Vidcon 2017: Youtube & What Would Marshal McLuhan say? - Page 4 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14824112
blackjack21 wrote:Well, to be fair, you didn't set your post up in a manner that would have sparked a discussion on YouTube within the context of McLuhan's theories. You characterized only two types of videos. Think about some punks who beat someone up, video it on their phones, and then upload it to YouTube only to get arrested. What kind of video is that? It's not the loser in the basement, etc. classifications you provided.

For example, how do you characterize YouTube videos? Are they hot or cold? As an extension, what does YouTube extend?

I think many of the political commentary videos are cold, meaning they are all based as reactions to world events or media stories that the viewer might already know about or would have to go review a media story to find out.

For example, Gary Franchi's "Next News Network" uses green screen and news desk backdrops to create the impression of a news outlet, while his content is a reaction to existing news. His click bait is typically consistent with his story, but I would say he spends too much time on his branding. I would characterize him as cool. His production, is backdrop slick, but content a little thin.

By contrast, Shirvan Neftchi's "Caspian Report" uses maps, b-roll, voice over, and a narrative supporting a thesis to provide geopolitical analysis. He provides enough supporting information that it is not required to put much effort into interpolating meaning. I would characterize his channel as hot by comparison. However, Caspian Report isn't as reactive. Neftchi takes time to make his videos.

In other words, I would disagree with McLuhan's general premise. In the 1960s, audio at the movies sucked and there were no video players. Today, audio at the movies is quite sophisticated, but people can get a movie and watch a scene over and over. The "hot" context in this case is overwhelmed by newer technology like DVDs. I watch old movies with a buddy, and he constantly pauses it to give his commentary like you might in a film class.

On the other hand, I disagree with McLuhan's critics that he overemphasizes technology in describing cultural change.

YouTube levels the playing field. No longer is a Jeff Bezos able to put out propaganda via the Washington Post in a way that the public no longer sees it. No longer is Bill Gates able to put his Microsoft NBC message out there with MSNBC. Mass media has always been designed to reach a mass audience, but it was always controlled by wealthy narrower interests. YouTube democratizes this process.

A more primitive video format is Mark Dice's commentaries. He often depicts himself as observing media and then reacting to it. His stories are consistent with his hook bait, and usually fairly concise.


I'll be 50 in December. I sometimes enjoy getting on to Hulu and watching shows that I watched as a kid to see how times have changed. One of the things that changed is that show content is much shorter now. An hour long program used to have 50 minutes of content and 10 minutes of commercials. Now they have 40 minutes of content and 20 minutes of commercials.

Shows with plot lines were much more elaborate in the past. Shows with situation comedies were more poignant. For example, I find "All in the Family," "Sanford and Son" etc. far more entertaining while providing a subtext of social change, whereas I cannot even sit through 10 minutes of Madam Secretary, because it is nothing more than propaganda purporting to be drama.

I listen to a few minutes of news and as soon as they get on Trump/Russia, I think to myself "waste of time" and turn it off. I just don't see a lot of value in it.


I think you are missing MB's point, and that's largely MB's own fault for inserting his/her own bias into the discussion, rendering it somewhat still born. Rush Limbaugh is a radio personality. If the medium is the message, Rush Limbaugh is tribal, because radio is aural, like Norse sagas or something. Television is video. That's why FoxNews programs hotties. That's why CNN uses a homosexual anchor.


A book that impressed me in a similar manner to McLuhan's was "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television" by Jerry Mander. He extends McLuhan's theory but restricts it to television and indicates that it cannot be reformed, because of the technology itself.


Well, that's a salient point. Television is a broadcast medium, whereas YouTube is a user-selected demand. While television has changed--thousands of channels fragmenting the market of viewers--and incorporating the ability to record and pause, the content is still produced by larger organizations. YouTube levels the playing field. It gives low capital voices the same standing as high capital voices.


I can't watch Alex Jones, and I think that's a medium/message construct. Jones' icons and click bait link is a "promise" if you will, and when you click on it he is rambling about something totally different. I frequently find myself asking, "When is he going to get to the point" based upon what the "promise" was on the link. Stefan Molyneux does this too. Whereas, I find Lauren Southern gets to the point much faster. Mark Dice is typically right to the point. Cenk Uygur is usually to the point too.


