Cancel The New York Times
robrhinehart.com
robrhinehart.com
>I see it now. I see that information and truth and freedom have been oppressed. I had been silenced. We had all been bound and gagged and silenced, not directly, but indirectly, by a strange, complex, invisible, sinister force. But I see it now. I see it so clearly. There was a "guild of truth" telling us that there was a central narrative of mankind. Truth was branded. We are all being controlled and oppressed and enslaved by the evil octopus of the New York Times.
This I especially don't get. No one has declared themselves the "guild of truth", and there's no paper or institution I can think of that the people have declared to be the "guild of truth". And if someone has, saying so doesn't make it true. But people not liking you, or your writing, isn't a crime.
There is no diversity in their ranks, just conformity and uniformity.
There is no debate of ideas, storms of conflicting concepts, just reaffirmation of the same things they all believe in, the single universal truth they subscribe to with no doubt or consideration to the possibility they may be mistaken.
They do not dispassionately present facts letting the reader make up his mind. They already know what they want the reader to think and they just feed him selected facts to influence him into thinking that way.
They do not write for the world, for the opposition in its diversity. They just write for their own eco chamber, reinforcing preexisting ideas and inflaming the spirits agains the "non-believers".
They are a religion: the FoxNews of the Left.
If you hang out with actual leftists, they've probably hated the NYT longer than you have.
The guy sounds dis-associated from reality. A lot of the "everything is fake news" crowd is disjointed...I'm not sure of Soylent is the cause or not, or if they have investors/advisors if so, I'd be having a conversation about moving him out of the company and maybe into a psych ward for observation.
The failures I think this comes from are a form of ignorance and arrogance, and possibly a lack of empathy about how they're perceived. I personally know someone like this that is very intelligent, and thinks that they have all the right answers. There seems to be a mentality of, I have this information facts, given these facts, and that as a goal, *this* is the solution.
With the person I know, a significant problem with their reasoning is that they have important gaps in their knowledge (ignorance). They believe other people just aren't as enlightened as they are (arrogance), and if they were, they would have come to the same conclusion.
For my acquaintance, I believe that the mentality comes from a history of often being right, but also a prolonged social isolation that allowed them to build a myth in their head that they are always right.
In his mind, he's not wasting water because he never does laundry, while he totally ignores the environmental impact of having his clothes producing in China and shipped to him.
He refuses to cook and is genuinely offended when the apartment he is looking at has a kitchen, because why would they assume he would want to cook? He finds cooking horrible, bordering on torture, so surely that must be the Correct and Rational way to be.
He seems to think he can just figure out everything from first principles by doing a few web searches and reading through a bit of literature and extrapolating from there.
Every article from (and by) him is an absolutely fascinating and genuinely horrifying look into a mind that is just fundamentally out of whack, but has never faced enough adversity in life to properly recognize that.
Get back to me on this in a couple of years, when "fighting misinformation" reaches its peak. All social media already have "guild of truth", and you can be very effectively silenced if you run afoul of this guild. The formal institutionalization of this de-facto arrangement is still in the works, but there's no doubt there is a wide demand for it and wide agreement - at least among politicians, academia, news media, entertainers and big tech companies - that having a "guild of truth", tightly controlling masses' information intake, is a good and vital project.
> It seems perfectly adequate
Adequate for what? It is a partisan propaganda organ including some infotainment content along the way. For people that see the task of the press to be something else, it is abhorrent. For people seeing nothing wrong with a correct-minded propaganda, especially coupled with a bit of fun infotainment, it's perfectly fine.
In the past week these were enough for me to consider the NYT is done, it's rotten to the core (150 staff signed a letter against Donald McNeil) -
Taylor Lorenz
Donald McNeil
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26128752
This article/rant is wrong about what the issues are. I assume the upvotes are the Soylent connection, the headline and an attempt at a solution (ghost.org)
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/ayaan-hirsi-ali-and-the-...
And that's just recent events, without getting into the disgrace that was the 1619 Project.
> He feels he has no voice, no power politically and seems to want to lash out at an entity that appears to have both. I don't understand it, but it's not an uncommon story, especially recently.
The link below may overgeneralize, but it dissects the piece in some detail.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/epd4je/soylent-founders-unhi...
>There is a ton of money in newspapers. Have you ever heard of Hearst castle? There is a literal castle in California built by a man that owned newspapers.
I'm not sure that makes sense.... now.
Also the NYT destroyed local newspapers? I'm not sure that is accurate.
>They are the ones that choose the president.
What?
>Write what you want to write. Write what you really think. The truth will come out. And it will come out better if you stop fearing and feeding the octopus.
Is that just an argument to just believe whatever you want and to write a blog about it?
That whole rant seems off.
My point being that should anyone ever want to see this argument made much more cogently (while also getting to appreciate one of the greatest films ever made) maybe give Citizen Kane a watch.
Rosebud!
Just happened to rewatch Citizen Kane last week
This about sums it up, yes.
NYT may have gone downhill, or it may not have ever deserved its status as “the paper of record.” But it’s definitely not an oppressive octopus strangling America’s speech. The NYT isn’t the reason you’re afraid to write a controversial blog post; that’s absurd.
