2018: Escalation

December 31, 2018 10:27 AM

“Everything felt exactly as urgent as everything else did, which is probably why I continue to feel existentially tired...” “We can’t speak truth to power, we have to destroy power.” “Ten years after the financial crash, every day has been a swarm of mystified praise and self-serving proclamations about an economy whose “booming” booms without us. ” “the 1% will hoard everything, leaving the rest of us to fight amongst ourselves and die.” We asked more than two dozen of our favorite journalists, writers, and thinkers: What were the most important events of 2018, and what were the least? (The Morming News)
posted by The Whelk (23 comments total)

"Who’s going to pay for the energy transition?"

Yeah, that sounds right. Directly following in its tail wind is 'who will pay for climate migration'.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 11:59 AM on December 31, 2018 [4 favorites]

Most Important: finding the loved ones in my life and keeping them close and letting them know they matter
Least Important: twitter
posted by Fizz at 12:15 PM on December 31, 2018 [9 favorites]

you know what's not important? celebrities. [I let that sink in while blowing bubbles out of my meerschaum pipe]
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:16 PM on December 31, 2018 [10 favorites]

Least Important: twitter

Given the high frequency of low-information hot-takes, marketing spam, bad-faith trolling, blatant self-promotion, disinformation from political operatives, and ironic-or-is-it shitposts that fill social media, it's really baffling as to why I continue to see articles that have little substance beyond what's trending.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 12:23 PM on December 31, 2018 [3 favorites]

Sorry, love Twitter. If used properly it is an amazing way to find primary sources (or lower-tier but more knowledgeable commentators and specialists) to get informed and make up one's own mind about what's happening in the news. A 180 from, say, television.
posted by JamesBay at 12:27 PM on December 31, 2018 [17 favorites]

I also get a little sick and tired of hearing journalists talk about Twitter. For many journos Twitter act as sort of a water cooler area where they share inside jokes (subtweeting) or go off the deep end about a Twitter personality. Or refer to Twitter as "this garbage site" or "this hellsite" etc.

Obviously journalists, being public personas, are exposed to a lot of abuse. But at the same time there seems to be this willingness to revel in the stupidity and absurdity of social media. Which is a way of blowing off steam, but maybe it should be done in a private channel?

Anyway, it's an interesting article, but I don't really care about what a jaded journalist thinks about "Twitter" or "Lena Dunham."

The "important stories" here have some real gems, though, which makes up for it.
posted by JamesBay at 12:33 PM on December 31, 2018 [3 favorites]

I loved Margaret Howie's:

Most Important: While we’re squabbling over borderlines as if they’re something that we can fuck, coastlines are eroding into the boiling sea. [...]

Least Important: Protracted displays of despair, like mine above. Every generation has seen down a threat of annihilation—nuclear war, Nazism, the vapors—and has managed to hold it together to shuffle on to the next disaster. The dumpster fire gifs are growing cold. Despair is unsexy and gets nothing done, and moratoriums on celebrations (or on fighting! We’ve gotta keep bickering or our blood will run cold) are just as short-sighted. We’re a species with an innate need for dancing, too.
posted by ITheCosmos at 12:42 PM on December 31, 2018 [24 favorites]

I also get a little sick and tired of hearing journalists talk about Twitter. For many journos Twitter act as sort of a water cooler area where they share inside jokes (subtweeting) or go off the deep end about a Twitter personality. Or refer to Twitter as "this garbage site" or "this hellsite" etc.

I know this site leans more tech-and-journalist-centric so I'll give a shout out to something maybe all y'all in those groups somehow seem notoriously oblivious to.

The truth is...

Basically fuck nobody uses Twitter if they aren't in tech or journalism. It's a fucking echo chamber of dipshits.

So yeah, hearing about Twitter is about as useful as stepping in dogshit.
posted by deadaluspark at 12:45 PM on December 31, 2018 [12 favorites]

Next time I see someone I care about feeling overwhelming despair, it's good to know that the appropriate response to this is to tell them it's "unsexy and gets nothing done [sic]".
posted by some loser at 12:46 PM on December 31, 2018 [7 favorites]

Rachel Vorona Cote:

Least Important: The New York Times op-ed “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” Oh please.

I liked that one
posted by Max Power at 12:50 PM on December 31, 2018 [4 favorites]

guys let's make this thread about twitter
no rlly
guys
posted by lalochezia at 1:04 PM on December 31, 2018 [8 favorites]

Basically fuck nobody uses Twitter if they aren't in tech or journalism. It's a fucking echo chamber of dipshits.

