it, as far as I know.
Occam's Razor - this happened because she's been under immense pressure from highly antagonistic adversaries (I didn't know she had been doxxed), is feeling paranoid, is unfamiliar with the law (her interpretation of what might happen is plausible and in many countries other than the USA would be correct), and realized that she made a mistake in public.
What further explanation is needed here?
I also don't think this is unique to social media or the right. We have just got used to the idea that the legacy media is full of hyped up paranoid losers who constantly sperg out over absurd things and make themselves look like massive fools in public, e.g. calling a long list of ordinary objects racist, or putting the word merit in scare quotes (a NYT example from today).
The only difference between them and DR is the latter seems to recognize mistakes and feel shame. Also, her mistake is actually understandable, whereas the other cases are not really mistakes at all but one suspects entirely deliberate.
I know that the long history of the old media institutions creates great mental pressure to believe they are somehow better or more sober than social media personalities, but then you remember that they continuously elevated characters like Taylor Lorenz and now Hasan Piker. They are still much, much worse.
This kind of thing doesn't actually happen outside of social media. Most journalists seem able to handle sources just fine without these kinds of freakouts. People give you a tip, you write a story or you don't, that's it.
DR's fuckup here is not unique, it's part of a broader 'paranoid style' of alt-populist discourse rooted in poorly substantiated speculation about intrigue and conspiracies by shadowy actors. This kind of analysis is pervasive among social media pundits and has even been turned by DR's own followers against her, as they imagine that this whole dustup was a nefarious plot masterminded by her for other purposes. A lot of social media personalities like to make themselves main characters and stage drama for their followers. This behaviour is structurally incentivised, which means very often they don't directly intend to do this or plan to do this and may not even be aware why they're doing this. Doesn't really matter either way.
DR may or may not presently be experiencing stress, but appeals to feeling bad don't cut it in other contexts and shouldn't here. If she has a question about her legal liability she needs to consult a lawyer. That's no an excuse either.
As I've documented, DR hasn't recognised her mistakes and continues to produce histrionic nonsense about the absurd situation she caused.
Legacy media institutions have done a lot of harm and their political biases and malicious strategies are part of the reason people like DR exist in the first place. They also get some things right, but beyond that they have capabilities and institutional structures that content creators don't have and they clearly benefit from those, for all their faults. Among other things: institutional backing, editorial oversight.
"Most journalists seem able to handle sources just fine without these kinds of freakouts."
That's somewhat unfair. Most ("authorized") journalists have a huge support network that includes corporate lawyers on call, and experienced management to draw upon for guidance. Independent journalists don't (unless they are lawyers themselves).
Hence my concluding point about editorial oversight and institutional backing, but I don't really understand the point about fair. this piece is about structural problems with social media, the world isn't fair and problems are problems.
At the same time, you don't need institutional backing or editorial oversight not to piss your pants when a friend in the State Department tries to tip you a story, you just need not to be ignorant and paranoid. Unfortunately, being at least one of those things is also selected for on social media.
"I fear that those who follow social media personalities strictly for content are in a minority; vastly greater numbers want to be active spectators in a kind of political sportsball."
And here we get to the crux of the matter. Which Hollywood publicist was it that opined there was no such thing as bad publicity. If they're paying attention to your bad behavior, at least they're paying attention to you...
"...things like long-form investigative journalism or deeply researched political documentaries require overhead and institutional backing beyond what most successful posters have at their disposal."
Yes, this is what I have been saying for like the last 15 cotton-picking years, to little avail. When people complain about the media environment, I remind them that they have it within their ability to vote with their wallet. You can have real journalism once again, but you have to be willing to pay for it. It's funny how mundane the solutions really are.
I don't quite understand the bile directed at DR but I'm neither a fan nor a follower so, whatever...
I do find it interesting that our host revealed how counterproductively annoying DR's followers are which led me to think about the followers (and fans) of Lindsay Clancy. It seems like worst part about populist movements is the people!
