My experience was stupidly believing the idealistic crap I was taught when young only to eventually be forced to realize we're not much better than the ones we villify.

I guess my point is that you should consider whether journalism has really gone to shit or if you're less idealistic than you used to be. There is hope in the thought that you're less idealistic. It means the world has always been kind of shit, yet has survived, so perhaps you're just a bit more alarmist than you should be.

Or atleast that's what I tell myself.

To “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”, as it were.

I always laugh at this. Which "official narrative lines?"

During the Trump administration, many people complained that all journalism was too anti-Trump, and anti-Trump voters (who voted in the majority in 2016). So was this "prosecution" of the views of the party in power by journalists enforcing the "official narrative," or against it? Was it defending the minority's interests or the majority's?

Somehow, everyone has it in their minds that "PC culture" is the real official line, no matter who is in power. This is how, when all the social media apps were censoring Trump, everyone just accepted the perception that it was big-government censoring the little people, even though it was literally censoring the people in power.

You realize all those criticisms apply very well to this very piece, right? Just read it again. The hook from the lede paragraph invokes, literally, an:

"[...] unholy mix of junior high hall-monitor tattling and Stasi-like citizen surveillance. It is half adolescent and half malevolent. Its primary objectives are control, censorship, and the destruction of reputations for fun and power."

I mean, the point is well taken, but the call is coming from inside the house.

And, FWIW: the whole thing is about how Taylor Lorenz dinged Andreessen for using the word "retarded" on a call. And it turns out, I guess, that someone said it, but not Andreessen. Is that really worth this screed?

I think this is a good microcosm of a broader trend. Is it itself indicative that the sky is falling? No, of course not. No single black man getting shot by the cops in murky circumstances is itself indicative of systemic racism. Rather, those cases, and the Lorenz case serve as useful foci for talking about what I think are real problems with society.

I do think that journalists aligning themselves against privacy and free speech in the name of fighting "misinformation" and "hate speech" is a real problem. This case is not what makes it a problem, but it is a good vignette demonstrating it.