[ExI] Book review - Hate Inc. Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another by Matt Taibbi

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of BillK via extropy-chat
Subject: [ExI] Book review - Hate Inc. Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another by Matt Taibbi

>...As this book is very critical of the mass media it is difficult to find a good review from mass media sources. What a surprise!
Try :

https://www.eastvillagemagazine.org/2019/12/07/review-hatred-inc-and-why-we-hate-cast-light-on-todays-quagmires/


Quotes:

>...The “Ten Rules of Hate”
“So long as the public is busy hating each other and not aiming its ire at the more complex financial and political processes going on off-camera, there’s very little danger of anything like a a popular uprising... 
>...but the most common thread is money and control.  Hate, it turns out, pays off big time.
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BillK

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BillK, I have been long pondering the best way to cash in on this, make buttloads of money, rule the world and so forth.  I have an idea, inspired by a birthday party I attended yesterday for a longtime friend who just turned 60.  She and I were friends in college, she was my bride's roommate.

We are not particularly religious in our old age, but we were at one time.  All of us who attended (all either already 60 yrs or are approaching it) are feeling a kind of cultural alienation.  We do not understand rap and hip hop.  We do not like mainstream Hollywood movies, but at that party, the birthday girl received several videos of a genre in which Hollyweird takes little interest.  There are no helicopter chases, no one is murdered, there is no crime, it's really all just talking heads, the kind of stuff people under 30 would wonder when something was going to happen.

There is a genre of its own: Hallmark movies.  Oh ick, mercy, those things are so icky sweet ya just want to barf, but think about it: we could create a genre that has no shoot em ups, no CGI, doesn't really require big name thespians, doesn't cram society's problems into our faces constantly, but can still teach us something useful and interesting, such as historical fiction.  If we can make those kinds of scripts and keep the cost of production down, we could make a buttload off of people like me.  We are legion, I tells ya!  We don't want to see movies about hate.  We don't want the usual garbage that the next generation seems to devour so eagerly (why I don't know.)

Perhaps what I am thinking about is more movies like Chariots of Fire (oh that one is so good.)  And The Truman Show.  

Next... we could come up with a news channel that was a bit more upbeat, not so focused on politics, perhaps a business-oriented slant where they talk about stuff like the rise of Apple, or Tesla or something, a kind of fun upbeat sympathetic documentary.  Hell we might even get Elon to pay for it.  It wouldn't be hate.  It would be in many ways the opposite of hate.  We could create Like Media.  It causes one to come away feeling good about our world, and this has a special meaning for me, because I do feel good about our times.  I know the mainstream media bombards us with constant negative messages, because it sells, but I think positive messages can find a market too, perhaps an even bigger one.  Oh I could go totally Simon bar Sinister and rule the world.

spike