A lot of social media personalities will be angry with DR because Trump admin outreach to influencers is seen as a unique opportunity and very valuable, and she's sending a big message: "WE ARE A BUNCH OF UNRELIABLE LOSERS." Also too Sarah Rogers is not just any Trump admin member, she's considered particularly ideologically sympathetic.
That DR dropped the ball in this regard is undeniable. My reference to the bile directed at her was messages I saw on X that were utterly savage like they had been saving up their anger just waiting for this. They weren't even political, just hateful.
I used to respect Tucker Carlson as a reporter until he went "independent" and soon drove the bus off the road. Your explanation of this as a result of social media's structural incentives makes perfect sense. "Eugyppius' Razor."
I think a lot of these people who spend all day online (influencers,etc.)have the same problem academia has:
They can say and do stupid shit because they're "shielded" from dealing with reality
In the case of the influencers—naw, it's the money ;)
¿ Reality ? In the society based on docile credulity of any officially prescribed unreality, how do the normie-orcs ever recognize reality.
❦ REALITY SIMPLY DOESN’t MATTER ❦
Agreed about Carlson. I still watch an occasional interview of his, when it looks like somebody I might find interesting to hear from. But more and more, I'm choosing to ignore his stuff. For my money, the last really good interview he did was with Vladimir Putin---and how the hell long ago was that?!
I agree on Tucker; I have cancelled my January renewal and stopped checking his site. Having been born in DC in January 1939 and stated school four months before the Normandy invasion, been a young teen for Korea and did my eight-year Army Reserve obligation including an alert for activation for the second Berlin Crisis. I find all this stuff silly and totally uninteresting. With the exception of being a great fan and supporter of Eugyppius.
Eugyppius, many thanks for this explanation. I have only very recently become a free subscriber to D.R. and so far have received only two posts. The first was the essay you refer to and, not knowing any of the background, I found it incomprehensible. I thought I was a just being especially dumb today, but now feel slightly reassured.
Me too, having just subscribed and having been mystified by that post.
Relieved to know it’s not just me.
It's like tuning into the middle of a long-running soap opera. We have no idea who's been screwing whom.
Very well put.
On the broader point of alt media and the 'Right', internationally.
There are few authors that do what eugyppius does with each essay.
Unlike eugyppius, most content creators shuttle between sensationalism and pragmatism, which is not reliable nor useful.
Simply telling the truth is getting harder every day.
As the Chair of Story Telling at Cambridge in the UK (Prof. J'son Arrrrdaaaay) said, 'he preferred a form of narrative telling' instead of solid, well-researched content. It is a remarkably common defect.
I think it would be interesting for eugyppius to engage on some of these platforms. I say that as a fan and with gratitude for all he did in the dark times of the pandemic.
I do think it is better to avoid.
Some of the alt platforms are disappearing up their own backsides.
The massive assumption on their part is the audience will applaud whatever they publish.
It's time for a better grounded, debate driven, considered approach. There are too many things going wrong to do anything else. Serious content for times of deep crisis.
Old Saying: "the man with just a watch knows the time: the man with many clocks is never certain." When there was just a MSM, everyone knew just what the Governments wanted us to know and all was right with the world and the US engaged in dozens of conflicts around the world in the name of democracy, fairness, justice, and other tropes, managed by billionaire donors, banks, MIC, etc. Now, we are conflicted by alternative information sources. The truth is more visible to more people than at any other time in history, but you still need to search to find the "needle in the haystack". I know: too many metaphors. LoL
Nope, I love this trope. The meme with all the Homburged commuters in the train car, reading exactly the same newspaper, with the text decrying the death of uniform American opinion. It's like a Norman Rockwell painting of a covertly dysfunctional family.
It would be gloriously enjoyable if we here in the US didn't have crucial elections coming up that the Warriors of the Right seem determined to hand to the Lunatics of the Left on tarnished but quite serviceable platters.
And Lindsay. That idiot has quite the affinity for Deaf Girls of Expertise who go off the deep end with maximum drama.
