Scott in Still Alive: “I have no remaining beef with them. (aside from the sorts of minor complaints that Rob Rhinehart expresses so eloquently here)”
(https://www.robrhinehart.com/the-new-york-times/)
posted on February 23, 2021 09:05 AM by
u/textlossarcade
That’s a pretty fucking misleading title if I’m not mistaken, because
after skimming the article and using ctrl+f I can find literally no
reference to Siskind
Especially in the current controversy I’d like to discourage this sub
being filled with pure scatter-shot outrage porn over Siskind
It is linked by siskind on his “still alive” post with the sentence I used as the thread title; it seemed relevant because it wasn’t discussed back when that thread had its own discussion, and it suggests that Scott endorsed huge irrational negative attitudes about the NYT before the Metz piece came out even when he was pretending to half apologize for what he had done
Why not 'the article Scott agreed with in his Still Alive is otherwordly bad, take a look. But content warning, you might lose your sanity.'
And considering this is also the guy who invented Soylent this prob should have been more of a text post with the link. I have read way more about all this shit than is sane for anybody, and even I was confused. (But when I read your title again it was clear btw).
It is fun however that Scott agrees with another 'speed up your brain to write ~~javascript~~ blog posts' transhumanist type. Hot swappable bodyparts when?
I wanted to get his ironic understatement of the complaints and praise of the writing into the title, and hadn’t seen that my phrasing might be unclear; your phrasing is clearer. I would have just posted side by side screen shots or something on Facebook
This seems absurd but this is truly how I felt. I was so oppressed I
literally had to go back to the beginning of the universe to find
something to write about. So I wrote about the beginning of the
universe. When I published it I felt a strangling amount of anxiety. I
did not advertise it but I just knew somebody would read it, and they
would find something in it they did not like, and it would trigger the
forces of darkness to destroy me. This did not happen, but it also did
not really go anywhere and what was the point anyways and what was I
thinking writing publicly where I could get hurt. So I stopped
again.
Oh well, I thought, times change, people move on, it was fun for a
while. But wait, yes there have been changes in blogging platforms and
software like any technology but they were all to help writing, to
encourage writing, why didn’t people write anymore? Why didn’t they
really write? Writing is a very old technology. And it had only been
improved upon. So where was all the writing?
Yes there was tons of content. We were drowning in content. There
were tweets and stories and shows and articles and articles and
articles. But they were all the same. Nobody was really saying anything.
They were not allowed to. Anybody that tried had to quickly change or
leave or be destroyed. They could only say very specific things about
very specific topics in very specific ways at very specific times. Fuck.
That.
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.
…huh. That’s all I got, “huh.” It’s so phenomenally stupid I don’t
know what to do with it.
Bots are infighting, but only one offers an opt out, by the powers of Rational Radical Centrism, that means the one without opt out is the evil one. Sorry GenderNeutralPhobes, you lost this one.
‘I commercialized my writing’ obviously that has nothing to do with
why he (and others) stopped blogging openly. Nope it is the tought
police. The nyt specifically.
Anyway, this is the same article written a billion times already,
writer who likes to write fails empathy check, thinks his exp is
universal, praises writing for writings sake (even if it fails to pay
the bills, or you have nothing interesting to say), adds a bit of
conspiracy theory to explain why the 2000s era of blogging stopped. And
it is way to long, utter waste of time. At least Tim Pool looks funny
when he is sprouting the same kind of weird shit.
If you think this is eloquent, you are a bigger fool than I am.
> adds a bit of conspiracy theory to explain why the 2000s era of blogging stopped
The consolidation/centralization/corporatization of the internet is sad and insidious enough without people making up things like that.
I basically stopped reading at, “In 2012 I was tired of people
telling lies about food and I decided to tell people what I really
believed.” The “truth” that Rhinehart gave out was really about how much
he hated eating and basically invented Soylent so that he wouldn’t
starve. And if that works for him and others, in a way that
already-existing products like Ensure don’t, then that’s fine. But
apparently now he’s decided that he’s a Teller of Hard Truths, and the
NYT is uniquely evil among mainstream media, and… yeah, he’s
not just nuts, he’s Kanye nuts.
