
Edward Snowden: The Whistleblower Fantasy - eggspurt
http://arachne.cc/issues/01/snowden-dorothy-howard.html
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colinbartlett
> The Rubik’s cube almost as a sex toy of those paranoid for dataveillance, a
> symbol of the genius needed to beat corrupt political systems.

Honestly? What is this garbage? Interesting commentary, maybe, but I can't say
I agree with any of this. Is this a respected author or news source of whose
opinion I should be more accepting?

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x5n1
> Is this a respected author or news source of whose opinion I should be more
> accepting?

Do you let fame determine the legitimacy of the your media you listen to?

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elthran
How do you not? Someone's history and expertise should absolutely be used as a
gauge of how to view the information they're presenting. Do you treat Fox News
the same as the BBC? Or are you going to take David Icke at the same level of
truth as Glen Greenwald?

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x5n1
> David Icke at the same level of truth as Glen Greenwald?

I treat all non lizard-people with similar level of "truthiness"

~~~
voidz
Also, don't forget to buy seeds while you still can!

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pmilot
Maybe it's just because I don't frequent social networks all that much, but
I've never been exposed to this sort of depiction of Edward Snowden. The only
coverage I've come across of him focused solely on what he did or his current
predicament, not his image.

Even calling that Wired cover "sexualized" seems a little farfetched to me.

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elcapitan
Not using social media is probably the simplest and most effective strategy to
stick to the 'real issues'.

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0942v8653
… and yet here we all are.

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johnchristopher
Does HN fall into the social network category ?

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rootbear
I don't think so. The signal to noise ratio here is much higher than on
typical social media. It's self policing and there are rewards (karma) for
good behavior that are absent on most social media. HN to me feels more like
early Usenet newsgroups than it does something like Facebook.

~~~
elcapitan
I appreciate that the ego-factor is very low here. No profiles, no avatars, no
'mentioning' of other people, just the author name of a comment, that's it.

Also - hn doesn't center around people, but around topics. That changes the
whole thing.

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dangerlibrary
One can further an argument in this way - by simultaneously writing an article
sexualizing Snowden and arguing that he is being sexualized in articles.

Recursion should be old hat to this crowd, though. It's not interesting or
thought provoking.

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paulajohnson
I followed this expecting an analysis of the "whistleblower protection" that
some people think Snowdon could have availed himself of. Instead I got "Hey,
look, I hope you're not being distracted by this big media distraction I'm
part of."

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grandalf
When presenting ideas to primates, it's helpful to create emotion and tension
by introducing an element of sex. This applies to any ideas whatsoever.

We are animals.

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oneJob
This diatribe is regarding the media's handling of one of _many_ recent
whistleblower stories, and an atypical one at that. After beginning with a
historical expiation of the etymology of the term, the author goes on to
discard other current whistleblower stories, the vast majority of which the
media has covered in a starkly different manner, and commits the sin they are
condemning, that of sesationalizing the Snowden case.

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hxatekin
what if this writing is sci-fi theoretical non-fiction? What makes you ascribe
the quality of adolescence onto certain forms of theorizing?

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ablation
Hilariously adolescent garbage.