Anyway we keep learning through painful experience how much the higher-functioning autistics require an extremely firm managerial hand and when they don't have that, chaos will bust out all over.
Perhaps that should be "self-proclaimed autistics"?
Well, we can open the category to "everyone who ain't wrapped too tight."
Never forget that "disabilities" (real or feigned) are bonus currency in the intersectionality game, like having just the "right" Pokemons.
“Deaf Girls of Expertise.” Goddammit — I am 95% certain I know who you’re talking about, which is my signal to get off social media until at least Michaelmas.
Oh, it's just that the bucolic fields of Substack ain't always as bucolic as hoped for. But they're spacious enough to allow one to bypass the gassy bits.
A timely and extremely necessary article exposing so much of the rot that pervades social media, even with non-bad actors. Whether people will become more circumspect about what they are digesting, and moreso, who they decide to swear fealty to, I’m not optimistic.
So very much of all this nonsense is evidence of and the consequences for the absolute cratering of trust that has occurred across the spectrum in society at large in our times. Don’t know when, how or if that can ever be repaired or retrieved.
'I fear that those who follow social media personalities strictly for content are in a minority; vastly greater numbers want to be active spectators in a kind of political sportsball.'
That's depressingly plausible.
I maintain my sanity by avoiding all forms of social media. I regret to say that I am in the extreme minority in this regard but that is probably typical of people like me who grew up in the Pleistocene Era.
"I maintain my sanity by avoiding all forms of social media."
I make this claim also. Yet, I find myself here, and several similar venues. We are all unclean.
Law is a quagmire for the non-lawyer. Whether it's gun law, family law, self-defense law, commercial law, or you name it -- the less you are versed in it, the scarier it is. Hell, most of us drive every day and yet still don't understand points of traffic law that we probably violate routinely.
Classified information law is designed, on top of that, to be extra scary. Classifications, categories, clearances, needs-to-know... even things that aren't quite "real" classifications but are "sometimes Y", like FOUO and NOFORN. ("Not for public release" isn't even on the radar, but how does Joe Sixpack know that?)
The case law is even murkier. The Supreme Court here has formally established that a journalist who publishes even truly classified information cannot be found guilty of violating the national security laws, only the leaker who was legally privy to that information and provided her with it. It's also well-established that "freedom of the press" isn't a freedom restricted to a particular licensed professional class, it applies to everybody, even #justabloggers.
The fairest analysis of this kerfuffle is that Data Republican made a public fool of herself by not knowing the territory, then going public about her anxieties rather than consulting an appropriate legal expert.
nothing DR received was classified, or marked as classified, nor did she have any reason at all to believe any of it was classified.
Yes, the info-tainment aspect is undeniably part of the ecosystem that's evolved. But most popular media is similarly rooted (NPR, NBC nightly news, etc.). It's also true that the info-tainment providers often advance the story beyond what's available in MSM. See for instance, the C. Kirk assassination -- whatever your view, it's undeniable the streamers have marshalled into public view a significant part of what's understood as the evidence.
Honestly, I don't know that we need any sweeping theories of social media. DR doesn't have a history of trying to cash in on her following or create drama to build it, as far as I know.
Occam's Razor - this happened because she's been under immense pressure from highly antagonistic adversaries (I didn't know she had been doxxed), is feeling paranoid, is unfamiliar with the law (her interpretation of what might happen is plausible and in many countries other than the USA would be correct), and realized that she made a mistake in public.
What further explanation is needed here?
I also don't think this is unique to social media or the right. We have just got used to the idea that the legacy media is full of hyped up paranoid losers who constantly sperg out over absurd things and make themselves look like massive fools in public, e.g. calling a long list of ordinary objects racist, or putting the word merit in scare quotes (a NYT example from today).
The only difference between them and DR is the latter seems to recognize mistakes and feel shame. Also, her mistake is actually understandable, whereas the other cases are not really mistakes at all but one suspects entirely deliberate.
