End of an era (for better or worse): Ailene Voisin admires her last rippling bicep

#31


And so almost all of Boogie's media enemies have left the building (except for Grant).


Who will tell Kings fans all the details of who got #ripped over the summer now?
Grant still talks crap about Cousins about twice a week on his show and that's only during the half hour I listen to on my way home. Wouldn't doubt it if he talks about him every day.
 

Mr. S£im Citrus

Doryphore of KingsFans.com
Staff member
#34
Hell yes I did: I've known @Bricklayer long enough to know that, as soon as he heard that Voisin had been let go, he was going to have something to say about it. I'm only surprised that he didn't have the first reply.

When Napear finally gets canned, I expect him to be on the first thing smoking to come back for some @sloter-when-Webber-got-traded level partying, too.
 
#35
I think you're misunderstanding me: you appear to be reading my post as if you think I'm saying that now people think that the ninety percent of trash is worthwhile. What I'm actually saying is that people think that the ninety percent of trash now comprises one hundred percent of the journalism.
And that's also a problem. We call the media the fourth estate for a reason; it's essential to a functioning democratic republic. It's troubling to me that people don't know where to go to find reasonably effective journalism.

Counterpoint: millions of Americans always believed those things. What's changed is that the world's gotten smaller, and it's forced us to recalibrate our definition of 'fringe.' You make it sound like you think that there were only 10,000 total whackadoos in the entire country fifty years ago, when what's closer to the truth is that the 50 whackadoos in Billings didn't know about the 500 whackadoos in Seattle, who didn't know about the 1,500 whackadoos in San Francisco, who didn't know about the 400 whackadoos in Phoenix, who didn't know about the 25,000 whackadoos in Chicago, who didn't know about the 15 whackadoos in Mobile, who didn't know about the 100 whackadoos in Charleston, who didn't know about the 150,000 whackadoos in New York City, who didn't know about the 600 whackadoos in St. Louis...
The point I'm trying to make is that these species of thoughts were not mainstreamed in a different era, and thus could be easily refuted due to common mainstream resources for obtaining hard facts. With the mainstreaming of erroneous ways of thinking about the world, we see a mainstreaming of suspicion for all credible sources of information.

But methinks we've been speaking in the abstract a bit too much. Here's a concrete example. I teach composition and critical thinking in the Los Rios Community College District. Two semesters ago, I had a student who read online that Kyrie Irving had said that the earth was flat. He did some "research," and asked me in earnest how I knew that the earth was round. He was not a "whackadoo." He wasn't even particularly prone to conspiracy theory. He was just one among many online users who are susceptible to such cons in an era with no consensus about what constitutes an "authority."

This is a problem. It's a problem when education and experience are no longer satisfactory markers of credibility for an authority on a particular subject matter. We could move from issue to issue in 2018, from climate change to voter fraud, and you'd find millions of internet users consuming untold amounts of text every day who had never read a single piece of reporting that cited credible sources on the issue in question. Yes, there will always be ignorant and/or unengaged individuals, but in an earlier era, at least they were absorbing "the facts" by osmosis. As shared facts and shared reality become obliterated in the online age, there is great opportunity for fraudulent strains of thought to spread at a wildfire's pace.

While similarly trying to avoid political specifics, I would counter that the disconnect is that people conflate heterogeneous with unreliable, and that's actually not new. What's different is that, when the gatekeepers were homogeneous, the voices of the people could not relate to them or found them unreliable were ignored and, now that that is lessening, the people who want for a return to the status quo are rejecting the changing faces of the gatekeepers.
I won't disagree that many were left alienated by the gatekeepers of old, and that much could have been done to improve upon that model (particularly when it comes to representation of non-white voices in the media, and representation of non-white issues in the media), but again, I remain unconvinced that the new model, with its heavy de-emphasis of critical engagement, is providing a better alternative for the greatest number of people. It's wonderful that more human beings have access to more information that at any other point in history, but if the vast majority of them aren't engaging with reliable sources of information, then the internet just becomes a broken promise of a sort--all potential, no execution (kinda like the Sacramento Kings teams of the last decade).

If that's what you get out of your internet experience, well... that's unfortunate.
It is unfortunate, but my experience online is hardly unique. Ask the female population what it's like to try and voice an opinion in many online spaces, for example. The internet, when taken as a monolith, is not a friendly place. It's not a civil place. Hell, even kf.com can become an unpleasant place to hold a conversation from time to time. This is not to say that there aren't worthy websites to visit, or vibrant communities to join, but it's naive-as-f*** to gloss over the toxicity that's rampant across the most-trafficked online spaces. And as users continue to flock to social media, in particular, many once-great online communities simply fade away.
 
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Mr. S£im Citrus

Doryphore of KingsFans.com
Staff member
#36
And that's also a problem. We call the media the fourth estate for a reason; it's essential to a functioning democratic republic. It's troubling to me that people don't know where to go to find reasonably effective journalism.
I think that you're grossly overstating how informed the average person was in the past. People who always had access to 'good' journalism have a skewed sense of how ubiquitous that was. I would submit that access to 'good' journalism was never as widespread as you are making out.

