Buzzworthy Breakdown Week 1
An exercise in objectivity and the identification of nuance in the perception of polarizing events.
Well, here is an exercise I will be attempting with you beautiful people in mind where I will grab some polarizing topics and write about them. However, I am going to attempt to offer more than one conclusion or way of understanding them. I hope. The purpose of this is finding blind spots, or the practice of being able to identify blind spots in ones belief system and presumably showing others how to as well, if successful. So let’s see here where to start…
BREAKING NEWS: Elon Musk Takes Over Twitter!
Twitter residents report little green men coming out of the sewers and apocalyptic messages being written in the sky by a large, disembodied hand!
Well, so, this one isn’t new, nor is it breaking, but we do see that word used far too much. It has definitely lost its meaning. But this piece of news has its fans and it has its doomsayers, so let’s grab some source material (in regards to news writeups) and get to lookin’ at some sides.
The New York Times has a page on this titled “Updates: Elon Musk Takes Over Twitter”
The $44 billion deal, after months of drama and legal challenges, puts Twitter on an uncertain course.
So far that seems fair. And it appears they are giving updates as the “situation unfolds”. Or something long those lines. This was published last October, so you know my own reporting on this is super fresh. In January of the next year. I am so on the ball.
I have to say already I am surprised that in the title and description, as well as in the picture they used, I am not seeing much bias against Mr. Musk. Now that is an indication of what I had simply assumed I would find clicking on the first link I got from Google and the website it took me to. I am quite surprised I didn’t find them doctoring the photo of Musk with devil horns and a goatee.
That’s something I should be careful of myself. I had assumed even the beginning would say one thing and I am genuinely surprised it has been reasonable. What could I have read into incorrectly had I not opened the link with the explicit purpose of attempting objectivity, considering that already got skewed by my own false preconceptions of what I would find? That’s concerning, I need to work on that.
But in the meantime, what I thought they would do to ole Musk:
So that was my first lesson, in real time. But let’s jump into the body of the piece.
So far the bullet points seem reasonable. One mentions how the acquisition was cheered by more right leaning politicians and pundits. That’s fair, from a coverage perspective. They also allude to who was fired after the acquisition itself, no overwhelming or obvious tilt so far.
Then the series of articles this “ongoing coverage” links to starts. We have some good headlines here including:
Antisemitic campaign tries to capitalize on Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover.
That’s the first one. The very first. They were doing so well. Though to be fair, antisemitism is abhorrent. To be fair again though, everyone with any investment into twitter, whether it be time, effort, money, what have you, will be attempting to capitalize on large changes that come. If you use that search function and then try hard enough, you can change the word “antisemitism” to anything else and the title would likely still be accurate.
Teletubby Awareness campaign tries to capitalize on Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover.
I like my title better. More levity, less gravity.
And for the fourth one down:
Some far-right accounts on Twitter saw surge in new followers, researchers say.
Oh cheese and crackers. Another buzzword. In an attempt to be fair, they make money off traffic and clicks, so buzzwords are necessary, but “far-right” or “extremist” or whatever it may be is ubiquitous nowadays and gets put on individuals who are “far” from “far-right”. Matt Taibbi for instance? Or Bari Weiss? Bret Weinstein? Heather Heying? All liberal leaning. All labelled far right.
But this piece is an attempt at seeing nuance. So we will be getting to that. But let’s look for something on the other side.
Way down the page of results for Google on this topic I finally run into the other side of the argument, no shocker there. There’s definitely bias in how those results are displayed, but plenty of people have done write ups on that so we won’t here. Just be aware, of course.
Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover makes the left lose it: ‘It’s like the gates of hell opened’
Holy Toledo, Fox News, that’s a hell of a headline. Any need to unpack this one? “Makes the left lose it” “It’s like the gates of hell opened”. Now presumably that’s a pull quote but uh, hopefully this cannot really apply to everyone on the “left”. Just disappointing for me all around.
Let’s take a look at their media for the article. The title seems to imply they’re going to have people running around screaming for their lives. But seemingly it’s a pro-Musk write-up as well, so maybe a picture of him looking nice.
Yes, the happy, glowing face of Elon Musk. Definitely not at all touched up and lightened to make it more flattering and Musk less threatening. I like the guy, but I’m not IN like with the guy. This picture does make me question those feelings though. Good job to their media team. I need time to process this…
Musk’s newfound beauty aside, the title is attempting to paint their opposition in a negative light while their media assets are giving the opposite impression of Musk. What a super subtle way of swaying opinion without even hitting the body of the message. Watch out for that, Andrew! Stay objective!
Right away they get into why the executives at Twitter were fired. That’s useful information. I wonder why The New York Times didn’t feel that was pertinent? This line in particular “were all fired after Musk had accused them of misleading him and investors over the number of fake accounts on the platform”. Seems to be fired with cause in that case. Conjecture and bias is bad, omitting information that would paint someone negatively (or info in general) is equally bad. So knock that shit off, people.
They then go into tweets on the platform, for and against. Neutral and not. I think we’re done with the analyzing.
Which means it’s share the substack time! That’s this button below:
Okay I made that part up, but it would be nice of you.
Moving on. Let’s try and assess what’s happening here with Elon Musk taking over Twitter without much bias, with added nuance (or better conveyed, actually noticing the nuance that was always there) and in an objective way.
First, Elon Musk found some investments and investors and they overpaid for it, based on what the stock price was at the time. There must be some potential for the business he saw wasn’t being taken advantage of.
The right will celebrate this of course since that list of executives that got fired is a list of openly left leaning individuals with political opinions that do not align with the right, obviously.
The left will lament this having happened for the same reason, just from the other side.
This may be the big news in this story. How is it that an acquisition can be so polarizing? It’s not unheard of, but worth looking into.
So the left sees a swath of political champions fall, the right sees foes vanquished. Does this mean we accept and expect companies to be actively involved in the political process? That’s a damn problem. So extrapolating this realization over time, does this mean we need to invest based on which party is taking office currently? Sure, that is already done to an extent, but is it how things should go? We’re all taking crazy pills, I am sure of it.
Not only that, but the blind assertions and cock-sure predictions of both sides on what the outcome will be of this takeover is extraordinary. Nobody can know what will happen, but pundits aren’t paid to say that. They’re paid to make predictions. Perhaps getting back into the mindset that this is the reality would help some of the vitriol between factions die down a bit. Everyone seems chomping at the bit to call out a failed prediction on one side and perfectly content ignoring a similarly failed one on theirs.
So my objective take? We’ve all gone damn crazy and we cannot and will not know how this will play out long term. So let’s stop wildly hopping from mood to mood based on the latest headline, go take our dog for a walk and give things time to be worked through.
THINK OF THE CHILDREN.
The sun will rise again, I promise. So until next time friends, I am done adding two lines of objectivity to the stack of novels of partisanship that is our news cycle.
Love,
Dad