I know that the long history of the old media institutions creates great mental pressure to believe they are somehow better or more sober than social media personalities, but then you remember that they continuously elevated characters like Taylor Lorenz and now Hasan Piker. They are still much, much worse.
This kind of thing doesn't actually happen outside of social media. Most journalists seem able to handle sources just fine without these kinds of freakouts. People give you a tip, you write a story or you don't, that's it.
DR's fuckup here is not unique, it's part of a broader 'paranoid style' of alt-populist discourse rooted in poorly substantiated speculation about intrigue and conspiracies by shadowy actors. This kind of analysis is pervasive among social media pundits and has even been turned by DR's own followers against her, as they imagine that this whole dustup was a nefarious plot masterminded by her for other purposes. A lot of social media personalities like to make themselves main characters and stage drama for their followers. This behaviour is structurally incentivised, which means very often they don't directly intend to do this or plan to do this and may not even be aware why they're doing this. Doesn't really matter either way.
DR may or may not presently be experiencing stress, but appeals to feeling bad don't cut it in other contexts and shouldn't here. If she has a question about her legal liability she needs to consult a lawyer. That's no an excuse either.
As I've documented, DR hasn't recognised her mistakes and continues to produce histrionic nonsense about the absurd situation she caused.
Legacy media institutions have done a lot of harm and their political biases and malicious strategies are part of the reason people like DR exist in the first place. They also get some things right, but beyond that they have capabilities and institutional structures that content creators don't have and they clearly benefit from those, for all their faults. Among other things: institutional backing, editorial oversight.
"Most journalists seem able to handle sources just fine without these kinds of freakouts."
That's somewhat unfair. Most ("authorized") journalists have a huge support network that includes corporate lawyers on call, and experienced management to draw upon for guidance. Independent journalists don't (unless they are lawyers themselves).
Hence my concluding point about editorial oversight and institutional backing, but I don't really understand the point about fair. this piece is about structural problems with social media, the world isn't fair and problems are problems.
At the same time, you don't need institutional backing or editorial oversight not to piss your pants when a friend in the State Department tries to tip you a story, you just need not to be ignorant and paranoid. Unfortunately, being at least one of those things is also selected for on social media.
"I fear that those who follow social media personalities strictly for content are in a minority; vastly greater numbers want to be active spectators in a kind of political sportsball."
And here we get to the crux of the matter. Which Hollywood publicist was it that opined there was no such thing as bad publicity. If they're paying attention to your bad behavior, at least they're paying attention to you...
Women, man.
"...things like long-form investigative journalism or deeply researched political documentaries require overhead and institutional backing beyond what most successful posters have at their disposal."
Yes, this is what I have been saying for like the last 15 cotton-picking years, to little avail. When people complain about the media environment, I remind them that they have it within their ability to vote with their wallet. You can have real journalism once again, but you have to be willing to pay for it. It's funny how mundane the solutions really are.
I don't quite understand the bile directed at DR but I'm neither a fan nor a follower so, whatever...
I do find it interesting that our host revealed how counterproductively annoying DR's followers are which led me to think about the followers (and fans) of Lindsay Clancy. It seems like worst part about populist movements is the people!
A lot of social media personalities will be angry with DR because Trump admin outreach to influencers is seen as a unique opportunity and very valuable, and she's sending a big message: "WE ARE A BUNCH OF UNRELIABLE LOSERS." Also too Sarah Rogers is not just any Trump admin member, she's considered particularly ideologically sympathetic.
That DR dropped the ball in this regard is undeniable. My reference to the bile directed at her was messages I saw on X that were utterly savage like they had been saving up their anger just waiting for this. They weren't even political, just hateful.
In a society where Luigi fans are even a thing, despair of any solution that would involve rationality or ethics,
'…the peculiar pressures of social media mean that influencers active there are less reporters or pundits than they are entertainers.'
… which might not be as bad if their followers understood that.
Like professional wrestling, whose fanbase knows it's all an act.