Although I'm on the fence about whether it's JUST SO MUCH FUN or it JUST MAKES RICH PEOPLE RICHER. I lean toward IT'S THE MONEY, but that's sort of tied into IT'S JUST SO MUCH FUN. Because the talking heads' rich mogul bosses wouldn't make more money if we stopped watching and clicking and buying. But how do we get everyone to do that? When we do in fact need news (even if we don't want it)?
I have a journalism degree. I remember in one of my classes, the professor (who I did not appreciate enough at the time, but he was really great), would give us discussion questions. There's one that sticks in my mind because I don't think we ever came up with a good answer. It was about money and the free press. The example had something to do with, "You work for a paper and find out it's top advertiser is polluting the groundwater and killing people but your boss doesn't want to piss them off and run the story, how do you handle this?"
And most of the class was like, Haha, I'll quit. Or, "Expose your boss for being a sellout."
So Prof asks us, what if you really need that job? What if you quit and you can't pay your rent and you and your kids are out on the street? What about your boss? If they lose their biggest advertiser, do they have to start firing people? Will other advertisers pull out if they know you're not afraid to tell the truth about them? Can the paper stay in business? Who is going to pay for you to publish the truth without advertisers?
And that was when we all realized how fucked the system was.
OFC, today papers are mostly online, but advertising is still king. And online media will publish ANYTHING that gets more clicks because that gets them more revenue. In fact, it's worse, because before they would just charge X for an ad of Y size and say, "We have a circulation of 15,000 readers who will see your ad" or whatever. But now they mostly use the cost per click (CPC) model, so they don't get paid UNLESS SOMEONE CLICKS. Which means if no one reads your dry story about how much the acid vat people suck and the receipts, you don't make money.
Anyway, back to my college class... we talked about solutions. What do you do? The free press is supposed to be free because it ISN'T paid for by the government. Which you definitely don't want because then the government can control what you publish. So instead we have the free market system where....rich people pay for your media and control what it says. Rich people who are usually the same rich people who own Congress and essentially, your government.
I think about that class a lot because we never did solve the problem. Someone has to pay for media and neither the public nor the private option really works as far as a "free press" goes.
This is great stuff! The Internet -is- an improvement because even without the big internet companies, it democratizes media--for $5/year the average person can put up a website and get their word out even without all the web2 nonsense.
But...even with that, the -journalists- need to get paid, or they can't devote their lives to digging through the muck and trying to get at the truth--the media orgs need to get paid so they can serve up millions of clicks and people can get some of the -same- news rather than just what they get through the grapevine.
And that means that the enshitification talk we've had about how broken the ad system and everything deriving from it becomes important--with nobody except liars and cheats benefiting from the ads nobody wants to see and everyone hates, but there not being enough will and enough accountability in the system for anything to fix it.
"Democrats are a normal fucking political party. Full of more or less normal people, for politician standards of normal. That means some of them are corrupt assholes, some of them are quite astute public servants with robust morals, and most of them are just these guys, you know? " And the thing is, when they find a corrupt asshole in their ranks, they go "GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE, no, you can't take any fries with you...oh, you shoved the whole plate into your mouth, ok, fine, GET OUT!"
And then the media loses it's shit about the Democrats letting the corrupt asshole leave WITH FRIES as if they weren't already covered in spit and the important thing was they got him out.
I don't have the skills to craft a response that is remotely worthy of the magnificence of what you've written here, so I'll just say thank you (& head over to upgrade to a paid subscription) and leave it at that. But truly, and in complete seriousness, thank you.
