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."
If I think aliens are demons I’m going to have a hard time finding anyone in my circle to discuss it (except my oldest brother 🙄), but on the Internet I can find a million.
Clicks corrupt, a form of power, Eugyppius is 100% correct.
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.
The explanation that Tucker's departure from serious journalism into the world of tabloid garbage is due to social media's structural incentives doesn't quite hold water for me. But it's worth consideration. I used to respect him, even though I remember him doing segments on flying saucers on FOX six years ago. At the time, I just chalked it up to dumb programming by the network execs. Now I'm thinking that the truth is that he really, sincerely believes it, which is scary.
I've long figured there actually are aliens. I just don't understand why it's kept secret. BUT I don't really spend any time thinking about it - I just think probability has it we're not the only intelligent life, and it's probable there are other inhabitable planets in other places - whether they're carbon based or something different, who knows, but it just seems possible enough that I wouldn't expect the government to say peep if it was true.
I, too, wondered what happened to Tucker. This explanation does make some sense. But boggles my mind since I had assumed he had f-u money and I thus expected better from him. Oh well.
I agree with your remark and those of some of your other respondents, but let us consider one more possibility: frequency of output
When a journalist goes from one installment per week to one per day, the desperation to find a topic increases and the time to think about them decreases. Compare the quality of Eugyppius' editorials, which appear neither on a strict schedule nor very frequently, with those in The Free Press or with Tucker's podcasts, among others. Eugyppius responds to events after he's thought about them, and some of these other folks are required to provide content on administrative demand or content to which paid advertisements are attached.
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.
Same here! I missed the entire internet drama but for her substack post, and all I could figure was that she's trying to be honest and walking back her earlier emotion. But really, I'm just not sure about any of it. I'm glad others are having this same baffling experience.
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.
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.
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.
This stuff does happen outside of social media! Especially if you generalize just a little bit to journalists making themselves the story through stupid dramas.
I'm remembering the Julian Assange fiasco here. The Guardian at first worked with him, but then after accidentally publishing an encryption key that released a huge pile of raw diplomatic cables they turned on him, falsely calling him a rapist and other insanities. The journalists not only became the story but literally wrote a whole book in which they were the story, and it became as much about the stupidity and malice of the journalists as the leaks themselves. No sign of any competent institutional oversight anywhere, or even basic IT literacy.
Then I'm remembering Russiagate. YEARS of hysteria, freakouts, absurd conspiracy theories and brainless repetition of testimony from ultra-compromised sources that any sane lawyer or sober management would have put a stop to immediately. But there were no such lawyers or managers, and eventually the story became about the investigation into the journalistic meltdown as much as it did the actual allegations.
Then I'm remembering Gamergate. A multi-year institutional crisis in which gaming journalists engaged in non-stop hysterics, including creating fake evidence of non-existent stalkers.
Heck, most journalists don't even use pseudonyms. They put their faces on every story, on every TV broadcast. They looooooove being the center of the story. Right wing social media figures like Data Republican do at least try to keep the focus on what they're reporting rather than themselves, which is why becoming the story is so stressful for them and why malignant leftists are constantly trying to doxx them. You can't doxx a left wing journalist because they publish all their insane stupidities under their own name to begin with.
So I understand where you're coming from here, and it'd be great if right wing citizen journalist types never made any errors despite the huge pressure they're under from the (very violent) left. It would. But the quality of "journalism" isn't higher. They just never admit fault or express shame.
Mistakes and errors happen everywhere. The point is that this wasn’t a mistake. This is exactly the kind of content that people pay social media influencers to produce. Had DR just run with the story she was tipped she would’ve gotten less views and generated much less interest. Similarly if Candace Owen’s just provided defensible well-supported analysis of Kirk’s assassination and the Robinson trial she would have no viewers. This conspiratorial, paranoid, drama-heavy content is systematically favoured by social media dynamics, it’s not a mistake or an error.
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.
A very smart friend of mine with a small following on Substack makes a distinction between commentary and culture war. Commentary is commentary, you say what you want and you hope enough people agree with you it makes the job worthwhile. But no one gets rich doing commentary.
Culture war is where the money is at. Culture war delivers the clicks, the engagement, the numbers.
And quite a number of folks have consciously made the leap from wise and informed commentary to culture war in recent years, with great success (depending on how you look at it). Jordan Peterson is my friend’s favorite example, a figure my friend credits with helping him get through a very difficult family tragedy. But since then Peterson has become a culture warrior, and while he probably has enriched himself and his family in so doing, his commentary if far less thoughtful and interesting than it once was.
So true. Early Darkhorse podcasts were so insightful especially when Weinstein focused on his particular area of expertise of evolutionary biology. But once he got wrapped up in the save the republic movement, I feel like his commentary is increasingly conspiratorial and paranoic. Sadly, that probably gets him more engagement and, in turn, $$$$.
