I didn't even get past the first line: "the Ottawa antivax convoy trucker occupation".
Was that a mistake, a Freudian slip, or an intentional smear? It undermines the author's credibility in the first line. Everybody knows that is a nonsense narrative. They are anti-mandates and passports. Most people there are vaccinated and support vaccination.
I suggest you edit to correct that.
Edit: Then later, "who posts photos and videos of antivax protesters".
OK, done. This author can't be taken seriously. Come The Line. You said No Bullshit. This author is saying multiple times the protestors are antivax either in ignorance or as a smear tactic. Come on. Don't throw away your credibility like this.
From Matt Gurney’s own on-scene report last week: “ And yes — I was told, many times, that vaccines are bullshit, or poison. I know that a talking point of the organizers has been that the protest isn't anti-vaccine, and I didn't check anyone's QR code, but in my thus-far limited experience, the general mood goes beyond mandate skepticism into outright enthusiastic embracing of anti-vaccine conspiracies. Make of that what you will.”
This is generally in line with other reporting from the protests.
No. Those participating who are genuinely pro-vaccination have been rendered irrelevant by the dominance of QAnon/new age woo/WEF conspiracy nonsense voices. To the extent that they exist I feel sorry for them, but they chose to lie down with these cults. This is widely perceived as an anti-vax “protest” with good reason.
It's a good question. I don't really see an actual point. The article looks like a vehicle for flinging metaphorical poo, as a vanity blog for the author, and filled with irony.
Like this:
"livestreamed to YouTube by one of the countless hustlers who ride the line between journalism and activism, propagandizing for the convoy demonstrators while monetizing their online content."
This sounds like the death throws of a dying legacy media getting upstaged by better journalism from average joes with a phone. I mean, really, the legacy media have big production, network deals, funds from the government, and the author (apparently from CBC radio: https://www.writerstrust.com/authors/james-mcleod/) tries to smear some Youtubers who mostly are lucky if they get a few bucks to pay their bills, saying they are "hustling".
Really? So these Youtubers are rich and legacy media folks are starving working class, and just telling it like it really is?
Those Youtubers are getting everybody's views in their own words. They are journaling what is happening through unedited, livestreamed video in people's own voices. Mr. McLeod is writing a vanity blog about his personal opinions and using it as a vehicle to throw empty insults.
Clearly the Youtubers are acting far more professional, doing far better at journaling what is happening.
If you weed through the poo, well ... there's nothing less. But the wrapper around the poo appears to be this thesis: "All the participants are livestreaming their experience because it allows them to bring their network along, while also boosting their social capital with physical world cred."
No citation to a psychological study, nor a claim of such. It is literally just the vanity opinion of somebody who works in legacy media, and has an obvious conflict of interest in this matter, and the irony of using an online blog just to put out his personal beliefs. The Youtube livestreams almost devoid of such vanity. The young 24-year old
Viva Frei gives a lot more personal thoughts, but he's constantly interviewing people, asking where they are from, why they are there, what they've seen, and anything else they want to say. He gives them all their voice: https://youtu.be/HWBEp5REwDo
He's the only one that probably makes a living from Youtube, and he had that prior to the protest.
This is what journalism is supposed to be. Journalism is not vanity opinions by people with journalism degrees. Why would we care any more about the personal opinions of James McLeod than any other random person at Tim Hortons? I want to know what the protestors, or counter-protestors, think.
So, just no. Nothing here to see. I can watch a nature documentary if I want to see monkey's flinging poo. I don't come to The Line for it. This is a shamefully bad article.
The reason why individual or private media are so successful is because it comes from on the ground reality. They are not attempting to create a narrative but trying to express a reality. Mainstream media needs a story to sell, so it must be made worthy of people buying it. With the subsidies coming from the government they are more obligated to put them in a good light. Truth becomes out of focus when you try to create a story with tainted glasses. The mainstream media already has the narrative before they show up to do the story, so they must make the pictures fit their narrative. Its why it is often so easy to see the flaws and why things often seem out of context. It is because they are completely out of context. The CBC's version of CNN's story, pushing the Russian interference was hilarious. Then Trudeau himself saying this was an insurrection was pure blaspheme. He and the mainstream media have no shame and nothing to lose at this point. Its horrific to watch and I hope that many Canadians have been shown the truth about the propaganda being spread by the mainstream news. Its horrific and disturbing.
