Pirate's Cove

NY Times opinion writer David Brooks is someone who those on the right can mostly disagree with. Like most writers for the NY Times. He does have a few salient points, but is missing two big things

How We Destroy Lives Today
Will the Covington Catholic High School fiasco change social media?

Within living memory, political polarization had at least something to do with issues, but in the age of social media it’s almost entirely about social type. It’s about finding and spreading the viral soap operas that are supposed to reveal the dark hearts of those who are in the opposite social type from your own.

It’s about finding images that confirm your negative stereotypes about people you don’t know. It’s about reducing a complex human life into one viral moment and then banishing him to oblivion.

You don’t have to read social theory on this phenomenon; just look at the fracas surrounding the Covington Catholic High School boys.

(A couple paragraphs on what went down early, when social media created a Narrative to blame the kids)

Many news organizations ran one of these accounts. Before you judge the reporters too harshly, it’s important to remember that these days the social media tail wags the mainstream media dog. If you want your story to be well placed and if you want to be professionally rewarded, you have to generate page views — you have to incite social media. The way to do that is to reinforce the prejudices of your readers.

Actually, we do need to judge the reporters harshly. Yes, yes, rush to do stories, but, David wrote it: the majority are completely biased towards Democrats, and do not care to get the facts before getting the story in their news outlets, a soundbite on TV, and in their own social media platforms. This causes way, way, way more damage than most social media arguments. And when the real story comes out, many of these same media types fail to cover it, and many circle the wagons because they were wrong.

Look at the amount of investigation into the kids, the school, and the school employees that’s occurring, even after it has been shown social media and the news media got the story completely wrong. Kids are being doxxed. More stories are being manufactured (ZOMG, white power symbol!!!! which is actual for a 3 point shot). Media outlets won’t give up. They’re doing more investigation than they did with Obama.

Further, you also have politicians rushing to judgement. In this case, Democrat ones. Where are they now in apologizing to the kids?

So Sunday was a day of conservative vindication. See? This is what those liberals do! They rush to judgment, dehumanize and seek to expunge us from national life. The main boy wrote a public letter that was consistent with the visual evidence and that was actually quite humane.

In this case the facts happened to support the right-wing tribe. But that’s not the point. The crucial thing is that the nation’s culture is now enmeshed in a new technology that we don’t yet know how to control.

Actual, the facts are the point. To go with the rush to judgement, which would have been minor had the news media done their jobs correctly.

And thanks to the news media rushing to judgement, rather than waiting for facts, the Covington School is closed today due to all the death threats to children.