Hacker News Reader

Comment by chefandy | Hacker News Reader

Closures like this are a Rorschach test-- many people are going to think it supports their view because the lack of opposing evidence is more visible than the lack of objective supporting evidence. As far as I can tell, Gawker media's strategic shortcomings damaged all of their subsidiaries, and Jezebel's style, content strategy, and cachet was more of a fad than a broad cultural shift. I'm open to actual supported evidence that this is anything more significant than that, but so far I've seen a bunch of people assuming that it's evidence of something larger and more significant than the evidence supports.

View on HN

I can't readily find it to cite but I recall once talking to someone on HN who was decrying discrimination or lack of inclusion or whatever in discussion of an article about some wealthy, influential founders and I think one was a woman and one was gay and one was a person of color or ethnic origin.

I've also seen people talk about how successful people may be of different ethnicities but are "all well-paid Silicon Valley programmers" or whatever.

A lot of people seem to feel those who have "made it" in some sense are all insiders with the right connections, the same culture and yadda -- and don't confuse them with the facts.

"yay! feminism is defeated!"

It's part of a broader cultural purge across media outlets that has seen the cancellation or destruction of works that appealed to marginalized people, including minorities, women, and queer folk. Belligerents include large companies like Warner Bros/Discovery (we are currently witness the destruction of American traditional TV animation), astroturfed parent groups (going after the teaching of both newly-discovered and long-known histories of American civil and human rights abuses), wealthy entrepreneurs (Musk's direction has has devastated Twitter on both a technical and community level), and the government itself (from That One SCOTUS decision to state bans on city decision-making).

And I'm sorry for you if you're going to be onstinate enough to deny this. It means you won't have a plan for when someone goes after something you care about.

> It's part of a broader cultural purge across media outlets that has seen the cancellation or destruction of works that appealed to marginalized people, including minorities, women, and queer folk.

You're not wrong, but all of those groups were--up until recently--causes championed by those same belligerents. This is what happens when you bite the hand that feeds.

It doesn't tend to work out for any marginalized group when their narrative shifts from "we're tired of being bullied" to "we want to be the bullies." That's Hamas logic, and the establishment will bite back. Take a page out of MLK's book and settle for mere equality.

They murdered MLK for his beliefs, he didn’t “settle” for anything.

jstarfish's point is, "Know when to back the fuck down, or be invincible."

And since none of us are Superman, you better know when to back down if you want to keep breathing. That isn't hyperbolic advice - you can apply it as low as a street fight to as high as a war between two superpowers.

You may not like it. You may not agree with it. You may not want it to be true. But if there's one thing I've noticed here on Hacker News, which I would have thought so-called "smart" people could figure out, it's that Might Makes Right. We still live under the Law of the Jungle. We just think we don't because we've piled up load after load of bullshit on top of it to obfuscate that fact because we don't like what it says about it.

Don't believe that?

Stop paying your taxes. You'll eventually be fined. Keep on not paying them them. You'll eventually have government officials at your door. Resist them. You'll be forcibly taken. Resist by shooting dead every single one that tries to take you. You'll eventually be met with overwhelming resistance. And the reason for that is simple. The State must be the supreme authority which rules over all citizens and there can be no exceptions. It's no different than a mob boss or a pirate captain. None at all. Zero. Might. Makes. Right. The best we can hope for is a philosopher king - or in the context of Western civilization, an enlightened governing body that attempts to balance all things towards the flourishing of mankind. We're still a long ways away, but we're trying.

> It's no different than a mob boss or a pirate captain

This seems like a gross oversimplification in the years after a mob boss who was also the duly-elected Commander-in-Chief of the United States tried to take over the US government and have himself instated President against the will of the electorate and failed. Is the argument "well, he just didn't have enough might?" Because that seems very circular.

This suggests the story is more complicated than "Might makes right" (I'd suggest that 'might makes right' may actually be a retroactive justification for disruption of status quos; 'they must have been strong enough to win because they won' may be correlation without causation, or perhaps 'strength' and 'victory' are synonymous, so 'might makes right' collapses into a useless tautology).

Right, my point is, they killed MLK. So either he didn’t “know when to back down” or it doesn’t matter

MLK being shot is entirely irrelevant. His mission succeeded, and because blacks knew when to quit, the Civil Rights Act still stands. Nobody repealed it a generation later.

The gays get it. How often do you hear about gay-anything in the news anymore besides the occasional wedding cake drama? They wanted equality. They got it. Nobody's challenging DOMA. Nobody's trying to outlaw sodomy.

Women have been so aggressive in their politicking and rhetoric they've made themselves a threat to the male establishment. How the fuck did they lose the right to abortion? Like a bitter ex-spouse, they weaponized the offspring of Men--the Internet--against the patriarchy. Can't have that. The establishment turned their own biology against them, and now they're being muted too.

The trannies should learn from the blacks and gays before it's too late. After women, they're next.

> Nobody's challenging DOMA. Nobody's trying to outlaw sodomy.

I assume you meant that the other way: DOMA was the law that blocked gay marriage, which the SCOTUS overturned. You meant "Nobody's trying to reinstitute DOMA."

And, yes, they are. Obergefell V. Hodges is in the crosshairs; overturning it was avowedly the goal of the people who fought hard to get this slate of Supreme Court Justices nominated to the bench, right next to overturning Roe v. Wade.

https://jlsp.law.columbia.edu/2021/01/15/thomas-tees-up-futu...

MLK did not succeed in his mission, that’s just a blatant lie. He won a few battles, and once he got close to real progress he was killed. No one “knew when to quit” they were decapitated and beaten into submission.

Honestly I think you have only a cursory understanding of MLKs life and mission, otherwise you wouldn’t be saying such ignorant things and trying to make him some example of why you shouldn’t be too “uppity” if you want “equality”.

You’re acting like he got tea with Hoover after they signed the civil rights act together, like it wasn’t a brutal conflict marred by violence, a full on non violent revolution, that was snuffed out.

You're hired for all of my future PR needs.

What in God's name are you talking about?

Behind every corporate media source making a stand is a pod of rich old white men pocketing the admission fee regular people pay to witness it. Any positive effect jezebel or any similar corporate media outlet had was a latent function of generating view-based profit which, for most of its life, supported the company that released the Hulk Hogan sex tape. Yay for challenging toxic gender dynamics?

I would never argue that the capitalist powers that be aren't actively trying to stifle the voices of and resources for marginalized people, but you've given me no reason to assume the shuttering of jezebel was any more idealogically motivated than starting it was.

> It's part of a broader cultural purge across media outlets that has seen the cancellation or destruction of works that appealed to marginalized people, including minorities, women, and queer folk.

It's more a continuation of an ongoing cultural purge of niche works that appeal to under-resourced/under-privileged groups. Which include the groups you identified, but there are others too.

It's been happening for as long as I can remember. Things start to gain cultural traction only to be stomped back down again when they get enough momentum to attract the attention of opponents.

Somehow, we (collectively) keep going.

I buy this. I would just argue that there's been a "surge" in the campaign of late, as it were. It's also more public and panicked than in the past. When it happened in the mide-late Oughts, things just went away quietly. Now, there's an almost constant drumbeat of x was cancelled, y is looking for a job after being laid-off on Twitter, etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com