I am feeling you all the way from Aotearoa New Zealand. we have also traditionally had two major parties but moved to a proportional representation system MMP some years ago so you would think things would be better. And now, thanks to a corporate media and being flooded by conspiracy and lobby group crap leading up to our election last year, we have the worst government who are turning out to be worse than we could have imagined. A major conservative party in coalition with two minor parties, one led by a wanna be Trump and one led by a libertarian Atlas Network fuckwit. All three of them racist. They are punishing poor people, allowing mining and infrastructure projects to bypass processes and be approved by a minister, and disappearing Maori, Tangata Whenua, by rewriting us out of any power or cultural appreciation that has been fearsomely fought for over the past 50 years. And selling off real estate to overseas landlord investors to raise money for tax cuts. and lining up the last vestiges of publicly owned organisations for privatisation. i thought we were past all of that. they have dragged up all of the quiet lurking racism, made it okay to rant against Maori in public and effectively united Maori in the process. that one will be an interesting fight. new strataegies coming forth. but really what a WASTE OF FUCKING TIME when we could be fighting over cllimate change and pollution and empire and wars. Appreciating the caps and the swearing from this side of the world.
THANK YOU!!! jfc, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. I'm starting to think the number of insanely f'ing stupid people in this country (especially in the media) must mean our air is poisoned with lead or something. I seriously can't take watching the news much anymore because of this shit.
THERE IS NO GOOD REASON NOT TO SWEAR AT THE FUCKING MESS WE FIND OURSELVES IN, AND SINCE THE MEDIA ARE IN LARGE PART RESPONSIBLE BY THEIR REFUSAL TO SPEAK THE TRUTH ABOUT WHAT’S RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM, SWEARING AT THEM IS QUITE APPROPRIATE.
Done with the shouting part, but now I want to point out that while the fools shouting “Both Sides, Now!” do not think they have any skin in this game because they can go home at the end of a fascist day, let me point out that many of us do have skin, bones, meat, and lives in this game. The last time these bozos decided to revenge themselves on the rest of the world, a lot of my cousins died. This time around they’ll be spoiled for choice as to which extermination camp to send me because I’m Jewish, disabled, old (77), and far left progressive. So I would prefer that the fascists not get into power, and if that takes voting for a candidate for President I don’t agree with on a lot of issues, I’m OK with that. We can deal with issues if we’re still alive and not incarcerated.
So keep on shouting, because maybe someone who isn’t yet convinced will hear you, and anyway it encourages the rest of us that we still have someone willing to bring fire and sword to this ratfuck.
I've been watching the nightmare unfold from across the pond where our own gobshite dipshits seem so eager to just human centipede right onto to Trumps quivering hindquarters, as if no one learnt anything in the last 8 years. They're just so eager to bring on the boot stamping all of our faces forever. And no matter how much we yell and scream and protest we're zombie-walking into the same gaping maw that's yawned just beneath the surface since the last God-emperor was given unlimited power and no accountability.
It really feels fucking insane, especially right now, when people try to say both sides are the same. Like, pre-Trump is was already clearly wrong, but you could kind of assume people just weren't paying attention because most people weren't. Then we lived through, those of us who survived it anyway, those fucking four years. And people are trying to say Biden is the same as that? Like, where the fuck were you? How'd you miss those four years? How were you not paying attention? How'd you miss it? And yeah, Biden sucks to. He's passed some good stuff, but he's also done some pretty shitty stuff. But just get the vote in and then go out and protest him the day after. You don't need to like the person you vote for, you just have to consider them the better of the available options. And after the election do everything in our collective power to improve our options by the time the next election rolls around.
The trouble with your obviously-well-thought-out plan for "leaderless democracy" is that if every neighborhood, city and state can choose its own government without any federal interference, some areas will choose right-wing-nutbar government that will make life a literal living hell for those who aren't rich, white, straight, conservative, Christian and/or male and cannot afford to move to a more sanely governed area.
Love it!
Although I'm on the fence about whether it's JUST SO MUCH FUN or it JUST MAKES RICH PEOPLE RICHER. I lean toward IT'S THE MONEY, but that's sort of tied into IT'S JUST SO MUCH FUN. Because the talking heads' rich mogul bosses wouldn't make more money if we stopped watching and clicking and buying. But how do we get everyone to do that? When we do in fact need news (even if we don't want it)?
I have a journalism degree. I remember in one of my classes, the professor (who I did not appreciate enough at the time, but he was really great), would give us discussion questions. There's one that sticks in my mind because I don't think we ever came up with a good answer. It was about money and the free press. The example had something to do with, "You work for a paper and find out it's top advertiser is polluting the groundwater and killing people but your boss doesn't want to piss them off and run the story, how do you handle this?"