I don't remember whether it was McLuhan or Mander, but one of them supposed that TV is good at defining conflict. So we get these absurd political dialogs like whether or not Obama is a Muslim or whether Trump collude with Russia. They simply have to go with that sort of a narrative in the news business. But then, Archie Bunker and Fred Sanford were also backdrops for defining social conflict, albeit far more entertaining than news outlets.


Well that is the point, isn't it? In McLuhan speak, YouTube levels the playing field between high capital media and low capital media. For example, the interplay between Alex Jones and Megyn Kelly is really a conflict between high capital media (Kelly) and low capital media (Jones). Kelly did the hitpiece, because she is doing the bidding of her high capital masters. MB's frustration is that Alex Jones is more popular than some television channels. While I am probably more in line with Jones politically than I am with Kelly, I find Jones unappealing because he's long winded, rarely gets to the point quickly, and is overly emotional and practically paranoid. By contrast, Megyn Kelly has nice legs, but her tits aren't big enough. :)


The left has long thought that if they could shut down right wing media, their utopian age would arise out of the ashes. So they are deeply frustrated that right wing voices are metastesizing on the internet, and YouTube is a big source of it.


I think Decky is spot on. What bothers you is someone like Mark Dice absolutely mocking the mainstream media. He'll routinely show that his videos get more views than MTVs for example, and then he'll mock MTV mercilessly. In a McLuhan sense, Dice is declaring victory and taking a victory lap for low capital media in its war with high capital media.


I disagree. MB is lamenting primarily alt-right voices. There's all kinds of shit on YouTube that has nothing to do with MB's analysis. For example if you watch Linus Tech Tips channel, it's basically a small crew that makes videos about technology in a manner that is a hell of a lot cheaper than C-NET. That doesn't make Linus an imbecile. It just means that you don't need a big corporation to make interesting tech videos. That's why I say that YouTube doesn't confer legitimacy so much as it confers a platform to reach a mass audience to anyone who can upload a video. Reaching the mass audience depends on people liking the content.


See? That is what you are missing. They have a media platform, but it doesn't matter what their content is. That's McLuhan. Linus can give tech tips to millions. Is he left of center, right of center, a communist? It doesn't matter? Is he gay, straight? Doesn't matter. The media of YouTube gives him a platform to reach millions without spending a dime for that reach. He only has to spend money on a camera, backdrops or green screens, video editors (open source ones like kdenlive are free), and write a decent story board.


That's exactly it, but MB chose to focus on alt-right vloggers. Do cat videos have legitimacy? It doesn't matter. What matters is the "You" in YouTube. You have a platform to reach millions.


Technically that's correct. That's not what's eating at MB. As I said, Megyn Kelly is big capital media, and Alex Jones is small capital media. That Kelly decided to do a hit piece shows that big capital media knows they are losing ground on the one hand. However, what shocks the mainstream media is that Donald Trump has called in to Alex Jones before. Did Donald Trump get in touch with Alex Jones, because YouTube made Jones legitimate? Not really. What is happening is that high capital media is losing influence, and they had a big influence over politics. They were not able to stop Trump. One of their big frustrations is that Trump tweets. That means Trump bypasses high capital media and their political filter. So does Alex Jones.


Well that's exactly what I mean. Your notion of "nobodies" is basically "low capital." They don't exist as the face of billion dollar corporations. I find that interesting when some of you socialists are debating Decky on this, because you are in effect defending the ultra rich and taking a shit on the poor.


Well, that's what it's really about isn't it? It's not really about understanding YouTube and McLuhan, but trying to analyze why Trump won over Clinton.


Spot on. Trump spent 1/10th of what Hillary spent, and he beat her. Big capital lost the election. High capital media wasn't a difference maker. Low capital media won the day, and unlikely names like Alex Jones unseated much bigger names like MSNBC. A political novice like Donald Trump schooled 16 Republican contenders and the Democratic nominee, all of them with far more political experience than Trump. I heard that Kid Rock was entertaining a run for the senate, and that has the establishment in a dither. They realize now that he actually could win, because they are realizing they are disconnected from the public and people like Kid Rock know mass audiences and their tastes and preferences better than politicians do.


