/lit/ - Literature

the irony of our time is that we arrive at a point where we can say, ok, it's all just money and tech and media, we can't do anything, it's the end of history and all of this stuff. and yet it is by that very same process that Silicon Valley cannot seem to keep itself *out* of deals and arrangements that are in the long run going to be disastrous for them: that is, everything has to do with the attempts to regulate hate speech, or produce the ultimate non-conformist utopia, or whatever else. they are basically trapped within the self-imposed confines of rules they discover and attempt to regulate, and in the end this brings them into close proximity with all kinds of stuff they would probably prefer not to be associated with: for example, the complex nature of Middle Eastern policy, or postmodern theory, or any number of other things. but in the age of the internet the whole nature of broadcasting fundamentally changes, because we can see what Twitter is: it's a direct line straight into the mind of your fellow consumers with a minimal role assigned to media pundits, because the pundits - rather like the philosophers! - eventually get crowbarred into a position of having to admit that they too cannot be experts in The Feels, because there's simply too much information for even the most ironic stance possible to be presented with a straight face day after day. eventually you have to Take A Stand, and Taking A Stand is a death sentence. in the age of Trump it has become more permissable, because now it seems like #Resistance, but the facts don't bear this out either. it's like trying to fight asymmetrical media warfare using Napoleonic tactics. or perhaps like trying to convince others you're fighting WW2, when in fact this more resembles the Cold War and the kinds of McCarthyite tactics he would have preferred. except that we know McCarthy is politically beyond good and evil, and that too is outdated - now, *everybody* is beyond good and evil and that is exactly the problem. it's fucking anarcho-tribalism, and all you have to do if you are the news is *try and represent what is actually there* without the ideology. we've become completely overwhelmed by the *need to editorialize.* and all of this shit has to stop, because there is no longer a one and true correct Position to take on this shit.

b/c the deluge is in. what would be good is if we *just allowed people to think for themselves,* rather than taking it upon ourselves to do their thinking for them, because this is really not good, this isn't what it means to be Heroic Media Guardian or any of this shit. it is cynical, it is deluded, it is wrong, and it is the same bullshit fallacy that once took place in the universities also. people never really learn anything if someone else is doing their thinking for them, and people who want to think on behalf of other people may be very confused, very opportunistic, batshit insane, all of the above, and so on.