it seems that, an ad and investor supported CMS for social, that becomes a public company, and applies a similar editorial algorithm to diverse cultures and demographics, needs must optimize for its most significant stakeholders. Investors want advertisers, advertisers want eyeballs, eyeballs can god damned be force-fed whatever content makes them click most. If Facebook news feed has become a rage-filled bubble-chamber that’s because powerful forces demand it become that: human psychology, the zeitgeist, demographics and economics.
.. outrage engages because outrage has become the main currency you can trade in for being right.
.. In a world that has exchanged old authority values for new authority values, there’s a transition period of authority looting which is where we are now. The crowd naturally gets a little mad and scared when the values that used to lead the crowd suddenly dematerialize, and in the age of authority looting everybody runs around trying to get as much authority for themselves as they can. And it turns out that the way individuals can loot authority for themselves in these troubled times is by taking it from others. So outrage engages because outrage let’s you pretend others are wrong so you can pretend you are right, thereby lootin some sweet authority for yourself. And social CMS systems are obviously an efficient arena for this.
.. It might be ugly, but Facebook is a reflection of us. It’s the interactive mirror. Some people don’t like looking in the mirror. It’s not surprising. It can be uncomfortable. To see your true Face.
Milo Yiannopoulos’s Cynical Book Deal
Though he is often described as a troll provocateur, he prefers the label “free-speech fundamentalist.”
.. Yiannopoulos, too, has suffered an exile—from Twitter, which finally banned him in July, after the Jones affair. Evidently, the episode boosted Yiannopoulos’s sense of himself as a man not to be trifled with.
.. Getting kicked off Twitter hardly stopped Yiannopoulos in his tracks, but it did deny him a major platform for his provocations. That he would parlay his notoriety into some sort of book deal is an unsavory, if inevitable, prospect. The rude surprise is that a major company like Simon & Schuster would be the one to give it to him
.. a man who has helped define the Trump moment’s flippant bigotry in the service of brand-building narcissism.
.. “I met with top execs at Simon & Schuster earlier in the year and spent half an hour trying to shock them with lewd jokes and outrageous opinions,” he told the Hollywood Reporter. “I thought they were going to have me escorted from the building—but instead they offered me a wheelbarrow full of money.”
.. Yiannopoulos’s motivation is not so much ideological as it is fundamentally adolescent; he spreads his bile for the sake of seeing just how much bile-spreading he can get away with
Will Trump Help Make The Daily Show Great Again?
Trevor Noah may find his breakout moment during a presidency that promises to dismantle many of the established systems of American democracy.
.. Trevor Noah tends to be at his best—as a comedian, and as a political observer—when he can apply his perspective as a non-American to the assorted antics of the American political system. Noah’s extended riff on candidate Donald Trump’s resemblance to an African dictator might have been the most culturally enduring observation he made during his first year at the helm of The Daily Show;
.. He hasn’t been righteously angry, in the manner of Samantha Bee, or indignantly wonky, in the manner of John Oliver, or impishly cheeky, in the manner of Stephen Colbert and Jimmys Fallon and Kimmel.
.. Noah’s comment, here, was designed not necessarily to provoke guffaws or even outrage, but rather to provoke … thought. Critical assessment. It was wonkery in the guise of comedy.
.. And on the other, there’s the fact that Noah seems to be, much like Obama himself, constitutionally calm: His perspective is more observational
.. late-night audiences, the argument further goes, haven’t been looking to comedians to explain the world so much as they’ve been looking to them to channel its many outrages. They’ve been seeking catharsis, not analysis.
.. Trump’s victory has been called, by Trump himself, “Brexit plus plus plus.”.. Trevor Noah—the man who locates himself both outside the American system and within it—may be poised, as is traditional, to help his viewers rage at the world, and to help them laugh at it. Just importantly, though, he may also be poised to help them re-imagine it.
Calm down. We’ll be fine no matter who wins.
Everyone’s in on the same game, which is essentially to ensure that The People gobble up what they’ve been serving — and what they’re serving is resentment, fear and anger.
.. Sure, people were upset about stuff. But what we feel now was mass-produced by a propaganda industry that profits most when people are worked up.
You want a good money tip? Invest in outrage.