Well, it took power away from the Roman Catholic Church. That was the elite as such when it came to written texts. The press has typically been upper middle class or better in capital requirements. Until very recently it became such that anybody can get a book published.
Dude, you're that guy in Annie Hall... :lol:



It's not really about understanding YouTube and McLuhan, but trying to analyze why Trump won over Clinton.
Yep, no substance, just superficial chatter.
#14824142
RhetoricThug wrote:Yep, no substance, just superficial chatter.

Precisely my point: the art of the put down doesn't work, because "elite" is just your self image and you don't control either the medium or the message anymore. The medium is common, not elite. The common man can reach a global audience.
By RhetoricThug
#14824290
What kind of video is that? It's not the loser in the basement, etc. classifications you provided.
Dogmatic persistence numbs awareness. Instinctually, profane somnambulists politick for their chief ideology (or leader(s) in the flesh because he-she-they embody the architecture of a particular belief), because idols of the tribe construct hierarchal super-systems of culture (operating systems) that dialectically (in the form of structural binary opposition) entertain and satisfy the unwashed masses. Skilled dialecticians suspend judgment and observe political interplay in order to counter absolutism and critique popular classification.

Like I said, I'm not going to address MB's original post, because it is filled with trivial labels and appears to be obsessed with fixed perspectives and political babble which shall be buried by time like any other outdated chemical combustion. It took me 9-months to get to this dimension, I traveled in a biological spaceship. In other words, I got more important things to think about.

For example, how do you characterize YouTube videos? Are they hot or cold? As an extension, what does YouTube extend?
An extension of us, an extension of everything in our rear-view mirror, our hopes, our dreams, our lies, our conceit; I, you, we, it, a side-effect of a multiplex message coming at us from within and without (always all-ways). Cybernetic (automated information loops) grids emphasize group participation (input/output, upload/download, flowing electrical information signatures) and artificially (artifice) bypass physical time-space barriers, so the internet is HOT&COLD, because you can be involved (interact through the resonant interval called NOW) or you can spectate. Later in McLuhan's life, he stopped using his superfluous 'hot & cold' metaphors because popular culture tarnished its meaning/value.

I think many of the political commentary videos are cold, meaning they are all based as reactions to world events or media stories that the viewer might already know about or would have to go review a media story to find out.

For example, Gary Franchi's "Next News Network" uses green screen and news desk backdrops to create the impression of a news outlet, while his content is a reaction to existing news. His click bait is typically consistent with his story, but I would say he spends too much time on his branding. I would characterize him as cool. His production, is backdrop slick, but content a little thin.

By contrast, Shirvan Neftchi's "Caspian Report" uses maps, b-roll, voice over, and a narrative supporting a thesis to provide geopolitical analysis. He provides enough supporting information that it is not required to put much effort into interpolating meaning. I would characterize his channel as hot by comparison. However, Caspian Report isn't as reactive. Neftchi takes time to make his videos.
People, events, exoteric phenomena... YAWN! :O If we follow the process- ideas to manifestation, we may get closer to the formal cause.

In other words, I would disagree with McLuhan's general premise. In the 1960s, audio at the movies sucked and there were no video players. Today, audio at the movies is quite sophisticated, but people can get a movie and watch a scene over and over. The "hot" context in this case is overwhelmed by newer technology like DVDs. I watch old movies with a buddy, and he constantly pauses it to give his commentary like you might in a film class.
What are you talking about? Again, you sound like that guy standing behind Woody Allen.

On the other hand, I disagree with McLuhan's critics that he overemphasizes technology in describing cultural change.
Actually his critics didn't understand his theory, McLuhan's unified field theory includes 'intelligent selection' as abstracted convention created by humans for humans (Narcissus trance). Furthermore, McLuhan had inadvertently challenged Darwinian evolution. Darwin considered natural selection and divergent evolution, but he did not see human technologies as environmental stimuli conditioning organisms in a convergent evolutionary process. However, Alfred Wallace pondered: "I have also endeavoured to show, how the same power which has modified animals has acted on man; and have, I believe, proved that, as soon as the human intellect became developed above a certain low stage, man's body would cease to be materially affected by natural selection, because the development of his mental faculties would render important modifications of its form and structure unnecessary. It will, therefore, probably excite some surprise among my readers, to find that I do not consider that all nature can be explained on the principles of which I am so ardent an advocate; and that I am now myself going to state objections, and to place limits, to the power of "natural selection."