And most of the class was like, Haha, I'll quit. Or, "Expose your boss for being a sellout."
So Prof asks us, what if you really need that job? What if you quit and you can't pay your rent and you and your kids are out on the street? What about your boss? If they lose their biggest advertiser, do they have to start firing people? Will other advertisers pull out if they know you're not afraid to tell the truth about them? Can the paper stay in business? Who is going to pay for you to publish the truth without advertisers?
And that was when we all realized how fucked the system was.
OFC, today papers are mostly online, but advertising is still king. And online media will publish ANYTHING that gets more clicks because that gets them more revenue. In fact, it's worse, because before they would just charge X for an ad of Y size and say, "We have a circulation of 15,000 readers who will see your ad" or whatever. But now they mostly use the cost per click (CPC) model, so they don't get paid UNLESS SOMEONE CLICKS. Which means if no one reads your dry story about how much the acid vat people suck and the receipts, you don't make money.
Anyway, back to my college class... we talked about solutions. What do you do? The free press is supposed to be free because it ISN'T paid for by the government. Which you definitely don't want because then the government can control what you publish. So instead we have the free market system where....rich people pay for your media and control what it says. Rich people who are usually the same rich people who own Congress and essentially, your government.
I think about that class a lot because we never did solve the problem. Someone has to pay for media and neither the public nor the private option really works as far as a "free press" goes.
This is great stuff! The Internet -is- an improvement because even without the big internet companies, it democratizes media--for $5/year the average person can put up a website and get their word out even without all the web2 nonsense.
But...even with that, the -journalists- need to get paid, or they can't devote their lives to digging through the muck and trying to get at the truth--the media orgs need to get paid so they can serve up millions of clicks and people can get some of the -same- news rather than just what they get through the grapevine.
And that means that the enshitification talk we've had about how broken the ad system and everything deriving from it becomes important--with nobody except liars and cheats benefiting from the ads nobody wants to see and everyone hates, but there not being enough will and enough accountability in the system for anything to fix it.
But that's a different issue. Mostly.
I haven't read it all yet, but BRING ON THE ALL CAPS and the SWEARS.
ALL OF IT.
(it's always a good day when Catherynne pushes the "publish" button)
"Democrats are a normal fucking political party. Full of more or less normal people, for politician standards of normal. That means some of them are corrupt assholes, some of them are quite astute public servants with robust morals, and most of them are just these guys, you know? " And the thing is, when they find a corrupt asshole in their ranks, they go "GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE, no, you can't take any fries with you...oh, you shoved the whole plate into your mouth, ok, fine, GET OUT!"
And then the media loses it's shit about the Democrats letting the corrupt asshole leave WITH FRIES as if they weren't already covered in spit and the important thing was they got him out.
I don't have the skills to craft a response that is remotely worthy of the magnificence of what you've written here, so I'll just say thank you (& head over to upgrade to a paid subscription) and leave it at that. But truly, and in complete seriousness, thank you.
Totally worth the money
Thank you for every word of this!
I would love for this to be wrong. I know it is not. Goddamnit world.
I am feeling you all the way from Aotearoa New Zealand. we have also traditionally had two major parties but moved to a proportional representation system MMP some years ago so you would think things would be better. And now, thanks to a corporate media and being flooded by conspiracy and lobby group crap leading up to our election last year, we have the worst government who are turning out to be worse than we could have imagined. A major conservative party in coalition with two minor parties, one led by a wanna be Trump and one led by a libertarian Atlas Network fuckwit. All three of them racist. They are punishing poor people, allowing mining and infrastructure projects to bypass processes and be approved by a minister, and disappearing Maori, Tangata Whenua, by rewriting us out of any power or cultural appreciation that has been fearsomely fought for over the past 50 years. And selling off real estate to overseas landlord investors to raise money for tax cuts. and lining up the last vestiges of publicly owned organisations for privatisation. i thought we were past all of that. they have dragged up all of the quiet lurking racism, made it okay to rant against Maori in public and effectively united Maori in the process. that one will be an interesting fight. new strataegies coming forth. but really what a WASTE OF FUCKING TIME when we could be fighting over cllimate change and pollution and empire and wars. Appreciating the caps and the swearing from this side of the world.
