I take this as a stronger signal that too many people with shitty opinions have a microphone these days, and they make it their entire career to "tour" and manufacture outrage. We're really complaining that students objected to Tim Pool speaking on their campus? Freedom from association can be as strong of an argument as freedom of expression. Negative / positive rights and all that. Hopefully we're hitting peak podcast / ragebait culture and Gen Alpha will call out their elder Gen Z cohort as "cringe" for listening to so many low-signal podcasts.
No. I think there’s a baseline level of rejection of speakers that an NYT journalist would usually be a part of. I think we’re above that baseline because of podcasters with shitty opinions.
And it’s not so much that the opinions themselves are shitty, but that the methods of expression are designed (and through algorithms, optimized) to enrage and incite.
Ok, that’s fair, I do think that there’s a lot of intentional ragebait and controversy right now in the media.
However, ragebait isn’t a new thing. Think of Fox News hosts in the 2000s, Bill O’Reilly and the like. They made their living making outrageous and controversial statements to millions of viewers. And the radio “shock jocks” alongside them.
