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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29716 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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Right-leaning and centrist political and business elites often doubt the NYT. Many regular people have NYT-incompatible views but simply don't pay enough attention to the NYT to notice.

The NYT is a product of today's (overwhelmingly blue tribe) cultural elites, so naturally they find it credible and reenforce this through the other organs of cultural production under their control. However, there's a huge amount that's not under their control, now including Twitter. They can refuse to grant these things status within their system, but people outside of that system have little reason to care.

Right-leaning and centrist political and business elites often doubt the NYT.

There are no such people.

Many regular people have NYT-incompatible views but simply don't pay enough attention to the NYT to notice.

But if they did, they would change their views to be compatible.

However, there's a huge amount that's not under their control, now including Twitter. They can refuse to grant these things status within their system, but people outside of that system have little reason to care.

Twitter is outside their control for now, until they recapture or destroy it (they can deny it ad revenue indefinitely). And you can't get outside their system, not in the US anyway. They control too much.

Republican politicians and Republican-donor business executives (for starters) all unquestioningly believe the official narrative according to the NYT?

Twitter ad boycotts don't actually seem to be going so well. Apple and Amazon, sometimes rated as the #1 and #2 brands in the world, have reportedly already resumed advertising, which is basically a green light for anyone to do so. Casually scrolling my timeline for two minutes with personalized ads turned off, I see ads for Hyundai, Kia, Chevron, Robinhood, StateFarm, a film called M3GAN (NBCUniversal), Hulu (also NBCUniversal), the NFL, ESPN, and Walmart.

Seeing NBCUniversal show up twice is pretty funny given that some of the dumbest anti-Musk rhetoric has come from their journalists. They literally can't even get the company they work for to not hand Musk money. Establishment journalists overestimate their power, and so do you.

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