THANK YOU!!! jfc, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. I'm starting to think the number of insanely f'ing stupid people in this country (especially in the media) must mean our air is poisoned with lead or something. I seriously can't take watching the news much anymore because of this shit.
THERE IS NO GOOD REASON NOT TO SWEAR AT THE FUCKING MESS WE FIND OURSELVES IN, AND SINCE THE MEDIA ARE IN LARGE PART RESPONSIBLE BY THEIR REFUSAL TO SPEAK THE TRUTH ABOUT WHAT’S RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM, SWEARING AT THEM IS QUITE APPROPRIATE.
Done with the shouting part, but now I want to point out that while the fools shouting “Both Sides, Now!” do not think they have any skin in this game because they can go home at the end of a fascist day, let me point out that many of us do have skin, bones, meat, and lives in this game. The last time these bozos decided to revenge themselves on the rest of the world, a lot of my cousins died. This time around they’ll be spoiled for choice as to which extermination camp to send me because I’m Jewish, disabled, old (77), and far left progressive. So I would prefer that the fascists not get into power, and if that takes voting for a candidate for President I don’t agree with on a lot of issues, I’m OK with that. We can deal with issues if we’re still alive and not incarcerated.
So keep on shouting, because maybe someone who isn’t yet convinced will hear you, and anyway it encourages the rest of us that we still have someone willing to bring fire and sword to this ratfuck.
I've been watching the nightmare unfold from across the pond where our own gobshite dipshits seem so eager to just human centipede right onto to Trumps quivering hindquarters, as if no one learnt anything in the last 8 years. They're just so eager to bring on the boot stamping all of our faces forever. And no matter how much we yell and scream and protest we're zombie-walking into the same gaping maw that's yawned just beneath the surface since the last God-emperor was given unlimited power and no accountability.
It really feels fucking insane, especially right now, when people try to say both sides are the same. Like, pre-Trump is was already clearly wrong, but you could kind of assume people just weren't paying attention because most people weren't. Then we lived through, those of us who survived it anyway, those fucking four years. And people are trying to say Biden is the same as that? Like, where the fuck were you? How'd you miss those four years? How were you not paying attention? How'd you miss it? And yeah, Biden sucks to. He's passed some good stuff, but he's also done some pretty shitty stuff. But just get the vote in and then go out and protest him the day after. You don't need to like the person you vote for, you just have to consider them the better of the available options. And after the election do everything in our collective power to improve our options by the time the next election rolls around.
Thanks for writing this, cathartic and so so true.
It would be allot let work for you and us
if you recorded these and posted to youtube or peertube or
whatever.
Near as I can tell, there is only one party, the corporate party,
and it has two wings, each with it's own mission.
the right wing wants more for the wealthy donor class
and the left wing is there to keep from ever moving left.
They keep giving us shit candidates, never talk policy, and we
are supposed to pick the lesser evil. Being less bad
is still no good. This cannot continue. The planet is baking. We
need new leadership, bottom up.
We need to stop complaining and take over. Why should the 1%
hold our future in their hands?
We don't have to take this. We can self organize and throw the bums out!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/138PauT3wBzBHrgkCr8nuSXzSm77RE_ZYCDN9E2TMkUI/edit?usp=sharing
The trouble with your obviously-well-thought-out plan for "leaderless democracy" is that if every neighborhood, city and state can choose its own government without any federal interference, some areas will choose right-wing-nutbar government that will make life a literal living hell for those who aren't rich, white, straight, conservative, Christian and/or male and cannot afford to move to a more sanely governed area.
It's interesting that you took from my comment each area choosing its own government.
If you were going to design a decent society, what would it look like? Certainly not what we have currently.
Thank you, Cat.
This is the "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" this millennium deserves. Well done.
Definitely re-upping my subscription. Tell It!