
Gawker Smeared Me, and yet I Stand with It - wglb
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/31/opinion/i-stand-with-gawker.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&moduleDetail=inside-nyt-region-3&module=inside-nyt-region&region=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region&_r=0
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mc32
The article is full of non-sequiturs.

"I believe that Gawker serves an essential function in a celebrity-obsessed
culture"

? So, in a celebrity shunning culture they'd be useless?

"...the public right to information is more important than any individual’s
right to privacy"

What is this public right to information, where does it come from?

"Gawker is responding to an asymmetry of celebrity power"

An obsession with celebrities. As if celebrities were the important aspect of
society. If celebrity power is unfavorable to ordinary people, legislate their
power down to size, don't rely on a white-knight like "protector of the
people"

If Gawker wanted to do the public a favor, rather than say, just another way
to make a buck or to wield power, they'd do hard journalism.

I mean, who cares what kind of sex HH has or Peter's sex preferences are?
That's salaciousness disguised as news. And no, I don't care to see a
congressperson's sex tapes either. I do care that they engage in illegal
things, yes, but not about people's peccadilloes. Isn't society beyond
voyeurism-thru-media-cum-news already?

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lucozade
> ... the recent investigation into Donald Trump’s hair, [is] directly in
> opposition to the triumph of celebrity culture.

There's so much going on in that phrase it's hard to know where to start.

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internaut
>> ... the recent investigation into Donald Trump’s hair, [is] directly in
opposition to the triumph of celebrity culture.

>There's so much going on in that phrase it's hard to know where to start.

I think I've figured it out. It's like reading Lacan or Derrida.

The author or speaker generates these statements that create a combinatorial
explosion of possible meanings. The author then moves swiftly on while you're
trying to work out what the fuck they are talking about.

Since you're still cogitating on whether they've said something profound or
something ludicrous, you become the slow one. Eventually you resort to
skimming their sentences as they are spoken or written, desperately attempting
to extract sense from meaninglessness.

This is seen as victory by them. They are deep. You are dim.

This is like a programmer authoring code that takes up a lot of machine time
and then ascribing sophistication to the program because why else would it use
so many resources.

It is true that it is often difficult to follow somebody's argument when they
are of sufficiently evolved intellect. The difference is that there exists a
'ladder', a key metaphor or strand of thought that connects all together, and
once you find that element, everything else they were talking about on that
topic begins to make sense.

The key is to resolutely pin them down on a particular point. The intellectual
will, with sufficient prodding, be able to break it down using simple language
without jargon. Metaphors. Pictures. Beginning from the beginning.

The pseudointellectual will flower into a fully developed argot that extends
everything and explains nothing. If they cannot interpret their reasoning for
another mortal it is likely they do not understand it themselves.

If they want to feel complicated, I say we leave them to their devices. Good
luck building on that foundation.

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internaut
Well that was incomprehensible.

What is the politically correct word for these people?

Ah yes, 'intellectually challenged'.

In related news Gawker has partially sold itself to Viktor, a man for whom
people like Nick Denton are human chew toys.

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chillacy
This is tangential, but I'm somewhat surprised at how many journalists are
recording with their iphones in the picture. Are these guys not big station
reporters who can afford the big mics? Those mics themselves can't be that
expensive.

~~~
jackvalentine
They're not recording for broadcast - just as a note of what he said for when
they write about it later.

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nikolay
Peter Thiel makes people draw all kinds of analogies...

