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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29299 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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Elon Musk has suspended a slew of liberal journalists and pundits from Twitter. It is, as Benjamin Braddoc puts it, a red wedding for the liberal establishment. I initially believed that he was just the "controlled" opposition of the deep state, obviously he's stepped on way too many toes for that. This imo underscores an important truth to the ultra principled who believe in free speech absolutism and neutral institutions, the overton window won't shift the other way just to punish the "heretics" who've assailed this sacred virtue. Social media, our Frankenstein, has made it insanely easier for mob rule to influence culture (not that it wasn't already).

I still don't believe we're witnessing complete course reversal, but this could just be the first legitimate W for the right.

EDIT: It looks like he's lifting the suspension.

Definitely the biggest W for the right since Trump. If Elon can succeed in bringing "the press are regime shills, institutions are all controlled by progressives, progressives only care about who/whom" to the mainstream, then a lot of the hard work is done. All these institutions have going for them is credibility. Once it's gone, it doesn't come back.

How is this a W? What part of banning liberal journalists is a W? Was their credibility somehow based on not getting banned from Twitter?

Was their credibility somehow based on not getting banned from Twitter?

Yes.

There is no such thing as credibility any more for the chattering classes; only popularity. And you can't be popular if no-one can see you.

And yet, their publications will go on to be cited as reliable coverage in the halls of government, academia, etc. They'll be given a more favorable look as historians look back. The people who support them will still do so and the people who hate them won't. Not really seeing how much they lose if they can't cultivate a twitter persona.

Gee, I guess they’re really silly to be so upset about it then.

That's like asking why someone with good healthcare coverage would care if you punched them. That it doesn't impact the rest of their life doesn't mean you didn't do something wrong to them.

This is not to argue the bans are unjustified, I have no opinion on that right now, only that this logic does not hold at all.

You said you didn't see how much they lost by losing a twitter persona. Being punched is painful or frightening, hence an actual loss.

Why would it be a loss?

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Streisand effect says otherwise. I hadn't heard of any of the banned journalists until my timeline was flooded with people talking about the banned journalists.

Are you going to start following them on Mastodon (or on Twitter when they return in a week), or will you forget most of them in a month's time?

I feel like so many invocations of the Streissand Effect are like that meme that's structured like 'Awareness + ???? = Profit'. Being kicked off a platform of immense visibility is surely at counterwinds with the small bump of notoriety you receive for a week.

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