Yep. He seems to have taken down his original blog post in which he describes coming up with it because eating seemed like a chore to him, which makes a certain amount of sense--I mean, look at how many people live on convenience foods and/or order take-out regularly, and lots of people want complete nutrition without the hassle of menu planning, shopping, and/or cooking. There was even a DIY Soylent movement of sorts (it's now at [https://www.completefoods.co/diy/recipes](https://www.completefoods.co/diy/recipes) ) that adjusts home recipes for particular nutritional needs, such as keto. But Rhinehart himself just kept getting nuttier; here's [an early interview](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/04/the-man-who-would-make-eating-obsolete/361058/) where he claims that canned vegetables are better than fresh (he has a real obsession with food decaying or spoiling), and another article about his time [living in a shipping container](https://www.businessinsider.com/soylent-ceo-rob-rhinehart-has-a-house-in-la-thats-enraging-people-2016-8) that he bought with Soylent money, then complained when trespassers seemed to assume that it was, well, just a shipping container that someone had abandoned on the hill, and trashed it. I think that he might have some problems.
“The New York Times has slowly monopolized and subverted our freedoms
and the truth without us even realizing it. It is the great deceiver.
The prince of lies. The great trickster. The great oppressor. This evil
is ancient. It is much older than newspapers. It always looks
interesting and important on the outside. It looks like something you
love, something you need. But it does not love you. It hates you. And
you do not need it. That is a lie.”
Would you say it's older than Christianity? Just trying to narrow it down, here. If you were trying to represent this evil in, hypothetically, the form of a star, how many lines would you need to do so? Uh-huh. Very good. Now, I'm going to read off 26 letter pairs, and I'd like you to rate your opinion on each on a scale from 1, you don't care, to 10, something you feel very strongly about. AQ. BQ. CQ...
I mean I did cancel my subscription a bit ago so I can understand the feeling. I had to wait 20 minutes for some call center guy to get on their messaging thing and then convince him that no, I did not want 12 weeks free. Atrocious and insane that they might retain enough people to justify the cost.
Anyway imagine having a parasocial relationship with scott siskind that is so intense you call the grey lady the great satan, lol
The NYT has slowly monopolised and subverted a large group of people’s freedoms, primarily those from the working class, and mostly with the same motivations and methods that allowed Hillary Clinton to be the chosen candidate for the Presidency in 2016. To wit: the NYT is perfectly uninterested in anything but filling its pockets, and has been enabled to do so by a political class with the same interests. Read any of Matt Taibbi’s inveterate pieces on Thomas Friedman for perspective, or fuck, read anything about Bari Weiss, or Bret Stephens.
It’s undeniable that Yellow Journalism is and was and will continue to be a thing, pre-existing the NYT, which nonetheless feeds on it.
I am not a fan of Taibbi, and I think “newspapers/muckraking are worse now than when Alexander Hamilton and others were directly using the papers they personally owned to directly wage public opposition campaigns against each other, let’s replace this with whoever is rich now doing that” is not a great take, but no need to divide sneerclub over “how much do we like taibbi”
> than when Alexander Hamilton and others were directly using the papers they personally owned to directly wage public opposition campaigns against each other,
Damn, it really would be terrible if the wealthy owned news media and used their control over the media to push their personal agendas. Now to take a big sip of tea and look up who owns WaPo, Fox News, MSNBC, etc.
“Change your style with every post. Contradict yourself. Lie to me.
Commit plagiarism. Be really egregious about it. Misquote authors and
butcher philosophy.”
This is from the section on his preferred system: everyone getting
their own blog and lying
“A few months ago it was invulnerable. It had impenetrable armor. It
had us all cowering under the weight of shame and sex and masks. But not
anymore. It is weak. The resistance is gaining steam. People are
starting blogs and you should too. Tesla got rid of their media team.
Why did they need one? They were just distorting the message. All they
need is a blog. They have a great blog.”
OF COURSE YOU GET DIFFERENT “NEWS COVERAGE/MESSAGING” IF IT ALL COMES
UNDILUTED FROM YOUR PR DEPARTMENT DIPSHIT
Why are rationalists so fucking willing to accept such superficially
obviously foolish crap?
“Like an octopus, the New York Times has many arms. If you attack
one, the others will get you. And it will likely grow back. The New York
Times is so many things. It is a company, it is a web site, it is a
stock, it is a brand, it is a newspaper, it is a family, it is a
building, it is social media, news media, advertising media, and
entertainment media. No one of these things does the oppressing, it is
the subtle but very real creature behind all of it that does the
oppression. It controls books, food, technology, policy, you name it.
You do not see it. But it is there. It is everywhere. Every time a new
media technology or company shows up, it quickly becomes infected. Look
at Clubhouse. It was a matter of days. They thrust a new tentacle right
in to the middle of it. And Clubhouse was practically designed to stay
safe from it. Nice try.”
aside from the minor complaints that [they have slowly monopolized
and subverted our freedoms and the truth without us even realizing it.
