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Alison Wilder

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December 20, 2018

Passing the buck

Shame is now both global and permanent, to a degree ­unprecedented in human history. No more moving to the next town to escape your bad name. However far you go and however long you wait, your disgrace is only ever a Google search away. Getting a humiliating story into the papers used to require convincing an editor to run it, which meant passing their standards of newsworthiness and corroborating evidence. Those gatekeepers are now gone.

“Shame Storm”, Helen Andrews, First Things

This seems disingenuous, since most stories people share are still from major news outlets. If people were writing long, hateful screeds on their personal blogs, and that was the material that was spreading through Facebook and Twitter, I would agree that the gatekeepers are gone; however, every media outlet has editors.

It’s not that there are no gatekeepers. It’s that the gatekeepers are motivated only by clicks, and it turns out that people click on shit-for-brains, hateful language over measured, thoughtful analysis.

Filed Under: Society at Large Tagged With: social media, writing

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