Indeed. There seem to be many causes for the great failure of modern corporate press. For American contemporary media we might look at Matt Taibi's "Hate Inc." whose main thesis is essentially that divisive "clickbait" drives revenues, starting from the "if it bleeds, it leads" principle and adding in that divisive tribalism drives up our attention (and anxiety) on paying attention to what is important.
There's also the ol' "Manufacturing Consent" drive as well, which is more easily accomplished with "us vs them" tribalism. You don't need to convince people to go for policies that aren't in their interest; you just need to convince them that the other team ("them") are against the policy. Divisive rhetoric does that very nicely: "Those people" are putting our kids at risk (Trudeau, Aug 31); "those people" are white supremacists, racists, misogynists (Trudeau again). "Those people" carry swastikas and confederate flags (Trudeau, Singh, both parties). "Those people" are anti-vaxxers (McLeod, corporate media).
No need for evidence of any claims; just make it "those people" and tell the public to fear them.
Somewhere along the lines, the old journalistic practice of building a human narrative around the facts, rather than just reporting the boring facts, got corrupted into building "facts" around the narrative as you suggest.
It appears to be a terrible story about how this poor girl (visible minority, of course) lost her father to COVID-19 because he caught it at work from a co-worker who was at work while sick because he didn't have enough sick days, which was Ford's fault for having opposed more sick days.
Except, if you pay attention to the words ("if", "may have", etc.) they have no idea where the father caught it, if a co-worker was involved, if the hypothetical co-worker was knowingly sick and still at work, or if they had used up sick days. It is a completely fabricated, hypothetical story made to sound like it is factual and Ford's policies are to blame and hurt this young visible minority girl (and apparently killed her father -- but his interests don't seem to sell the narrative).
It's like a sick mental disease of the modern press, and body politic, to fabricate stories to fit narratives and pretend they are not lying. Yes, they contained the words "if" and "maybe" hidden in the story, but they are intentionally well hidden and downplayed in a story that makes no sense without the implicit story that it IS true, and done with clear intent to deceive the public.
The same with the swastika and confederate flags which clearly have nothing to do with the protest, but they can tell the narrative because there was at least one of each photographed there (in full face covering, with professional photographer in tow, took the photo, then left).
Same here with McLeod, and The Line for publishing it. These are not anti-vaxxers, but McLeod and The Line clearly don't care about truth or their own integrity; they care about selling the narrative. It's just so sickeningly repulsive.
You are 100% right that this is why individual private media is taking over. It's why Joe Rogan is so popular, and rising stars like Viva Frei (David Freiheit) resonate so well with the public; they don't bullshit.
One might like to see some professional journalists try to do the same instead of just claiming that is what they are doing. If not, they will lose against these citizen journalists. Unless, of course, they can cheat by having big tech censor the citizen journalists by calling everything "misinformation" or against arbitrary "community guidelines", and perhaps government getting legislation enacted to do the same.
It is just so disgustingly corrupt and immoral. I know The Line can do better. This is a big step backwards.
Not sure I should even bother commenting, after Ad Nausica's epic takedown, but I have a couple of points:
Who would say "Everything is documented from every angle and objective truth is impossible to attain. "? That makes it far easier to attain objective truth, as we have many angles from which to view what happened. It just means that we have to approach all the evidence with an open mind, and sincerely try our best to figure out what actually happened, using classic tools like careful observation and logical reasoning.
And then "People stream themselves online because online is where they feel most at home." Also absurd. People stream news events online because they believe that legacy media will simply lie about or ignore what is really happening. Of course McLeod's claim that documenting things from every angle makes objectivity impossible simply proves them right.
The actual issue is that legacy media continues to want to control the narrative, and is threatened offended by any competition. And that they do this, all the while pretending to themselves that they are telling "the truth", even when that is not supported by simple boring facts.
I think it also demonstrates the limitations of the online world, where you can find tons of like-minded people, but also shield yourself from other points of view if you choose. The ideological underpinnings of the protest (if there is one) is a bit of a hot mess. If it's really about vaccine mandates, they should be at provincial capitals where most of the mandates originate. If it's really about the federal gov't (or the Trudeau gov't in particular), there are far better criticisms than the meme-worthy slogans that seem to be the limit of this "movement". Ultimately, protest is about raising awareness and convincing people of your cause. Looking at polling, 2/3 of Canadians disagree with this protest and it's pretty safe to assume that 100% of Canadians are tired of COVID and all the limitations it's caused, so only finding sympathy from a third is pretty weak given the times we are in.