YouTube levels the playing field. No longer is a Jeff Bezos able to put out propaganda via the Washington Post in a way that the public no longer sees it. No longer is Bill Gates able to put his Microsoft NBC message out there with MSNBC. Mass media has always been designed to reach a mass audience, but it was always controlled by wealthy narrower interests. YouTube democratizes this process.
This is colorful cultural commentary, byproduct of the Shakespearean proscenium arch (the whole world's a stage), a superficial feature (symptom) of the entire communication structure. When man-made satellites orbit earth, we technologically turn the planet into a work of art. It started (we approximate, hang on, let me check the Akashic records)... at the Pettakere cave in Sulawesi, we turned a pig into a human myth. Sorry PETA, in a different dimension, we're turned into a pig myth, yall better believe it.

A more primitive video format is Mark Dice's commentaries. He often depicts himself as observing media and then reacting to it. His stories are consistent with his hook bait, and usually fairly concise.
I upload discarnate images of myself to facebook so I can feel mythical. I'm not the same person in the image anymore (because I'm aging, dying, evolving with the universe), but my friends don't know that. Some folks like to hear myths, some like to see myths, some like to become myths. A more advanced video format is video games, I like at least 60 myths per second.

I'll be 50 in December. I sometimes enjoy getting on to Hulu and watching shows that I watched as a kid to see how times have changed. One of the things that changed is that show content is much shorter now. An hour long program used to have 50 minutes of content and 10 minutes of commercials. Now they have 40 minutes of content and 20 minutes of commercials.

Shows with plot lines were much more elaborate in the past. Shows with situation comedies were more poignant. For example, I find "All in the Family," "Sanford and Son" etc. far more entertaining while providing a subtext of social change, whereas I cannot even sit through 10 minutes of Madam Secretary, because it is nothing more than propaganda purporting to be drama.

I listen to a few minutes of news and as soon as they get on Trump/Russia, I think to myself "waste of time" and turn it off. I just don't see a lot of value in it.


I think you are missing MB's point, and that's largely MB's own fault for inserting his/her own bias into the discussion, rendering it somewhat still born. Rush Limbaugh is a radio personality. If the medium is the message, Rush Limbaugh is tribal, because radio is aural, like Norse sagas or something. Television is video. That's why FoxNews programs hotties. That's why CNN uses a homosexual anchor.
Thanks for the bed-time story. Read me one more chapter from Idols of the cave, I'm getting sleepy... *Yawn* Remember (page 399, Understanding Media, MM)- In a radio speech in Munich, march 14, 1936, Hitler said, "I go my way with the assurance of a somnambulist." His victims and his critics have been equally somnambulistic. They danced entranced to the tribal drum of radio that extended their central nervous system to create depth involvement for everybody. See, any radio personality is a side-effect of the ear, sometimes people want to hear a myth and sometimes people want take over the galaxy, homie. Furthermore, each myth dialectically lives alongside its counter myth. All myths involve us and are designed to touch us through an extension of us. Idols of the theatre need an audience.

Reporting live from the epi-genetic center, this is ground zero multiplied by one!

Secure your reality through sigil magick today! This is my flag, it's important, I live and die for it.

ABCDE-minded people sign their name on the dotted line because it makes sense. Right now I'm saving for my tombstone, it makes me feel #alive #progressive #pragmatic.

I was talking to X and X didn't like the way X made X feel. Thank God for Y. Y and X make a great pair. YandX live in XYZ, if you take A to B you eventually get to DNA... But that's just my experience. Oh would you look at the 0123456789, I'm late, gotta go and organize time-space and work on my who-what-when-where-why-how homework so I can help the universe wake up from its incomprehensible-incompressible dream.

A book that impressed me in a similar manner to McLuhan's was "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television" by Jerry Mander. He extends McLuhan's theory but restricts it to television and indicates that it cannot be reformed, because of the technology itself.
The internet reformed television, it sped up involvement (algorithmic feedback loops, real-time data sets, etc) and gave Madison avenue (Culture is their business) what they always wanted, consumers willingly participating in the advertising process. I think Neil Postman explained television when he wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death.


