Sunday, June 03, 2012

Yes the Internet Can Make You Stupider. Blame Breitbart.

I am happy every day that fucker is still dead.  But it would have been better for everyone else if he had never been born.

The Sherrod video was also an example of the limits of another of Breitbart’s gifts to modern media: the false “proof.” It is a sad fact of online publishing that some ridiculous portion of readers only read the headlines and look at the pictures before moving on. (The percentage of online commenters who do this is approximately 90 percent, according to studies I have skimmed and had strong opinions about.) Breitbart’s sites exploit this: “OBAMA MARCHES WITH NEW BLACK PANTHERS,” or something like that, goes the headline. The story can’t support the claim. It doesn’t matter. The headline means it’s true for the majority of the readership.
Shirley Sherrod’s anti-white racism became a “fact” that led to her firing because of that convention of online muckraking. The headline said she was racist and there was a YouTube video attached that probably proved it, if anyone bothered to hit play and listen.


The Cancer that is/was Breitbart.

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