I know what you're getting at but it's actually extremely important and empowering for connecting Indigenous people across Canada, as it is for many other smaller, marginalized politically-active groups around the world.
posted by Rumple at 1:06 PM on December 31, 2018 [20 favorites]

The mainstream media hasn't been using twitter to connect to alternate voices or knowledgable commentary. Mostly what they've been doing is gossip reporting over celebrity spats (see about half the stories about Musk this year) and breathlessly elevating Trump's self-marketing to the level of a "constitutional crisis."

Twitter comes with a mess of biases, including the reality that women and other minorities end up getting obscene levels of harassment more than white men. Very little of that ever gets reported when the mainstream news uses twitter as a low-effort substitute for "man on the street" interviews.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 1:06 PM on December 31, 2018 [4 favorites]

The least important things to happen include all of my problems and everything I worried about. I don’t know if that should make me feel better or worse.

Uri Bram, I feel you.
posted by eirias at 1:30 PM on December 31, 2018

it's actually extremely important and empowering for connecting Indigenous people across Canada

Canadian indigenous Twitter is amazing. Canadian journalism Twitter is kill-me-now boring, I prefer US and UK journos, since journos in Canada are less likely to bite the hand that feeds them and take far fewer risks.

This Twitter thread between Robert Jago and Veldon Coburn is an example of why indigenous Twitter is so amazing, and why Twitter is just a fantastic resource for finding primary documents (i.e., content that is not published in a newspaper or magazine).
posted by JamesBay at 1:32 PM on December 31, 2018 [2 favorites]

I was just thinking this afternoon about how 'gets their news from twitter' has joined 'gets their news from tabloids' and 'gets their news from network television'.
posted by signal at 3:37 PM on December 31, 2018 [2 favorites]

The article didn't caution against feeling or expressing despair, it called out "protracted displays of despair." That's different, and I think we can all acknowledge that it's ok to sometimes have counterproductive feelings, and that it's healthy to express them and seek help with them. I took the author to mean that wallowing in despair and trying to draw others into it with you is unhelpful and should be avoided, and that seems like fine advice. (I'm also one of those to whom "despair is a sin" feels like a helpful bit of self-talk instead of an indictment of character against anyone struggling with feelings of despair. Just because it's not good or useful or sexy to give in to it doesn't mean that it's not going to happen every once in a while, or that helping or asking for help is shameful.)
posted by contraption at 3:43 PM on December 31, 2018 [9 favorites]

I was just thinking this afternoon about how 'gets their news from twitter' has joined 'gets their news from tabloids' and 'gets their news from network television'.

If you curate your sources methodically, Twitter is actually the best place to get news, since all the journos are on there, and they're all providing meta-commentary about their own stories, and critiquing stories from rivals. I don't even have to read WaPo or NYT to stay on top of "the news" and instead can spend more time (and subscription $$$) on speciality sources such as LawFare.

That said, I work for a news org and one of my other regular gigs is classifying misinformation, although I don't think I am a particularly analytical or introspective person.

A lot of the time people consume "news" because it conforms to their existing worldview, and not because they are actually trying to inform themselves with new information.
posted by JamesBay at 3:50 PM on December 31, 2018 [11 favorites]

Most Important: Who’s going to pay for the energy transition?

Whoever survives the lack of a timely energy transition?
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:05 PM on December 31, 2018 [4 favorites]

as it is for many other smaller, marginalized politically-active groups around the world

I learn stuff from Black Twitter constantly. Also, their humor is top-notch.
posted by praemunire at 6:00 PM on December 31, 2018 [5 favorites]

Interesting how like half the responses in TFA say “CLIMATE CHANGE CLIMATE CHANGE CLIMATE CHANGE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING” and most of the comments here so far are about Twitter.
posted by mostly vowels at 7:56 PM on December 31, 2018 [9 favorites]

Interesting how like half the responses in TFA say “CLIMATE CHANGE CLIMATE CHANGE CLIMATE CHANGE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING” and most of the comments here so far are about Twitter.

Because I doubt there a ton of debate to be had here (on mefi) about climate change. I believe most of us are in agreement about it. But Twitter? No consensus.
posted by greermahoney at 8:30 PM on December 31, 2018 [6 favorites]

What I saw as an important subtext is how the news is made. And that's usually a set of decisions that involves thousands of people and millions of dollars spent, largely creating or massaging various forms of outrage. A conversation about coverage of twitter, Yanni/Laurel, plastic straws, or CEO computing habits isn't primarily about you, dear reader, or me. It's about the million-dollar decisions to put those stories at the top of the page.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 10:56 PM on December 31, 2018 [3 favorites]