Well, that's a salient point. Television is a broadcast medium, whereas YouTube is a user-selected demand. While television has changed--thousands of channels fragmenting the market of viewers--and incorporating the ability to record and pause, the content is still produced by larger organizations. YouTube levels the playing field. It gives low capital voices the same standing as high capital voices.
Indeed, but how fertile is the noosphere? Can you broadcast seeds if the ground is sterile? Will THEY germinate, and who finances the idols of the marketplace?

I can't watch Alex Jones, and I think that's a medium/message construct. Jones' icons and click bait link is a "promise" if you will, and when you click on it he is rambling about something totally different. I frequently find myself asking, "When is he going to get to the point" based upon what the "promise" was on the link. Stefan Molyneux does this too. Whereas, I find Lauren Southern gets to the point much faster. Mark Dice is typically right to the point. Cenk Uygur is usually to the point too.
The mainstream media myth created the Alex Jones myth, as the free press myth created the journalist myth.


I don't remember whether it was McLuhan or Mander, but one of them supposed that TV is good at defining conflict. So we get these absurd political dialogs like whether or not Obama is a Muslim or whether Trump collude with Russia. They simply have to go with that sort of a narrative in the news business. But then, Archie Bunker and Fred Sanford were also backdrops for defining social conflict, albeit far more entertaining than news outlets.
The military-corporate edifice used television to romanticize war, frame perspective, and install 'this just-in' trauma based mind control. Fear reduces men to fight or flight machines, and war images frame perspective for the machine in flight fighting itself. Dead poets and dead soldiers lack animation, if it bleeds it leads (on the frontline, pawns plug-N-play), so keep on bleeding(white and black square games). Dogs salivate when they hear a bell ring, the food is just a reward, an expected side-effect, extension of salvation-er-salivation, conditioned response, learned behavior. Time marches on.

Well that is the point, isn't it? In McLuhan speak, YouTube levels the playing field between high capital media and low capital media. For example, the interplay between Alex Jones and Megyn Kelly is really a conflict between high capital media (Kelly) and low capital media (Jones). Kelly did the hitpiece, because she is doing the bidding of her high capital masters. MB's frustration is that Alex Jones is more popular than some television channels. While I am probably more in line with Jones politically than I am with Kelly, I find Jones unappealing because he's long winded, rarely gets to the point quickly, and is overly emotional and practically paranoid. By contrast, Megyn Kelly has nice legs, but her tits aren't big enough.


The left has long thought that if they could shut down right wing media, their utopian age would arise out of the ashes. So they are deeply frustrated that right wing voices are metastesizing on the internet, and YouTube is a big source of it.


I think Decky is spot on. What bothers you is someone like Mark Dice absolutely mocking the mainstream media. He'll routinely show that his videos get more views than MTVs for example, and then he'll mock MTV mercilessly. In a McLuhan sense, Dice is declaring victory and taking a victory lap for low capital media in its war with high capital media.


I disagree. MB is lamenting primarily alt-right voices. There's all kinds of shit on YouTube that has nothing to do with MB's analysis. For example if you watch Linus Tech Tips channel, it's basically a small crew that makes videos about technology in a manner that is a hell of a lot cheaper than C-NET. That doesn't make Linus an imbecile. It just means that you don't need a big corporation to make interesting tech videos. That's why I say that YouTube doesn't confer legitimacy so much as it confers a platform to reach a mass audience to anyone who can upload a video. Reaching the mass audience depends on people liking the content.


See? That is what you are missing. They have a media platform, but it doesn't matter what their content is. That's McLuhan. Linus can give tech tips to millions. Is he left of center, right of center, a communist? It doesn't matter? Is he gay, straight? Doesn't matter. The media of YouTube gives him a platform to reach millions without spending a dime for that reach. He only has to spend money on a camera, backdrops or green screens, video editors (open source ones like kdenlive are free), and write a decent story board.


That's exactly it, but MB chose to focus on alt-right vloggers. Do cat videos have legitimacy? It doesn't matter. What matters is the "You" in YouTube. You have a platform to reach millions.


Technically that's correct. That's not what's eating at MB. As I said, Megyn Kelly is big capital media, and Alex Jones is small capital media. That Kelly decided to do a hit piece shows that big capital media knows they are losing ground on the one hand. However, what shocks the mainstream media is that Donald Trump has called in to Alex Jones before. Did Donald Trump get in touch with Alex Jones, because YouTube made Jones legitimate? Not really. What is happening is that high capital media is losing influence, and they had a big influence over politics. They were not able to stop Trump. One of their big frustrations is that Trump tweets. That means Trump bypasses high capital media and their political filter. So does Alex Jones.


