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0 pointsinglor_cz4y ago0 comments

Incidentally, I deleted my Twitter today. 4600 followers in hell, which is quite a lot for a Czech language community (10 million speakers only), but I can no longer tolerate the toxicity.

Yes, journalists are overrepresented there and yes, their journalism often degenerates into "we are covering what happened on Twitter".

But the worst offenders in terms of toxicity aren't journos. They are ... well, tormented human beings who love to dish out some misery to everyone around. Usually under a superficial veneer of a respectable goal.

So long and thanks for all the tweets, but I am not coming back. After leaving Facebook in July 2019, I felt almost liberated; I expect the same to happen now.

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steveBK1234y ago

I think one can insulate themselves from the worst of the noise with some very selective follows/blocks/etc,

But anyway, re: your comment on the worst offenders, a related quote that came across my twitter this weekend-

"The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience - this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats" - Aldous Huxley

mcosta4y ago

Journos are the new clerics. The western moral compass

mkr-hn4y ago

There's probably a better way to frame this in a context where journalists are increasingly under attack just for doing their jobs.

https://cpj.org/2020/12/in-2020-u-s-journalists-faced-unprec...

a13692099934y ago

That (better) framing would probably need to involve making a distinction between legitimate (eg investigative) journalists versus primarily-twitter-covering psuedo-tabloid journalists, which is rather fraught at the best of times, since most authorities (formal or informal) have a obvious incentive to misclassify legitimate journalists as tabloidists, and a less obvious incentive to misclassify tabloids as legitimate journalism. (This gets much worse if you try to do anything material with the distiction, thanks to [0].) Not that it's impossible, but I'm not optimistic.

Besides, there were plenty of clergy who were otherwise fairly decent people.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

steveBK1234y ago

Well it's also hard to blame journalists for writing the kind of stuff that gets clicks, which is what gets them all paid.

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koheripbal4y ago

I'm not sure if it's correlated - but journalists have also been doing a far worse job than I've experienced previously.

aliasEli4y ago

Due to a decline in income from advertisers many traditional media have fired a lot of journalists. The remaining ones are under great pressure to produce articles. So it is not surprising that the quality of journalism has declined.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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steveBK1234y ago

I think one can insulate themselves from the worst of the noise with some very selective follows/blocks/etc,

But anyway, re: your comment on the worst offenders, a related quote that came across my twitter this weekend-

mcosta4y ago

Journos are the new clerics. The western moral compass

mkr-hn4y ago

There's probably a better way to frame this in a context where journalists are increasingly under attack just for doing their jobs.

https://cpj.org/2020/12/in-2020-u-s-journalists-faced-unprec...

a13692099934y ago

Besides, there were plenty of clergy who were otherwise fairly decent people.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

steveBK1234y ago

Well it's also hard to blame journalists for writing the kind of stuff that gets clicks, which is what gets them all paid.

1 more reply

koheripbal4y ago

I'm not sure if it's correlated - but journalists have also been doing a far worse job than I've experienced previously.

aliasEli4y ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse