I don't really recognize either side of this dichotomy?
Twitter is full of people being funny, kind, weird, fascinating as well as angry trolls, of the profesionall and amatuer kind.
Real life has illness, death, war, pollution and assholes as well as art, music, love, weddings, births, friendships etc.
I'm generally optimistic that things are getting better, on average, for the human race but don't see how pretending horrors as well as small unnecessary hardships aren't happening every day helps that progress.
My neighbors are not well off. I am not well off. The people I know are mostly below or hovering around the federal poverty guideline. Far from making great sums, and it's been this way for a long time.
Are we sure the author isn't just rich, and coming largely from rich parts of society?
Yes. Things are not fine.
The trouble with journalism is that there's too much punditry and too little reporting. Newspapers used to have large staffs of "beat reporters", who went out, gathered news, and sent it in. Today, most "news" begins as a press release. Check cnn.com. Everything above the fold today started as a press release or statement from someone, or is an opinion piece. Fox News is worse.
Collecting local news is now more the job of local TV stations, because they need video.
That seems more like a symptom than a disease. Punditry is cheap, good journalism is very expensive.
Were they, though? I mean, things have gotten worse since then - but that doesn't mean we were doing well then. Simply that things got worse.
(1) https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate
I think people have a right to feel angry, and I don't think the pandemic is the thing that caused it.
Perhaps that is true of you and your neighbors but US unemployment is at a low not seen in over a decade. That’s what the Great Resignation is about. The problem that is likely to wallop the Democrats is inflation, not unemployment. Things are going at least ok for a lot of people. They’re going well for quite a few.
Employment doesn't give you a snapshot of how well things are doing, though. If you can't get a job that pays your rent, things aren't doing well even if you have low unemployment. I'll also mention that part of the low unemployment isn't because things are doing well, but because folks have died, we've had a pandemic, and a number of folks have dropped out of the workforce because of things like child care, remote schooling, and retirement (pushed forward by the pandemic).
Employment doesn't mean things are going at least OK.
> These are also the people who drive the national conversation on twitter. Academics, journalists, policy hands, and lawyers.[2] The people who form the narratives that we understand our country have been frustrated by fate. They live uncertain, precarious lives; even the most successful and secure are surrounded by defeated legions. Each old college friend is a reminder of what they could have been or might soon be. They are more likely to be stressed by circumstance. Do you think that stress does not carry over into their perceptions of the country writ large?
At least for me my social media activity ramps up a bit when not so happy.
But there is something about online discourse that attracts extreme opinions like mice to cheese. This really dawned on me when I checked out the subreddit r/decaf for people quitting coffee.
I mean, how extreme could a subreddit like that be?
Well, it turns out, incredible extreme. It's nothing but posts about "caffeine is just heroin" and "we need to ban this dangerous drug" and "I'm pretty sure caffeine caused my skull fracture".
It's this bizarre mix of every extreme view you could imagine, obsessive thoughts, anxiety and hypochondria. And posters just feed off of each other.
And I was just curious to read some dull opinion about "my sleep is better when cut down to 1 cup of coffee a day".
That's something I miss about the forums of old: the off topic sections were generally just regular users commenting on whatever thread was at the top. It was a bit like a break room and could even form into communities.
Highly relevant: TIL that the National Enquirer was the most reliable news source during the O. J. Simpson murder trial. According to a Harvard law professor who gave the media an overall failing grade, the Enquirer was the only publication that thoroughly followed every rumor and talked to every witness. (<https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/6n1kz5/til_th...>)
There are still lots of journalists around who are devoting large amounts of their time and often taking substantial or even grave personal risks to their livelihood, their freedom, or even their lives. They’re doing all of this out of a deep conviction and sense of responsibility to uncover the truth about corruption, pollution, war, bribery, murder, and off-shore tax evasion and money laundering by some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world.
The problem is you won’t find their writing while scrolling through Facebook or YouTube or Twitter. You might find it sometimes here on HN. But otherwise you have to seek it out. It’s a shame so many people can’t be bothered to do so.
The Investigations sections of The Washington Post (source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/investigations/), The New York Times, and investigations by local newspapers are often very good, though occasionally they can be of lower quality.
I agree with vast majority of your comment, though to nitpick a bit, a curated social media feed can show this content (e.g. ProPublica's Facebook/YouTube/Twitter, and through using carefully curated Twitter lists). Also, from a cynical perspective, I know of some people doing it for the thrill, the fame, and the power to hold otherwise-powerful people accountable instead of for higher ideals, though I don't mind so long as the results are still ethically produced and rightfully empowering to the disadvantaged.
Even in my small country (~3mio pop), people manage to make a cushy living on this. E.g. covering iffy cases of corruption and neglect that ain't reported much (if at all) on mainstream media. In many cases because media if afraid to loose advertisement money from related business structures.
That must have been an extremely brief period significantly before I was alive, because I have never heard a single human being imply this.
Oh that’s fantastic for your neighbors.
It was..until around 4 months ago
Here is the lifehack to making a living at writing: be famous, well-known at something else and then pivot to writing. that usually does the trick.
it's a big barrier when one considers the vast majority of Americans, even those with degrees, cannot do either well.
Separate rant, but journalistic writing feels so paint-by-numbers now and I think that reduces the barrier as far as writing talent required. I know journalists have always been taught to write articles with a certain shape, but it feels like we've moved beyond "inverted pyramid" to something more constrained. Every article must mention the effect of whatever is being reported upon the downtrodden, every article must end with a quote from an individual affected by the subject of the article that is twinged with irony or somehow fraught with meaning to make it personal.
It's as if all HN posts had to end with a coda that captured the essence of what the poster wanted to express in a dramatic way.
Pausing, chucksmash seemed reflective. "There's a dreary, pervasive sameness to the way we express ourselves now, and I suspect it's driven by engagement metrics" he said, slowly sipping his coffee before looking back to his phone with a sigh.
What you're describing has a name and it isn't democracy: it's oligarchy.
Maybe 10+ years ago the situation was so bleak, not nowadays you see tons of otherwise no-name academics, of all areas whether it's science , math, sociology, political science, or economics, carving out niches online, such as substacks, twitter, podcasts, YouTube lectures (like 3blue 1 brown), selling books on Amazon, fundraising, etc. It's not like your options are only limited to teaching at a university. One of the hidden benefits of academia , even if the pay sucks, is you get branding power, which you typically do not see with other professions. Noah Smith, for example, was something of a failed academic but now runs a hugely popular econ Substack blog.
Seriously though, traditional intellectual pursuits are too crowded? Find new ones, it seems obvious.
Some of it, of course, is.