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.
'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.'
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.
"...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'll throw in my 2 cents worth (an aside: what would that even buy today? A couple of breaths of air, I'd imagine, and not much else) and say that I appreciate this piece, and your work in general. I kind of wondered what the hell happened to Tucker Carlson and I believe that you've largely explained it here. He really did run off the rails. And you're comment about true crime stories also struck a nerve. I follow Megyn Kelly, have been for a few years now, and she started her Megyn Kelly Network. I enjoy some of the vloggers and their work, but not all and that's okay. But she now does a true crime series. I haven't watched it, been there, done that back in the 1980s and I'm spending way too much time on the internet anyway. So in Megyn's network, I see the seeds of what you're saying. She's been sympathetic towards Tucker Carlson's viewpoint though she has not self-immolated to the extent he has and I still will give time to her views. But she seems to be becoming somewhat entrapped in the phenomenon you've described here. I think, perhaps, she has a stronger moral compass than Tucker and this is allowing her to maintain a little more balanced perspective. I'm afraid that I will have to agree with your summation as well, I don't really see what can be done to reverse this trend.
One other thing, I believe that both Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, both fairly strong supporters of Donald Trump and his presidential campaign two years ago, now are both coming out strongly against Trump and his involvement in Iran. They both quote the mantra of no more foreign wars that Trump was using as part of his 2024 campaign. I believe it's also generally accepted as part of U.S. foreign policy that Iran should have no nuclear weapons, ever. Who, other than the U.S., would stop Iran from acquiring the means to build these weapons? The Americans have periodically gone through bouts of isolationism throughout their history yet their governments have interfered with other nation's affairs from early in the nineteenth century to this very day. For all the American isolationist out there, you do not build your nation through expansionism and policies like the Monroe Doctrine and enjoy the wealth, power, and prestige that brings without having to pay the price by being the world's unofficial cop. I think it could be reasonably surmised that the current radical regime in Iran would not hesitate to find a use for a nuclear weapon had they the ability to build one. So, really, what choice did Donald Trump have? As is obvious by the current situation in Iran, the current Iranian regime has not earned the trust of anyone nor does negotiation work with these people. The only thing that gets the attention of Iran's rulers is sheer, brute force. So that's the path that the U.S. and Israel both had to take. And so I cannot understand how Tucker, Megyn, and all the others don't see this. Trump's action isn't just to make the world a little bit of a safer place, he's making America a safer place. In my lifetime it seems like yesterday but I guess to most of the world, the twin towers in New York City is ancient history.
You are way too kind about Megyn Kelly. She recycles most of Tucker’s Jew/Israel-hating guests. They pass them around like a sexually transmitted disease.
This is the first I’ve heard of this story and I’d say her autism got the better of her. She surely hasn’t heard of Greenwald or the like before and doesn’t consider herself a journalist which I’d imagine most shitposters don’t because they’ve most likely never taken a journalism course in their lives. She should get her head outta her ass because deepthroat she ain’t. I have no social media presence and never have and stories like this don’t have me clamoring to dive head first into it. Tucker is a loon anymore. Him and Hunter can blow lines together now as besties.
I think the right is stuck with flawed, but intelligent, right wing social media people for a variety of reasons. Some are because MSM is iffy at best, Fox News hates Trump and never did fair coverage on a whole range of issues during covid and the Jan 6 protests, and Epoch Times is Falun Gong. Both can be helpful but they also have their own narratives. And then the influencers that are in it for clicks, their money is tied to whatever narrative their monetary backers tell them it is (Jack Posobiec, Tucker, Massie, and presumably Lindsay, etc.). So we are left with a group of outliers, many of them autists because they don’t fully understand the risks and others are tightly wedded to the credentialist world that feeds them. Lawyers and doctors and professors are loath to identify themselves because they will get doxxed and fired. (Eugy, you are the rare exception. It takes a stubborn and principled person to leave the cushy confines and push back). So the autists just deal with data and they are super annoyed that the powers that be, manipulate the data (whether it’s the ABA, AMA or a PHd Professor who’s a fraud and a plagiarist), so they speak out. I’m not sure many of them even fully absorbed what the consequences of speaking out would be and their prior work experience was a complete bubble of just data collating and extrapolating that. I think DR started with data collation of the election precincts and then she evolved into uncovering the NGO networks. So, anyway, that’s my theory.
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 ;)
If I think aliens are demons I’m going to have a hard time finding anyone in my circle to discuss it (except my oldest brother 🙄), but on the Internet I can find a million.
Clicks corrupt, a form of power, Eugyppius is 100% correct.
¿ 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 ❦
They’re paid for their unreality.
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.
