Caltrops - We Love Katamari





	[quote name="Mysterio"][quote name="The Immortal Hulk Hogan's Durag"][quote name="saltlord"]Thiel specifically wants to avoid all taxation and responsibility to any country (seasteading institute), have his head preserved in working condition and pumped full of the blood of the young like a vampire lich (life extension research), and build the new automated gestapo (palantir<b></b>); any of these are great smears if you're the MSM. And that's just what we know about him already, what we can hang around his neck without even explaining his fintech leech work on PayPal. The ammo to launch against him could fill crates, but the best and brightest in the MSM throw a softball because they choose to, over and over. <i>They could print anything they wanted to about him, and they still went with some limp-wristed bullshit.</i>[/quote]Why would the media hate him for dreams of trans-humanist tax dodging? Is it not the more obvious successful revenge scored against Gawker that gets under their skin?[/quote]They can hate him for opposing the broader MSM (to them, gawker has to be included in the traditional fourth estate, like it or not) and print negative pieces on why he poses a general threat to liberty for their profit, because <i>the media is a business.</i> And then there's more current factors - it's an election year, and everything off the Fox network is liable to get targeted by the president; it's useful to tar any and all known associates of a media-hating president, and Thiel has consistently been one. Getting the pieces printed now gets them further down the road to November, what with being able to reference previously published articles, as in 'as we previously wrote at [link], this associate of Trump is also a media hater.' Any well-run shop will have those stories on hand ahead of time and drop them sequentially, over time, to let the story build momentum and keep readers hooked like a multi-episode arc on the Sopranos. Callbacks. Complexity. The many crimes of the great and good. In light of this point of view, everything I said above makes him a great target for a smear piece for the MSNBC demo. Transhumanism for the super-rich, seasteading for tax evasion as opposed to green economics, and labor exploitation of young stem talent, all built on a legacy of extra charges for businesses to process transactions? That guy's easy to paint as a monster even before he started altering what it meant to have free speech and free press protections, and plenty of readers would eat that up. It would sell ads to people that watch the network it was on <i>just by telling them someone was endangering their continued ability to watch that network,</i> creating feelings of scarcity. It's like that stupid new line on the Washington Post's site over every story about how Democracy dies right before they asks you for money, only a little more subtle, a little less like a drunk homeless guy shaking his big gulp cup of change at you and loudly demanding money (I volunteer, and those poor guys are most commonly near hospital centers in my city, so come at me trolls).[quote]Is your bet here that Thiel is the bigger risk, and beats Google to the punch in killing off legacy newspapers (such as they are limping along)?[/quote]I guess I wasn't clear initially. These bodies you're pointing to are by their nature businesses. The lawsuit you are talking about is a case of legal entities wrangling in a courtroom. Yes, there was a rich wrestling guy involved, but he was practically an entity unto himself given the kind of resources he could bring to the table. The point is, hatred aside, a competent business will find a way to keep itself in the black given the situation. A smart one will turn the situation to its advantage, and a standout enterprise with any control over its own destiny (poor fucking Deadspin, RIP) will have the luxury of living out its values in public. A stupid one, when it thinks it's threatened, will freak and make a loud noise and chase itself up a tree for short-term safety. If I ran a media outlet I'd be working to avoid being stupid AND enjoy the long-term value of exposing my journalistic hatreds (aside from bar tabs) to the public at large within the confines of the values of wider society all while selling my consumers the idea that I was getting crucified for bringing them the inside scoop so they'd pay more, now, immediately for luxury journalism, which is admittedly a tall order. But that's just the world according to me, maybe they're really doing that when every confrontation with force aimed at the press results in a knee-jerk response with zero aforethought.[quote]Ultimately, I'm with you on the state of the failing Slim/Bezsos rags. <b></b>rands will never live that one down[/quote]Oh, the places you'll go. At least we got to mention Jerkcity.[/quote]