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Articles and Stories We Do Not Want to Read or Edit

theatlantic.com

59 pointscurtis14 comments

It seems like Vice took huge swaths of this as a guide, sadly inverted. Nothing for us here to worry about though!

Next stop, Mars.

...Uh oh...

Throw in a couple more modern cliches—something about driverless cars and the trolley problem, say—and Manning’s list could just as well be used today.

Ouch... ok that got personal in a hurry.

Amusingly, the seniority system did end in Congress, the District of Columbia did get home rule, and commercial TV came of age and passed its sell-by date.

In what sense did the seniority system did end in Congress? House Republicans take into account fundraising in addition to seniority for leadership positions, but my impression is that Democrats and the Senate are basically a normal seniority system.

Geez, "Next stop Mars" is still going strong all these years later.

I am hopeful that at some point the "Next stop Mars" stories will end

Superseded by "Next stop Europa".

Interesting to see this on the same day as the doctorow article. Corey says we become immune to persuasion tactics. The Atlantic says otherwise. And Vice says "next stop: Mars!"

My favorite: "Insolence of the young: shame of a nation."

Honestly I love everything about that article.

That it's followed up with: "likewise, 'The Wisdom of the Young: Salvation of a Nation'" is the clincher. Breathless pandering is still pandering, even (especially?) when your group is the one being pandered to.

reminds me of News of the Weird's list of story types it would no longer accept because they happen often enough to not qualify as weird ... cat ends up 300 miles from home, super slow high-speed chase, couple having sex on co-workers desk after hours...

And if I could add a meta type of story I wish reporters would stop writing, it would be "The Death of X", when X is not a living being; e.g. The Death of [some Technology]. Most technologies never die. They just fade asymptotically. And all the premature announcements of death, while they're great for clicks, are less great for giving readers information...

Don't you remember when "gamers" ended because some buddy-buddy journos on a private forum decided to simultaneously declare "the death of gamers"?

Gamasutra was amongst them, and they still crop up here every now and then.

I do remember that statement. I even still agree to the basic conceit of the first article I read on the topic a while back - I want to say it was an editorial on the Escapist.

"Gamers" as they were in the past, have been pulled into the public eye. The mass popularity of E-Sports and Let's Play and Twitch & other streaming services means that in general, everyone is a gamer. It's not a separate language or culture with esoterica of its own. Whether it's your mother who plays Candy Crush & Farm Friends on Facebook, your "hardcore" buddies playing the newest Doomclones and Dotaclones, the hordes of Minecraft & Minetest players, mobile gamers, etc., games - and gamers, are everywhere and everyone. The "Gamer" as a separate being unto himself has basically died. He's now just another nerd.

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