Well that's exactly what I mean. Your notion of "nobodies" is basically "low capital." They don't exist as the face of billion dollar corporations. I find that interesting when some of you socialists are debating Decky on this, because you are in effect defending the ultra rich and taking a shit on the poor.


Well, that's what it's really about isn't it? It's not really about understanding YouTube and McLuhan, but trying to analyze why Trump won over Clinton.


Spot on. Trump spent 1/10th of what Hillary spent, and he beat her. Big capital lost the election. High capital media wasn't a difference maker. Low capital media won the day, and unlikely names like Alex Jones unseated much bigger names like MSNBC. A political novice like Donald Trump schooled 16 Republican contenders and the Democratic nominee, all of them with far more political experience than Trump. I heard that Kid Rock was entertaining a run for the senate, and that has the establishment in a dither. They realize now that he actually could win, because they are realizing they are disconnected from the public and people like Kid Rock know mass audiences and their tastes and preferences better than politicians do.


Well, it took power away from the Roman Catholic Church. That was the elite as such when it came to written texts. The press has typically been upper middle class or better in capital requirements. Until very recently it became such that anybody can get a book published.

... Contemporary gossip for cheer-squads. This is what happens when you get lost in the mythos of human expression.

blackjack21 wrote:Precisely my point: the art of the put down doesn't work, because "elite" is just your self image and you don't control either the medium or the message anymore. The medium is common, not elite. The common man can reach a global audience.
Well, you made a frivolous point, because the internet can extend human consciousness through hyper-space and restructure our sensus communis. Simultaneity as a principle side-effect of the electric information field unifies tactility (tribal involvement in the hunt for information) and restructures the mind-matter interface. The internet is a new ground or pattern of awareness/perception. Traditionally, the elite build blueprints, the priest class write programs, script-kiddies, linear language, so they can organize each eye's space-time. We're enfolded in the eye of the beholder (you only know what you've been told, not what you behold), may the 3rd eye of the blind man praise the one-eyed king and let two-eyed men gouge each other's eyes out. Learning is a side-effect of free-will and life is motivated by death. Individual identity is an abstraction, we co-create the enterprise, discover patterns of perception, and pretend to invent our purpose. Thoughts transform chaos into habitable cosmos, Consciousness is the medium, we're the message
Living pieces of the infinite universe
Writings on the wall enfolded in its unfolding
Last edited by RhetoricThug on 17 Jul 2017 05:53, edited 1 time in total.
#14824319
RhetoricThug wrote:Well, you made a frivolous point, because the internet can extend human consciousness through hyper-space and restructure our sensus communis. Simultaneity as a principle side-effect of the electric information field unifies tactility (tribal involvement in the hunt for information) and restructures the mind-matter interface. The internet is a new ground or pattern of awareness/perception. Traditionally, the elite build blueprints, the priest class write programs, script-kiddies, linear language, so they can organize each eye's space-time. We're enfolded in the eye of the beholder (you only know what you've been told, not what you behold), may the 3rd eye of the blind man praise the one-eyed king and let two-eyed men gouge each other's eyes out. Learning is a side-effect of free-will and life is motivated by death. Individual identity is an abstraction, we co-create the enterprise, discover patterns of perception, and pretend to invent our purpose. Thoughts transform chaos into habitable cosmos, Consciousness is the medium, we're the message
Living pieces of the infinite universe
Writings on the wall

Yes, I was just going to say the same thing but the obliteration of the transcendence is lacking in the paramount horizons as you see them. It is really multicolour since the production shifted from the location. However, don't forget to subtract the calendar from it.
#14824343
Ever since @Decky melted my brain by exposing me to Alex Jones vids, I have been trying to figure out why they appear to be deliberately staged as a parody of propaganda. They use all the tools of propaganda, but deliberately smack you in the face with them. Is this a test to see if we have become so devoid of independent thought that the Oligarchs are safe to come out from behind the curtain?
Or is it just entertainment?

Edit: To clarify my questions, if the 'medium is the message' then what is the purpose of using the medium this way? The production of these vids seems to indicate they are aware the medium is more important than the message.
#14824349
Edit: To clarify my questions, if the 'medium is the message' then what is the purpose of using the medium this way? The production of these vids seems to indicate they are aware the medium is more important than the message.