The explanation that Tucker's departure from serious journalism into the world of tabloid garbage is due to social media's structural incentives doesn't quite hold water for me. But it's worth consideration. I used to respect him, even though I remember him doing segments on flying saucers on FOX six years ago. At the time, I just chalked it up to dumb programming by the network execs. Now I'm thinking that the truth is that he really, sincerely believes it, which is scary.
I've long figured there actually are aliens. I just don't understand why it's kept secret. BUT I don't really spend any time thinking about it - I just think probability has it we're not the only intelligent life, and it's probable there are other inhabitable planets in other places - whether they're carbon based or something different, who knows, but it just seems possible enough that I wouldn't expect the government to say peep if it was true.
I, too, wondered what happened to Tucker. This explanation does make some sense. But boggles my mind since I had assumed he had f-u money and I thus expected better from him. Oh well.
I agree with your remark and those of some of your other respondents, but let us consider one more possibility: frequency of output
When a journalist goes from one installment per week to one per day, the desperation to find a topic increases and the time to think about them decreases. Compare the quality of Eugyppius' editorials, which appear neither on a strict schedule nor very frequently, with those in The Free Press or with Tucker's podcasts, among others. Eugyppius responds to events after he's thought about them, and some of these other folks are required to provide content on administrative demand or content to which paid advertisements are attached.
Good point. Call it "news inflation." Create too much of it and it becomes marginally less valuable.
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.
Same here! I missed the entire internet drama but for her substack post, and all I could figure was that she's trying to be honest and walking back her earlier emotion. But really, I'm just not sure about any of it. I'm glad others are having this same baffling experience.
She mostly posts on X, and I'm not on it a lot. I find her 'Stacks a little harder to follow anyway.
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.
You may have misspelled fuckallit
Now dear. That stays in the barnyard.
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.
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.
This stuff does happen outside of social media! Especially if you generalize just a little bit to journalists making themselves the story through stupid dramas.
I'm remembering the Julian Assange fiasco here. The Guardian at first worked with him, but then after accidentally publishing an encryption key that released a huge pile of raw diplomatic cables they turned on him, falsely calling him a rapist and other insanities. The journalists not only became the story but literally wrote a whole book in which they were the story, and it became as much about the stupidity and malice of the journalists as the leaks themselves. No sign of any competent institutional oversight anywhere, or even basic IT literacy.
Then I'm remembering Russiagate. YEARS of hysteria, freakouts, absurd conspiracy theories and brainless repetition of testimony from ultra-compromised sources that any sane lawyer or sober management would have put a stop to immediately. But there were no such lawyers or managers, and eventually the story became about the investigation into the journalistic meltdown as much as it did the actual allegations.
Then I'm remembering Gamergate. A multi-year institutional crisis in which gaming journalists engaged in non-stop hysterics, including creating fake evidence of non-existent stalkers.
Heck, most journalists don't even use pseudonyms. They put their faces on every story, on every TV broadcast. They looooooove being the center of the story. Right wing social media figures like Data Republican do at least try to keep the focus on what they're reporting rather than themselves, which is why becoming the story is so stressful for them and why malignant leftists are constantly trying to doxx them. You can't doxx a left wing journalist because they publish all their insane stupidities under their own name to begin with.
So I understand where you're coming from here, and it'd be great if right wing citizen journalist types never made any errors despite the huge pressure they're under from the (very violent) left. It would. But the quality of "journalism" isn't higher. They just never admit fault or express shame.
Mistakes and errors happen everywhere. The point is that this wasn’t a mistake. This is exactly the kind of content that people pay social media influencers to produce. Had DR just run with the story she was tipped she would’ve gotten less views and generated much less interest. Similarly if Candace Owen’s just provided defensible well-supported analysis of Kirk’s assassination and the Robinson trial she would have no viewers. This conspiratorial, paranoid, drama-heavy content is systematically favoured by social media dynamics, it’s not a mistake or an error.
She is the woman in the arena. Swings a lot, hits mostly, misses sometimes. It will blow over. I think eugyppius makes too much of it.
Doxxing seems like a big deal in the states especially if you are small woman. Paranoia inducing.
I Like some of the content, particularly dear senator XYZ. Lol
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.
A very smart friend of mine with a small following on Substack makes a distinction between commentary and culture war. Commentary is commentary, you say what you want and you hope enough people agree with you it makes the job worthwhile. But no one gets rich doing commentary.
Culture war is where the money is at. Culture war delivers the clicks, the engagement, the numbers.
And quite a number of folks have consciously made the leap from wise and informed commentary to culture war in recent years, with great success (depending on how you look at it). Jordan Peterson is my friend’s favorite example, a figure my friend credits with helping him get through a very difficult family tragedy. But since then Peterson has become a culture warrior, and while he probably has enriched himself and his family in so doing, his commentary if far less thoughtful and interesting than it once was.
