1. Platforming matters. I recall in the 80's and 90's historians came to a general consensus that they would not debate Holocaust deniers. During the late 80's and 90's it was quite the thing for daytime talk shows to bring on KKK and Nazi members in order to rile up their audiences. At first some of this cou…
1. Platforming matters. I recall in the 80's and 90's historians came to a general consensus that they would not debate Holocaust deniers. During the late 80's and 90's it was quite the thing for daytime talk shows to bring on KKK and Nazi members in order to rile up their audiences. At first some of this could be excused as an honest attempt to engage (Phil Donahue, Oprah Winfrey in her early years) but after a while it became clear it was a ratings grab and became disreputable. You may remember how characters like Gerado and Jerry Springer didn't go broke from doing it, but they were caste out of any possibility of being considered respectable journalist types even on the tabloid level.
2. Gaslighting matters: The "heterodox" sphere is notorious for whitewashing fellow members of their club by softball 'interviews' or focusing on their most mild and reasonable sounding assertions.
Imagine a journalist was given a one shot time machine to use to go back and interview anyone in history. Imagine the frustration if she used this gift to go back to interview Hitler but only asked him questions on the merits of vegetarianism. No that doesn't mean, say, Jordon Peterson or Bret Weinstein are Hitler, but the analogy still holds.
3. Bad takes matter. Twitter esp. is notorious for the 'bad take'. I define this as something that looks and feels like a respectable and decent argument just from the context of Twitter (or other forum) but everyone with a lick of practical sense knows and sees is BS. Glen Greenwald's feed, for example, demonstrates a mastery of this.
So yes the consequence is every interview you will ever do will have critics buzzing around you asking "why didn't you ask about X" or "how did you ignore he hangs out with a blatant Nazi" Welcome to the reality of everyone being connected. One of my favorite Youtubers is a guy called Mauler who is publishing a 6 part critical take of Star Wars The Force Awakens. To give you a sense, the project is going to be around 15 hours long, he is up to part 4, part 2 or so begins with him just finishing up his criticisms of the opening title crawl.
I can imagine a film director in the 1980's or before would find that type of deep analysis and criticism distressing and perplexing...maybe a sign of mental illness. Maybe one of the movies acknowledged as one of the greatest ever made (Citizen Kane, Godfather, Lawrence of Arabia, Gone w/the Wind?) might merit it. But the new reality is we have plenty of spare 'critical capacity'. That means 'creators' who rarely got much criticism except from their editors and the occasional demented "letter to the editor" type now find every piece they do subjected to the textual criticism 19th Century German scholars applied mainly to the Bible.
And, of course, there is no authority here. The critics themselves are subject to criticism as they often get their nitpicks wrong (or per #3 a 'bad take' can make a valid nitpick seem wrong in Twitter's condensed space for context). In fact there's a whole genre of 'meta critics' who nitpick the critics stuff piece by piece.
How about this: people are free to interview whoever they want in whatever way they want, and if you don't like it then don't listen to that interview.
Sure, but people are also free to rate the interviewer and declare his or her show boring, dull, offensive, exciting, fun, or whatever else. You can decide new Marvel movies are just not for you and stop watching them, or you can watch Youtube critics spend hours taking apart everything wrong or right with them.
I would push back slightly:
1. Platforming matters. I recall in the 80's and 90's historians came to a general consensus that they would not debate Holocaust deniers. During the late 80's and 90's it was quite the thing for daytime talk shows to bring on KKK and Nazi members in order to rile up their audiences. At first some of this could be excused as an honest attempt to engage (Phil Donahue, Oprah Winfrey in her early years) but after a while it became clear it was a ratings grab and became disreputable. You may remember how characters like Gerado and Jerry Springer didn't go broke from doing it, but they were caste out of any possibility of being considered respectable journalist types even on the tabloid level.
2. Gaslighting matters: The "heterodox" sphere is notorious for whitewashing fellow members of their club by softball 'interviews' or focusing on their most mild and reasonable sounding assertions.
Imagine a journalist was given a one shot time machine to use to go back and interview anyone in history. Imagine the frustration if she used this gift to go back to interview Hitler but only asked him questions on the merits of vegetarianism. No that doesn't mean, say, Jordon Peterson or Bret Weinstein are Hitler, but the analogy still holds.
3. Bad takes matter. Twitter esp. is notorious for the 'bad take'. I define this as something that looks and feels like a respectable and decent argument just from the context of Twitter (or other forum) but everyone with a lick of practical sense knows and sees is BS. Glen Greenwald's feed, for example, demonstrates a mastery of this.
So yes the consequence is every interview you will ever do will have critics buzzing around you asking "why didn't you ask about X" or "how did you ignore he hangs out with a blatant Nazi" Welcome to the reality of everyone being connected. One of my favorite Youtubers is a guy called Mauler who is publishing a 6 part critical take of Star Wars The Force Awakens. To give you a sense, the project is going to be around 15 hours long, he is up to part 4, part 2 or so begins with him just finishing up his criticisms of the opening title crawl.
I can imagine a film director in the 1980's or before would find that type of deep analysis and criticism distressing and perplexing...maybe a sign of mental illness. Maybe one of the movies acknowledged as one of the greatest ever made (Citizen Kane, Godfather, Lawrence of Arabia, Gone w/the Wind?) might merit it. But the new reality is we have plenty of spare 'critical capacity'. That means 'creators' who rarely got much criticism except from their editors and the occasional demented "letter to the editor" type now find every piece they do subjected to the textual criticism 19th Century German scholars applied mainly to the Bible.
And, of course, there is no authority here. The critics themselves are subject to criticism as they often get their nitpicks wrong (or per #3 a 'bad take' can make a valid nitpick seem wrong in Twitter's condensed space for context). In fact there's a whole genre of 'meta critics' who nitpick the critics stuff piece by piece.
How about this: people are free to interview whoever they want in whatever way they want, and if you don't like it then don't listen to that interview.
Sure, but people are also free to rate the interviewer and declare his or her show boring, dull, offensive, exciting, fun, or whatever else. You can decide new Marvel movies are just not for you and stop watching them, or you can watch Youtube critics spend hours taking apart everything wrong or right with them.