I agree with you wholeheartedly about the Substack phenomenon. I enjoy the content and the outlet it gives to independent voices (and even though I’ve been labeled a troll by the true believers for my dissent, I enjoy some of Matt’s content , especially when it come to literature).
But Matt has told us ad nauseam that Substack and people like himself and Joe Rogan are the New Media that will blow a fresh wind through journalism while the MSM withers on the vine because of its irrelevance. Matt, whose own numbers seem to be plummeting now, has equated ratings with credibility, and he has celebrated cutbacks and firings by MSM, which he doesn’t bother to define, but almost invariably refers only to media he considers antagonistic to him. Rogan is a professional bloviator and Matt now has retreated from doing any original reporting (ironically he has been reduced to sifting through revelations he finds out about in the NYT and the WaPo).
I find his posture reductive and hypocritical, and I would like to see a healthy ecosystem that encompasses a wide spectrum of voices.
The problem with a world of Joe Rogans and Matt Taibbi’s is the same thing they advertise as being their advantage— they have no oversight. They have no editors. They have no one to call their BS other than a few voices like mine. And yet they can be as wrongheaded and fallible and stupid as MSM. They exist in a bubble. Making matters worse, they revive the worst abuses of yellow journalism, by feeding their most radicalized bases with sensationalist stories, culture wars and false polemics.
Lastly. I disagree with you wholeheartedly that these two are centrists. Matt professes to be a populist, but his enthusiastically throwing his lot in with the polices of a faux populist billionaire like Trump makes him a reactionary in my book. Kirn is straight up MAGA, he doesn’t hide it.
It never ceases to amaze me that minutes after this type of post the comments are filled with outrage. Can they speak first?
I agree with you wholeheartedly about the Substack phenomenon. I enjoy the content and the outlet it gives to independent voices (and even though I’ve been labeled a troll by the true believers for my dissent, I enjoy some of Matt’s content , especially when it come to literature).
But Matt has told us ad nauseam that Substack and people like himself and Joe Rogan are the New Media that will blow a fresh wind through journalism while the MSM withers on the vine because of its irrelevance. Matt, whose own numbers seem to be plummeting now, has equated ratings with credibility, and he has celebrated cutbacks and firings by MSM, which he doesn’t bother to define, but almost invariably refers only to media he considers antagonistic to him. Rogan is a professional bloviator and Matt now has retreated from doing any original reporting (ironically he has been reduced to sifting through revelations he finds out about in the NYT and the WaPo).
I find his posture reductive and hypocritical, and I would like to see a healthy ecosystem that encompasses a wide spectrum of voices.
The problem with a world of Joe Rogans and Matt Taibbi’s is the same thing they advertise as being their advantage— they have no oversight. They have no editors. They have no one to call their BS other than a few voices like mine. And yet they can be as wrongheaded and fallible and stupid as MSM. They exist in a bubble. Making matters worse, they revive the worst abuses of yellow journalism, by feeding their most radicalized bases with sensationalist stories, culture wars and false polemics.
Lastly. I disagree with you wholeheartedly that these two are centrists. Matt professes to be a populist, but his enthusiastically throwing his lot in with the polices of a faux populist billionaire like Trump makes him a reactionary in my book. Kirn is straight up MAGA, he doesn’t hide it.