Re:John Oliver buys $15M in debt and forgives all of it on '...
by jerf on Monday June 06, 2016 @11:06AM
(#11847284)
Honestly, the whole "pre-biasing you to laugh at the scarecrow of the opposition we're about to show you" is enough on its own to turn me off. I've become more sensitive to this over the years. A lot of political clickbait comes out like that too; you get three paragraphs explaining how stupid the thing the opposition just said is, then a quoted snippet of the worst three sentences in the piece (probably ripped out of context), then another three paragraphs encouraging you to show your tribal affiliation by laughing at how stupid that one snippet was. Bonus points for not giving an easy, clear link back to the original, where you might actually see something that changes your mind.
And before you say "Well, yeah, the other side does that, but thank goodness my side doesn't do that", I would challenge you that as you read your next couple of political articles, click, pull them up, maybe zoom your browser until the entire article fits on the screen, then just sort of defocus your eyes for a moment and just look at the pattern of text and quotes on the screen. Do you already have a pretty good idea what the paragraphs are? Do they fit the description I just gave you? I won't claim to read a completely balanced media diet, I have opinions too, but I do at least sample a lot of things, and this pattern is universally used.
It's a cognitively-hazardous way to consume arguments even before we discuss its addictiveness. Putting it in video form is probably even worse.
And before you say "Well, yeah, the other side does that, but thank goodness my side doesn't do that", I would challenge you that as you read your next couple of political articles, click, pull them up, maybe zoom your browser until the entire article fits on the screen, then just sort of defocus your eyes for a moment and just look at the pattern of text and quotes on the screen. Do you already have a pretty good idea what the paragraphs are? Do they fit the description I just gave you? I won't claim to read a completely balanced media diet, I have opinions too, but I do at least sample a lot of things, and this pattern is universally used.
It's a cognitively-hazardous way to consume arguments even before we discuss its addictiveness. Putting it in video form is probably even worse.