To make money, obviously. Duh! How many millions is Alex Jones worth? And aren't we talking about him right now? 'Nuff said. Lol.

I can remember a lecture which I once attended given by a respected journalist from a British tabloid newspaper. He told us how the journalist does his job and what it achieves. He was the most cheerfully cynical bastard I have ever met in my entire life. At the end of his lecture, one middle-class woman raised her hand and asked him a question: "But what is the point of it all? Why bother?" To which he grinned cheerfully and told her: "It pays my mortgage." Lol.

If that's the attitude of even the mainstream journalists, you can imagine what the attitude of the 'shock jocks' and the alt-right journalists is. Ha!
#14824350
Potemkin wrote:To make money, obviously. Duh! How many millions is Alex Jones worth? And aren't we talking about him right now? 'Nuff said. Lol.

I can remember a lecture which I once attended given by a respected journalist from a British tabloid newspaper. He told us how the journalist does his job and what it achieves. He was the most cheerfully cynical bastard I have ever met in my entire life. At the end of his lecture, one middle-class woman raised her hand and asked him a question: "But what is the point of it all? Why bother?" To which he grinned cheerfully and told her: "It pays my mortgage." Lol.

If that's the attitude of even the mainstream journalists, you can imagine what the attitude of the 'shock jocks' and the alt-right journalists is. Ha!


You are right of course. :( You reminded me when as a teacher I was forced to sit through another expert telling me how to teach. I said, "you can't really believe this bullshit you are telling me, why are you here?"
She said, "They are paying me a $1000" :(
#14824352
You are right of course. :( You reminded me when as a teacher I was forced to sit through another expert telling me how to teach. I said, "you can't really believe this bullshit you are telling me, why are you here?"
She said, "They are paying me a $1000" :(

You are a noble-minded idealist, One Degree. You care about things other than merely your own material comfort. It is therefore easy for you to forget that most people are not like that. Most people, in fact, are shallow opportunists who can be bought cheaply. That one fact explains about 90% of the bullshit in the world right there.
#14824354
Potemkin wrote:You are a noble-minded idealist, One Degree. You care about things other than merely your own material comfort. It is therefore easy for you to forget that most people are not like that. Most people, in fact, are shallow opportunists who can be bought cheaply. That one fact explains about 90% of the bullshit in the world right there.


Yes, I think I have a mental disorder. I am familiar with 'the streets' and I have been victimized several times by the greedy and egoistic, yet I keep falling back into thinking people are rational. I wonder if I am a victim of insidious Catholic propaganda? I was a normal rotten self centered person until I met my Catholic school 'do gooder' wife. She kept insisting that I 'think about things'. Seemed stupid to me at first, but I was not about to lose that hottie.

Edit: Damn it, I even feel compelled to edit for truthfulness. I was not 'normal, rotten, self centered', but more like in the top 10%.
Last edited by One Degree on 17 Jul 2017 14:04, edited 1 time in total.
#14824358
@RhetoricThug
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?

At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus qui blanditiis praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti quos dolores et quas molestias excepturi sint occaecati cupiditate non provident, similique sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollitia animi, id est laborum et dolorum fuga. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Nam libero tempore, cum soluta nobis est eligendi optio cumque nihil impedit quo minus id quod maxime placeat facere possimus, omnis voluptas assumenda est, omnis dolor repellendus. Temporibus autem quibusdam et aut officiis debitis aut rerum necessitatibus saepe eveniet ut et voluptates repudiandae sint et molestiae non recusandae. Itaque earum rerum hic tenetur a sapiente delectus, ut aut reiciendis voluptatibus maiores alias consequatur aut perferendis doloribus asperiores repellat.
#14825354
To make money, obviously. Duh! How many millions is Alex Jones worth?


He doesn't even monetize his videos or site or radio show...he has no sponsors, does no 3rd party promos or ads, etc.

