And, frankly, I’m sick of pretending that they don’t. You will likely have seen that Pierre Omidyar’s First Look Media has parted ways with Matt Taibbi, the longtime Rolling Stone writer and former co-editor of Moscow’s The Exile, a tabloid newspaper that he co-edited with former NSFW Corp, current Pando Media writer Mark Ames. In a very long […]
Continue reading →As a leftist yourself, why do so many of your arguments critique those on the left? Because the struggle for social justice is the most important task that human beings undertake, it is necessary for people of conscience to evaluate how well that struggle is going and whether current tactics are effective. When we talk […]
Continue reading →Today, Merrill-Lynch announced its new slate of subprime mortgage-backed derivatives through 2019. And there was, naturally, much rejoicing. Of course, because the people doing the rejoicing are made perpetually uncomfortable by rejoicing, and are much happier feeling aggrieved, there was also grievance. This is how you know that your treasured properties are so culturally […]
Continue reading →I’ve really been genuinely disturbed by #GamerGate. Obviously, some of that is just the threats and harassment of women online. But it’s also disturbing how successful they’ve been in pressuring advertisers, and in getting parts of the media to credulously accept much of their narrative. To me, it’s indicative of the problems that come about […]
Continue reading →Hey gang. A couple readers have asked me recently what’s going on with me generally. So here’s a little self-indulgent update. I’m on the academic job market right now. I am a fourth year PhD student, and I have another year of guaranteed funding after this year, but I have three chapters of my dissertation […]
Continue reading →Over at the Columbia Journalism Review, the premier repository of old-guard journalistic “seriousness” and Ivy League pedantry, Sarah Grieco has a very odd critique of Gawker. I don’t find it odd just because I disagree with it; I find it odd because it defines bullying in a particular way, then immediately abandons that definition. Grieco […]
Continue reading →You have likely already come across this remarkable piece of reporting by Adrian Chen, where he delves into the world of human social media workers who scrub Facebook and similar sites of offensive and illegal content, but if not you need to check it out. It’s essential that we recognize that our visions of a […]
Continue reading →Tonight I read a 110-word piece, on a professional website, aggregating a tweet, celebrating it as a snappy comeback to another tweet, without bothering to explain what the comeback was a comeback to, ending by telling an objectively horrible woman “bravo,” written by an associate editor “focusing on innovation.” And given the economics of professional online […]
Continue reading →Eagle-eyed reader Devon G. emailed me last night to tell me that Alex Dunn of UCSB’s Philosophy department was again throwing a Twitter fit about the fact that I exist. Devon remembered Dunn from his previous little spasm of getting mad that not literally everyone is a part of his weirdo Twitter koffee klatsch. I […]
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