It is the great deceiver. The prince of lies. The great trickster. The
great oppressor. This evil is ancient. It is much older than newspapers.
It always looks interesting and important on the outside. It looks like
something you love, something you need. But it does not love you. It
hates you.]
Why does he hate the New York Times, specifically? I’m more used to
this kind of unhinged ranting attacking “the media” overall, not a
single organisational member of it.
"The prince of lies. The great trickster. The great oppressor. This evil is ancient. It is much older than newspapers. "
That just makes me question why a specific newspaper company is held up as the contemporary incarnation of an ancient evil. It's...emotive, but I would hardly call the writing's conflated and confusing invocation of the Devil, trickster spirits (I think??) and tyranny "eloquent".
That’s a pretty fucking misleading title if I’m not mistaken, because after skimming the article and using ctrl+f I can find literally no reference to Siskind
Especially in the current controversy I’d like to discourage this sub being filled with pure scatter-shot outrage porn over Siskind
…huh. That’s all I got, “huh.” It’s so phenomenally stupid I don’t know what to do with it.
Aw yeah, more people taking the Gray Lady to task!
clicks
reads
closes tab
massages bridge of nose
okay, SO
‘I commercialized my writing’ obviously that has nothing to do with why he (and others) stopped blogging openly. Nope it is the tought police. The nyt specifically.
Anyway, this is the same article written a billion times already, writer who likes to write fails empathy check, thinks his exp is universal, praises writing for writings sake (even if it fails to pay the bills, or you have nothing interesting to say), adds a bit of conspiracy theory to explain why the 2000s era of blogging stopped. And it is way to long, utter waste of time. At least Tim Pool looks funny when he is sprouting the same kind of weird shit.
If you think this is eloquent, you are a bigger fool than I am.
I basically stopped reading at, “In 2012 I was tired of people telling lies about food and I decided to tell people what I really believed.” The “truth” that Rhinehart gave out was really about how much he hated eating and basically invented Soylent so that he wouldn’t starve. And if that works for him and others, in a way that already-existing products like Ensure don’t, then that’s fine. But apparently now he’s decided that he’s a Teller of Hard Truths, and the NYT is uniquely evil among mainstream media, and… yeah, he’s not just nuts, he’s Kanye nuts.
“The New York Times has slowly monopolized and subverted our freedoms and the truth without us even realizing it. It is the great deceiver. The prince of lies. The great trickster. The great oppressor. This evil is ancient. It is much older than newspapers. It always looks interesting and important on the outside. It looks like something you love, something you need. But it does not love you. It hates you. And you do not need it. That is a lie.”
What the fuck
“Change your style with every post. Contradict yourself. Lie to me. Commit plagiarism. Be really egregious about it. Misquote authors and butcher philosophy.”
This is from the section on his preferred system: everyone getting their own blog and lying
“eloquently”
wtf is that writing style
And then I open to an octopus image and some wild, wild stuff.
“A few months ago it was invulnerable. It had impenetrable armor. It had us all cowering under the weight of shame and sex and masks. But not anymore. It is weak. The resistance is gaining steam. People are starting blogs and you should too. Tesla got rid of their media team. Why did they need one? They were just distorting the message. All they need is a blog. They have a great blog.”
OF COURSE YOU GET DIFFERENT “NEWS COVERAGE/MESSAGING” IF IT ALL COMES UNDILUTED FROM YOUR PR DEPARTMENT DIPSHIT
Why are rationalists so fucking willing to accept such superficially obviously foolish crap?
“Like an octopus, the New York Times has many arms. If you attack one, the others will get you. And it will likely grow back. The New York Times is so many things. It is a company, it is a web site, it is a stock, it is a brand, it is a newspaper, it is a family, it is a building, it is social media, news media, advertising media, and entertainment media. No one of these things does the oppressing, it is the subtle but very real creature behind all of it that does the oppression. It controls books, food, technology, policy, you name it. You do not see it. But it is there. It is everywhere. Every time a new media technology or company shows up, it quickly becomes infected. Look at Clubhouse. It was a matter of days. They thrust a new tentacle right in to the middle of it. And Clubhouse was practically designed to stay safe from it. Nice try.”
Why does he hate the New York Times, specifically? I’m more used to this kind of unhinged ranting attacking “the media” overall, not a single organisational member of it.
(((The octopus))) is it