The Washington Post reports on what "The Internet" thinks.
The quote is from "Mario Batali tells fans he’s ‘so very sorry’ for sexual misconduct. P.S.: Cinnamon rolls!" Batali sent fans some email expressing his contrition about sexual harassment and ended by pointing to a recipe for pizza dough cinnamon rolls.
It's challenging to confront readers with a combination of ingredients. Should you put cinnamon in your pizza dough? Should you put a recipe in your sexual harassment apology email?
I think the recipe in the email is like the traditional marriage scenario where the man brings flowers when he's returning home on a day when the couple had a big fight in the morning.
Anyway, I'm writing this post because I'm following how MSM reports what's in social media and I thought "The Internet responded, quickly and in fury" was a particularly silly example of presenting "The Internet" as if it is an individual person with feelings and a specific opinion on a subject.
December 18, 2017
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23 comments:
Like the six blind men touching the elephant, the part of the internet I am exposed to was laughing pretty hard at that.
Maybe I got the trunk?
He has lots of dough, which makes him a target. Deep pocket pizza.
A bemused internet responded with wordplay.
It's an amazing adaptation that a communication system designed to transmit porn would evolve to do jokes.
So the WaPo part of the elephaent is also long and round but doesn't seem to be breathing. I wonder which part that is.
I think the recipe in the email is like the traditional marriage scenario where the man brings flowers when he's returning home on a day when the couple had a big fight in the morning.
It acknowledges the wrong while refocusing the discussion back toward the more pleasurable aspects of the relationship.
After all, people signed up for his mailing list to get food tips and recipes, not discussions of sexual harassment.
was a particularly silly example of presenting "The Internet" as if it is an individual person with feelings and a specific opinion on a subject.
We are being prepared. We are increasingly losing our individuality - on one had being aggregate into "the internet", and on the other being some representative of a larger group based on class, gender, race, creed, or orientation.
Were we truly interested in the Constitution and freedom, we would be putting the individual at the heart of every discussion. Instead we are constantly being pushed by those in power into a more easily discussed and controlled collective.
They see us as a herd who must be fenced in lest we wander over and damage their yard.
Today we are the internet and we listen as a baby staring at its reflection in a mirror.
Once the machines become sentient, the internet will be Big Brother.
And we will continue to listen because we don't know any other way.
Mirrors reverse front and back, not right and left.
Dogs are not interested in mirrors because there's no asshole.
Is it intentional, or just bad, sloppy writing? Why not "some people on the Internet?" Or even, "factions on the Internet?" The Internet is a network of networks. Routers and network switches and cables and wifi connections with computers attached, all running various protocols, which can be viewed on the Internet Engineering Task Force website.
https://www.ietf.org/'
Click on the RFC (Request For Comment) link.
Talking about "the Internet" is analogous to talking about "the TV" or "the Radio." I should be mocked mercilessly. The TV reacted swiftly as did the Radio. They both said he was a big poopy head.
rhhardin said...
Dogs are not interested in mirrors because there's no asshole.
Most dogs. Our crazy dog (border collie ? mix from Navajo res) doesn't like dogs that look like him and attacked a new mirror; then for a few weeks he'd sit in front of the mirror, hating himself.
Another time here was a cat yowling on TV and he ran around the house growling and looking for the cat, and jumped up against the fridge to look at a cat picture on a calendar - I'd never seen a dog look at a picture before. Recently he's been very upset that the neighbor's horses are wearing cold-weather blankets.
was a particularly silly example of presenting "The Internet" as if it is an individual person with feelings and a specific opinion on a subject.
More exactly, the online mob.
Wash post hasn't weighed in yet on the Hezbolla story
"a communication system designed to transmit porn"
How long before women start whining about the Intertubes as an harassment tool, designed by patriarchal male-supremacist engineers for the denigration and oppression of women?
How long before women start whining about the Intertubes as an harassment tool
That started about two minutes after it was created.
By happenstance I have a jar of Mario Batali red sauce in my fridge. He's such an ordinary looking bloke, there on the label.
Soon we will cook some pasta and finish it and that will be the end of Mario Batali in my fridge. Unless, of course, the sauce jars show up in Ocean State Job Lot at a huge discount. Then I might buy them up. It's good sauce.
By happenstance I have a jar of Mario Batali red sauce in my fridge
Heat it up in your Paula Deen cookware.
"...I thought "The Internet responded, quickly and in fury" was a particularly silly example of presenting "The Internet" as if it is an individual person with feelings and a specific opinion..."
Don't be too quick to dismiss this notion. I'm sure someone will do a study modeling the internet as just that, a collective sort of organism.
The Internet doesn't respond to anything. People and bots do.
And since it is all at a distance and anonymous and effortless, none of those responses are worth a dam, and the sooner people wake up and start ignoring tweet-storms, the sooner our politics and culture may start to heal.
Ok. But I just wanted the cinnamon rolls recipe.
I can't stand those "Internet Erupts...", "Internet reacts..." type headlines. I wish the Internet would do something about it.
Reification and overgeneralization are the rhetorical plagues of the Internet.
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