He’s being totally disingenuous by telling journalists to write what they want and damn the consequences, and if they ask him nicely HE will fund them—but only if they “really make [him] believe in” their writing. That’s really no different from saying “go freelance,” and I’d be very surprised if he ever backs this up with action.
I understand the author making the point/assumption that the New York Times, due to its large influence in the United States, has a pervasive sway in public opinion that goes further than just New York City.
However I don't understand why that would be a bad thing, if it's not a monopoly?
To take a more extreme example, there are bureaus in countries like North Korea (country wide news monopoly) or China (less brutal but monopoly nevertheless by the State) dedicated to controlling the narrative that goes on within the country. Anything that goes out of line is suppressed.
Is the author comparing NYT to that kind of control over the narrative?
If that is not the case, then personally I see how a combination of "free market economy" and "freedom of speech" would mean the ones with resources (power and money) will undubitably have a larger sway in public opinion. That's inherent in the system.
That’s why it matters.
This seems to demonstrate that, and honestly, this sort of droning on would give me pause to invest in company he has any leadership role in.
Why is this drivel even here?
My guess is exactly because of statements like yours. He makes a good point, and when you can see past the conspiracy theory tone, I think this article is kind of awesome.
Your kind of response making people feel like this article is bad is almost the entire point why he writes in a crazy way.
Does he actually think the NYT is some singular conspirator, plotting the worlds doom? I highly doubt it. Is the NYT a good embodiment of the spirit that he is talking about? I’d say so.
This was my favorite part from his article - “ Invite friends to write on your blog. Start 20 blogs all with fake names of fake people. There are no rules! Start a blog for your cat and your rat and your flower garden. How does your rose feel about all this? Change your style with every post. Contradict yourself. Lie to me. Commit plagiarism. Be really egregious about it. Misquote authors and butcher philosophy. There are no rules! Ok now write some good stuff. Like some really deep look out the window and ponder the truth of the ages stuff. Get drunk and write. Get high and write. Write a message in the snow with your piss. I hope it offends somebody. Does this post offend you? Good! Now offend me! Let’s offend each other. Doesn’t it feel good to feel something?”
I read them in that order, and the OP article at least had context that way. It's in part deliberately bad for rhetorical reasons, since it's a call to arms asking for more people to write, just write, good or bad. It's art-prose in the vein of David Foster Wallace. (Edit: I totally meant Samuel Delany)
Yet HN completely ignores this and upvotes content when it's someone who reflects their own values
That is true, but it reaches far beyond the NYT. It is pervasive and it has a name. It's called "Cancel Culture". It is a social disease of unapologetic censorship that affects any and all civil discourse and is a form of social cancer.
I played along with Rhinehart's 'Sound of Silence' (Simon/Garfunkle) routine / experiment / message until suddenly: BLAM We are all being controlled by: the New York Times! OF COURSE. It's so simple. How could we have missed it until now?
All cultures have a dark side, as all we humans do. (See for reference:2020) Nature is beautiful, Nature is cruel. 'Best of times, worst of times.' But looking for a single source of darkness in some individual other is ... well, flippo.
'Find a scapegoat and beat up on it' doesn't lead to truth. After a century of war, we're still working on this. And suffering for it.
Someone on one of the articles here mounted an e-ink display on his wall, and loaded the new york times frontpage on it each day.
It has a very regular url:
https://static01.nyt.com/images/<year>/<month>/<day>/nytfrontpage/scan.pdf
So I wrote a script to download it each day and drop it in my inbox. It goes back about 10 years.
What I found was that the front page is different, it makes judgements and is opinionated. I wonder - am I reading articles that I have self-select and agree with?
He means for himself, certainly not anyone else, apparently.
The entire approach in this article is awful. It just builds up a boogeyman, demonizes it, sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph, a lot of strong words, yet with virtually no substance.
It seems like copypasta written by AI that’s been digesting Facebook.
Not sure why someone would spend effort on dropping a turd like this into the world. I guess his aim is to elevate himself by tearing down something else? Become a source of truth by attacking a source of truth?
If the OP’s point is that editors aren’t needed to publish at scale....yes....that’s been true since at least 2006.
I don't understand it, but it's not an uncommon story, especially recently.
Cancel your subscription, stop trying to stoke up a mob.
In the same whimsical tone of the article.
I honestly feel like I share the emotion of the author. I could write for hours about it. There are many other news networks and papers but still, I feel something draws me back to the nytimes as the true spawn point for all that is wrong in the world. It’s this “grey lady” notion. The “paper of record”. It’s not like the others that are unabashedly biased and know that they are.
The times is like an emperor blessed with the divine right to rule over truth and culture. The tone of the writing. The tone of their podcasts. Even in attacking it you must pay your respects to it as Trump did. You must leave the room without turning your back on it.
It doesn’t just evoke the need to reform itself. It evokes such a strong sense of...it needs to be killed and die.
why not wish for someone to do better instead of taking a flamethrower to the dregs?
I wonder if Rhinehart is behind #blockthenyt on Twitter
Add to this that nutritionally complete meal replacement shakes have been available at every corner store and drug store since the 1970s. His grand "invention" is a bad reimplementation of a wheel that already existed in a better form. Typical SV myopia.
Why anyone listens to a word he says, is a mystery. He's clearly completely off his rocker.