The point I'm trying to make is that these species of thoughts were not mainstreamed in a different era, and thus could be easily refuted due to common mainstream resources for obtaining hard facts. With the mainstreaming of erroneous ways of thinking about the world, we see a mainstreaming of suspicion for all credible sources of information.
You and I don't appear to be working from the same definition of "mainstream." I don't consider fringe thinkers being able to signal boost each other as being the same thing as 'mainstreaming'.

But methinks we've been speaking in the abstract a bit too much. Here's a concrete example. I teach composition and critical thinking in the Los Rios Community College District. Two semesters ago, I had a student who read online that Kyrie Irving had said that the earth was flat. He did some "research," and asked me in earnest how I knew that the earth was round. He was not a "whackadoo." He wasn't even particularly prone to conspiracy theory. He was just one among many online users who are susceptible to such cons in an era with no consensus about what constitutes an "authority."
Well, I hope you failed that student, then. If you teach a critical thinking class, and you had a student who 'earnestly' wondered how you knew the earth was round, then I feel like there was a failure somewhere, and I don't personally point the finger at journalism here.

Like, seriously, that what this comes down to, from my perspective: we stopped teaching people to think critically, and then we blame journalism for people not being able to figure out how to find credible information? I don't know what part of game that is?
 
#37
And that's also a problem. We call the media the fourth estate for a reason; it's essential to a functioning democratic republic. It's troubling to me that people don't know where to go to find reasonably effective journalism.



The point I'm trying to make is that these species of thoughts were not mainstreamed in a different era, and thus could be easily refuted due to common mainstream resources for obtaining hard facts. With the mainstreaming of erroneous ways of thinking about the world, we see a mainstreaming of suspicion for all credible sources of information.

But methinks we've been speaking in the abstract a bit too much. Here's a concrete example. I teach composition and critical thinking in the Los Rios Community College District. Two semesters ago, I had a student who read online that Kyrie Irving had said that the earth was flat. He did some "research," and asked me in earnest how I knew that the earth was round. He was not a "whackadoo." He wasn't even particularly prone to conspiracy theory. He was just one among many online users who are susceptible to such cons in an era with no consensus about what constitutes an "authority."

This is a problem. It's a problem when education and experience are no longer satisfactory markers of credibility for an authority on a particular subject matter. We could move from issue to issue in 2018, from climate change to voter fraud, and you'd find millions of internet users consuming untold amounts of text every day who had never read a single piece of reporting that cited credible sources on the issue in question. Yes, there will always be ignorant and/or unengaged individuals, but in an earlier era, at least they were absorbing "the facts" by osmosis. As shared facts and shared reality become obliterated in the online age, there is great opportunity for fraudulent strains of thought to spread at a wildfire's pace.



I won't disagree that many were left alienated by the gatekeepers of old, and that much could have been done to improve upon that model (particularly when it comes to representation of non-white voices in the media, and representation of non-white issues in the media), but again, I remain unconvinced that the new model, with its heavy de-emphasis of critical engagement, is providing a better alternative for the greatest number of people. It's wonderful that more human beings have access to more information that at any other point in history, but if the vast majority of them aren't engaging with reliable sources of information, then the internet just becomes a broken promise of a sort--all potential, no execution (kinda like the Sacramento Kings teams of the last decade).



It is unfortunate, but my experience online is hardly unique. Ask the female population what it's like to try and voice an opinion in many online spaces, for example. The internet, when taken as a monolith, is not a friendly place. It's not a civil place. Hell, even kf.com can become an unpleasant place to hold a conversation from time to time. This is not to say that there aren't worthy websites to visit, or vibrant communities to join, but it's naive-as-f*** to gloss over the toxicity that's rampant across the most-trafficked online spaces. And as users continue to flock to social media, in particular, many once-great online communities simply fade away.
You are an elequant writer and you usually have thought provoking positions. However the good old times weren't always so good. Have you ever gone back and looked at the positions of the old "gatekeepers" or whatever you want to call the old sources of trusted information? It's not always pretty and often their biases become very obvious. Look at the old National Geographic articles for example. A few decades ago they were talking about the next ice age. Go figure. Distortion of "facts" is nothing new they just have better tools now.

Now if you want to talk about how volital society has become or the dangers facing our society, you won't get any arguments from me.
 

VF21

Super Moderator Emeritus
SME
#38
...It is unfortunate, but my experience online is hardly unique. Ask the female population what it's like to try and voice an opinion in many online spaces, for example.
I'll answer that question: You have no clue...and it would do me no good at all to try and outline some of those problems.
 
#40
If any newspaper writer had any sense, they would have been using their column to build twitter followers for the inevitable shift. Sorry anyone loses a job but she wasn't very nice.

You all are sounding like dotards.
 
#43


And so almost all of Boogie's media enemies have left the building (except for Grant).


Who will tell Kings fans all the details of who got #ripped over the summer now?
My nickname for her was Alien Poison
She played the “Devils Advocate” too often.
It wasn’t unbiased journalism. She was a terrible
Reporter of news to an audience that was starving for something positive
 

VF21

Super Moderator Emeritus
SME
#44
With the news coming out of Los Angeles and Golden State, I'd love to see one more AV column explaining how the LBJ and DMC moves will make the NBA better. You know she'd have the spin.