I see Bret Weinstein trending this way also.
So true. Early Darkhorse podcasts were so insightful especially when Weinstein focused on his particular area of expertise of evolutionary biology. But once he got wrapped up in the save the republic movement, I feel like his commentary is increasingly conspiratorial and paranoic. Sadly, that probably gets him more engagement and, in turn, $$$$.
Sad.
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.
Melodrama.
'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.
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.
"...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'll throw in my 2 cents worth (an aside: what would that even buy today? A couple of breaths of air, I'd imagine, and not much else) and say that I appreciate this piece, and your work in general. I kind of wondered what the hell happened to Tucker Carlson and I believe that you've largely explained it here. He really did run off the rails. And you're comment about true crime stories also struck a nerve. I follow Megyn Kelly, have been for a few years now, and she started her Megyn Kelly Network. I enjoy some of the vloggers and their work, but not all and that's okay. But she now does a true crime series. I haven't watched it, been there, done that back in the 1980s and I'm spending way too much time on the internet anyway. So in Megyn's network, I see the seeds of what you're saying. She's been sympathetic towards Tucker Carlson's viewpoint though she has not self-immolated to the extent he has and I still will give time to her views. But she seems to be becoming somewhat entrapped in the phenomenon you've described here. I think, perhaps, she has a stronger moral compass than Tucker and this is allowing her to maintain a little more balanced perspective. I'm afraid that I will have to agree with your summation as well, I don't really see what can be done to reverse this trend.
One other thing, I believe that both Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, both fairly strong supporters of Donald Trump and his presidential campaign two years ago, now are both coming out strongly against Trump and his involvement in Iran. They both quote the mantra of no more foreign wars that Trump was using as part of his 2024 campaign. I believe it's also generally accepted as part of U.S. foreign policy that Iran should have no nuclear weapons, ever. Who, other than the U.S., would stop Iran from acquiring the means to build these weapons? The Americans have periodically gone through bouts of isolationism throughout their history yet their governments have interfered with other nation's affairs from early in the nineteenth century to this very day. For all the American isolationist out there, you do not build your nation through expansionism and policies like the Monroe Doctrine and enjoy the wealth, power, and prestige that brings without having to pay the price by being the world's unofficial cop. I think it could be reasonably surmised that the current radical regime in Iran would not hesitate to find a use for a nuclear weapon had they the ability to build one. So, really, what choice did Donald Trump have? As is obvious by the current situation in Iran, the current Iranian regime has not earned the trust of anyone nor does negotiation work with these people. The only thing that gets the attention of Iran's rulers is sheer, brute force. So that's the path that the U.S. and Israel both had to take. And so I cannot understand how Tucker, Megyn, and all the others don't see this. Trump's action isn't just to make the world a little bit of a safer place, he's making America a safer place. In my lifetime it seems like yesterday but I guess to most of the world, the twin towers in New York City is ancient history.
You are way too kind about Megyn Kelly. She recycles most of Tucker’s Jew/Israel-hating guests. They pass them around like a sexually transmitted disease.
This is the first I’ve heard of this story and I’d say her autism got the better of her. She surely hasn’t heard of Greenwald or the like before and doesn’t consider herself a journalist which I’d imagine most shitposters don’t because they’ve most likely never taken a journalism course in their lives. She should get her head outta her ass because deepthroat she ain’t. I have no social media presence and never have and stories like this don’t have me clamoring to dive head first into it. Tucker is a loon anymore. Him and Hunter can blow lines together now as besties.
I think the right is stuck with flawed, but intelligent, right wing social media people for a variety of reasons. Some are because MSM is iffy at best, Fox News hates Trump and never did fair coverage on a whole range of issues during covid and the Jan 6 protests, and Epoch Times is Falun Gong. Both can be helpful but they also have their own narratives. And then the influencers that are in it for clicks, their money is tied to whatever narrative their monetary backers tell them it is (Jack Posobiec, Tucker, Massie, and presumably Lindsay, etc.). So we are left with a group of outliers, many of them autists because they don’t fully understand the risks and others are tightly wedded to the credentialist world that feeds them. Lawyers and doctors and professors are loath to identify themselves because they will get doxxed and fired. (Eugy, you are the rare exception. It takes a stubborn and principled person to leave the cushy confines and push back). So the autists just deal with data and they are super annoyed that the powers that be, manipulate the data (whether it’s the ABA, AMA or a PHd Professor who’s a fraud and a plagiarist), so they speak out. I’m not sure many of them even fully absorbed what the consequences of speaking out would be and their prior work experience was a complete bubble of just data collating and extrapolating that. I think DR started with data collation of the election precincts and then she evolved into uncovering the NGO networks. So, anyway, that’s my theory.