Not very many millions. His only real source of income is his supplement business. It's just his style to be loud, sensational and comedic. He seems wacky because he's got wacky beliefs.
#14825653
Igor Antunov wrote:He doesn't even MONEY...he has no interest in MONEY
Not very many $$$. His only real source of $$$ is his business. It's just his $$$ method. He seems wacky because he's got wacky $$$.
Beyond posting unimaginative perspectives, you seem to enjoy the process of washing your mind with the latest trends. This is robot-talk, automatons may not correctly interpret this present moment. Igor is like a caricature, political cartoon figure, painted by 'others.' Of course, this may be a pleasant image for a simulacrum.

@SolarCross, I like the use of Lorem Ipsum to expound some of the points I made. McLuhan covered Cicero and typesetting, so I'm familiar with the passage; form before content, dialectic of happiness and the pain of labor, foresight for the human condition, careful presentation of ancient insight, etc. A body of work equipped with immunoglobulin, immune to invasive interpretations, very resistant to conclusive inflammation of the information. Lorem Ipsum typifies visual space through character-string transmogrification and produces an auto-amputation process of semantic field theory (the content is cut out of the form, highlighting structural awareness as dialogue between objective appearance and subjective experience.)

It is therefore easy for you to forget that most people are not like that. Most people, in fact, are shallow opportunists who can be bought cheaply. That one fact explains about 90% of the bullshit in the world right there.
Right, instead of telling us how to think you'll tell us what to think and the redundant left-right paradigm will show up to divide this debate. YAWN, predictable dialogue trapped in a closed system of ignorance. I get it, closed systems of thought are easier for you to navigate and manage, you're afraid of the unbound frontier because it is as uncertain as your mortal life. In other words, like many of your peers, you're hypnotized by the rear-view mirror because it maintains an illusory safe distance from this current moment, and you're pacified by background noises, dazed and confused by an ever-changing tomorrow.

Happy B-day McLuhan!
225-227, Laws of Media, The New Science and Media Poetics.
Language is metaphor in the sense that it not only stores but translates experience from one mode into another. Money is metaphor in the sense that it stores skill and labour and also translates one skill into another. But the principle exchange and translation, or metaphor is our rational power to translate each of our senses into the others: this we do every instant of our lives. But the price we pay for special technological extensions, whether wheel alphabet or computer, is that these massive extensions of sense become closed systems. Our private senses are not closed systems but endlessly translated into each other in that experience which we call consciousness. Our extended senses, tools, technologies, mental constructs, through the ages have been closed systems incapable of interplay or collective awareness. Now, in the electric age, the very instantaneous nature of coexistence among our technological instruments has created a crisis quite new in human history. Our extended faculties and senses now constitute a single field of experience that demands that they become collectively conscious. Our technologies, like our private senses, now demand an interplay and ratio that makes rational coexistence possible. As long as our technologies were as slow as the wheel or alphabet or money, the fact that they were separate, closed systems was socially and psychically supportable. Now, sight and sound and touch and movement are simultaneous and global in extent. A ratio of interplay among these extensions of our human functions is now necessary collectively as it has always been for private and personal rationality.

The strategy to which any modern culture must resort was indicated by Wilhelm von Humboldt: 'Man lives with his objects chiefly- in fact, since his feelings and acting depends on his perception, one may say exclusively- as language presents them to him. By the same process whereby he spins language out of his being, he ensnares himself in it; and each language draws a magic circle round the people to which it belongs, a circle from which there is no escape save by stepping out of it into another' (Cassirer, Language and Myth, 9). The ground that envelops the user of any new technological word completely massages and reshapes both user and culture. In this way too these words (extensions) have all the transforming power of the primal logos. Westerners' only escape or antidote has hitherto been by means of artistic enterprise. All serious art, to use Pound's phrase, functions satirically as a mirror or counter-environment to exempt the user from tyranny by his self-imposed environment, just as Perseus's shield enabled him to escape stupefaction by the Gorgon. The art historian has long puzzled over the question; at what point do our primitive cultures develop art? Evidently the Balinese had not yet confronted the problem when they answered, 'We have no art; we do everything as well as possible.' Art is a response to a situation that has reached a certain intensity. It may well be that intensity, or paralysis, comes about as a result of left-hemisphere stress. But at what point do developed cultures discard their arts? the question would seem entirely relevant to our present condition. In The Problem of Form Adolf von Hildebrand observed, 'In true art, the actual form has its reality only as an effect.' The same observation may be made with respect to all human artefacts as utterances.
Political prisoners, folks with deep convictions, fear the side-effect of youtube.

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