You're absolutely right about it being a constant in the history of journalism though. Recently I've heard a lot of talk about how the situation in this respect is getting worse, but I think it's important to remember that yellow journalism is nothing new, nor is the influence it wields. The Spanish American War was essentially started by yellow journalist media barons fabricating public consensus, and the ramifications of that war were fairly severe in both hemispheres. Maybe Vox picking on pewdiepie is unfair, or maybe they're justified. But viewed in the proper context it's inconsequential either way; neither Vox nor pewdiepie are provoking bullshit wars. Thank the gods for that.

But they are provoking bullshit wars.

Being an unreasonable extremist and drowning out the reasonable voices on your team gives the unreasonable extremists on the other team license to do the same.

People being able to express contrary opinions in public is a release valve that allows a moderate consensus to form.

Polarizing everything and then shutting down public debate is how you get into a war. Just because nobody is actively building munitions factories doesn't make this a benign development that it's reasonable to ignore just because the country is not yet literally on fire.

No not actually. Hyperbole is fine but don't confuse it for the real thing.

To reiterate my point: Yellow journalism that successfully warmongers is a far cry from yellow journalism that gets into a heated argument with a youtube celebrity. The methods employed by yellow journalists may be identical (in fact I'd argue they probably are), but there is a serious disparity in the severity of the outcome. And considering that in one case we're talking about significant loss of human life, I don't think you should be abstracting that away so coldly.

You should be thankful that the Vox/pewdiepie spat is not getting thousands of people killed and territory annexed. Is that not clear?

When you find a tiger loose in a city, the response should be to do what it takes to get it off the streets, not that we should be thankful that everything is fine because so far it has only been hunting puppies.

Only if you're abstracting away the value of real human lives. If a tiger breaks loose you should be concerned by that tiger but ALSO be thankful that nobody has been eaten by it. If you forget the later, you forget your humanity.

Who the fuck cares about what pewdiepie does with his platform for his speech?

Trump, on the other hand, has far more power, but hasn't figured out how to anything other than being the center of everyone's attention.

And while Fox News is ginning up fervor against immigration in the US, it's not like we're going to go into a serious war with Mexico over it. Thank God.

It's the "humourless, ironclad dogma" aspect that provokes the response of people like Pewdiepie, and it's that aspect of the reaction to Pewdiepie's satire that makes it a self-completing feedback loop wherever it's discussed.

A generation ago, this description belonged to right-wing moralists like Focus on the Family and Tipper Gore. Now it belongs to the left-wing moralists who have largely taken over corporate messaging and university curricula.

To me, the political aspect is less interesting than the underlying desire to control thoughts and behavior. The most alarming aspect is that it has gone beyond redefining what constitutes crime to using social media to attempt to destroy the lives of those who run afoul of the agenda. And it only takes a handful of people to start up the outrage machine and direct all of its fury at a particular person. It's the source of the sense of dystopia that I feel many days.

It will be interesting to see what the generation coming up now ("Zoomers" I guess they're called) does in reaction to the full-throated adoption of the humourless, ironclad dogma of the Millennials. I see it played out almost daily between my millennial daughter and her Zoomer son. I think it's going to be uglier than the Boomers fighting with the Silent Generation in the 60s.