I was just looking at the guardian website, this is not an uncommon thing, I like to know what is going on, in briton and the other bits and pieces of the world.
Was struck by the format of news now. I am offered a series of links, the most pressing issues seem to be at the top, and are a bit bigger "Hamas leader killed in airstrike" it says now, beside it is a photo of, I assume, the earth our planet thing, and it says beneath, a bit smaller than the hamas item, "climate expert makes plea to obama"
I am offered bits of news from all over the world. Someone has graded their importance. Unlike TV news I can sift through it.
I'm not sure I feel comfortable with this choice. There are all sorts of things going on, elsewhere, and here I have the opportunity to dip through reported experience. I will chose the "books" section, or search for "sexual things".
Actually I click on the most seemingly harrowing items too, we are hungry for all sorts of ingrained assaults. There are "comment" sections, they act as bait to those who have the opposite view of the article, and they comment oppositely. There is something called "the daily mail" which is about anger and impotence (perhaps because the anger is of something that isn't actually happening) and "celebrities" who have beards, wives, children, and are drunk, tired, and also angry.
What should I do? A link or other is waiting.
------/ / / / / / this is a terrible blog post. What I meant to say is: the clicking link thing of news sites is like playing a sort of game, choosing what incident you want to be revealed next. You probably already knew all this.
At least I used some mathematical images to spice things up, I stole them from here
I think they are some of the best images I have seen in my life. Not too flashy or augmented.
The text is good too:
"A chaotic orbit of a transcendental point under a simple tent map."
"A bizarre surjection from the integers to the rationals:
With[ {nn = Ceiling[Sqrt[n]]}, If[ n <= (nn-1)^2 + nn, nn/(n - (nn-1)^2), (nn^2 - n + 1)/nn ]]"
Are you saying by being forced to make a choice regarding what news you consume, you are implicitly implicated in the event? Interesting.
ReplyDeleteI heard that in the face of increased competition from alternative news sources, institutions like newspapers are engaging in campaign-based tactics to make sales, for instance the 'Maddy' campaign* with its twists and turns to keep readers 'hooked'. And of course, it was the Daily Mail who gave birth the Ross/Brand outrage complaint onslaught and subsequent tabloid mileage.
By providing the oxygen of publicity/page-hits we in turn fan the flames of the original outrage into a towering feedback loop inferno?
* Perhaps they will release it as a D&D module.
Complicit in, perhaps,colluding.
ReplyDeleteRecall in the WW2 germans being accused of knowing about the camps - everyone now knows about each and every nastyness when and where it occurs.
I am builder, maintainer, and gate-keeper of a prison within a prison.
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I imagine it would be a high-level campaign. "The Towers of the Tapas Wraiths". I shall be a half-elf, half-portugese cleric with detection skills