This feels like Angercon; a chance for angry online communities to get together and act out their online rants IRL. Unlike a lot of other protests, it doesn't seem to have a point. The stated points are delusional and often pointed at the wrong level of government ("end all mandates"). It doesn't seem like it hopes to convince anybody who isn't already convinced. It feels like a celebration of a bunch of online folks who don't want to hear anybody telling them how ignorant or delusional they really are.
Maybe that's what online cultures are doing to the public space -- slicing us up into highly engaged subcultures that can be easily monitized and marketed too. But, if that's the case, it's sad that that's what we've chosen for ourselves.
The vaccine mandates were put in by Trudeau. The Provinces deal with what is inside their Province. They deal with health care and Provincial restrictions including vaccine mandates passports within their Provinces among their own regulations and resources as well. Federal Government is responsible for the Countries Borders , immigration, Foreign Affairs and diplomacy and trade along with cross Canada and Provincial border projects. The Borders of the country are the one to the United States and for international travel, hence It is Trudeau that put the mandates and passports on those for the truckers who have been exempt due to the supply chain need and they were doing this without vaccines when we had none. Remember they were Trudeau’s heros. He put the restrictions and vaccine passports for truckers in on January 15th 2022. The end of the pandemic, restricting unvaccinated truckers. They may cross the border unvaccinated, no restrictions and quarantine , only if they are moving vaccines. For some reason they are not dangerous if they have a load of vaccines, regardless they are doing nothing different than they have through out the pandemic and with different loads. Perhaps reading up on things first would be beneficial to every one. This is how everything gets twisted around. Three quarters of Canadians have no idea how our government and country work.,what is done in our Parliament, as if they did know, they would certainly not be praising Trudeau. He has corrupted the entire parliamentary system since he was elected. People would stop voting for someone intent on destroying the country and its entire systems. That’s why he gets away with it because Canadians are completely uneducated on their own country and the Parliamentary system let alone our history! I think it should be mandatory to know this before anyone is aloud to put in a vote!
Yes, I'm aware of how our government works. What you are conveniently leaving out is that the US instituted a similar mandate for truckers at the same time. Which means whether or not Canada lifted the mandate for truckers, truckers crossing the border to the US would need to be vaccinated to meet the US edict. So, what was the point of this again?
Of course, the demand of the protest was to life *all* mandates, which of course the federal government couldn't do even if it was foolish enough to want to. Their legislation only covers people who work for the federal government and in federally-regulated industries. For trucking (since that's the focus of this protest) that's cross border and inter-provincial trucking. It does not cover trucking done within a province. However, to meet many provincial guidelines, many employers do have mandates to allow them to operate more freely. Industry sources have said that there is such a driver shortage that unvaccinated drivers likely could find work focused on local routes (within a province).
All of which to say, the aims of the protest reflected a lack of understanding of the mandates themselves and who was responsible for what. A focused protest to exempt truckers so they could haul between provinces might have made some sense, but would not have likely attracted anywhere near the number of people. And, that is not what the focus of this protest was.
The author's opinion of the protesters, I believe, would not be widely shared by the many people who work with their hands, drive large trucks, work in gas plants and so on. His smear of the protesters is out of order, but he is free to his opinion. Would like to know what he thinks of the people who attacked a peaceful Coastal Gas Link worker's camp, threatening the workers with violence and causing millions of dollars in damage. Do some of these creeps also live in the internet/metaverse?
My exact thoughts. People who work with their hands and provide, live in the real world and that is why the author and those similar to him have such difficulty understanding and relating to the working class. Trudeau is the same. He lives in a completely different reality. If you left them outside on their own in nature, they would starve to death or freeze as they do not know how to live in this reality. They live in the metaverse of their own making.
I disagree. The "truckers/protesters" or whoever is a lousy example of the working class. 90+% of Canadian truckers actually were working these past few weeks. Kudos!
So Trudeau can't camp out? (Are you sure?) Can he drink beer? Can he drop the f-bomb several times in a single sentence? But he is the Prime Minister of Canada and you can vote him out next election in 2 to 4 years.
Can PP live in snow and cold as his metaverse is truly bent?
My own personal feelings are somewhat mixed, one that they should have packed up and left by now, that there is nothing to be gained and that public opinion will turn against them.
The other how the elite have massively distorted this (impression is Canadians support the elite) What is one to make of the fact that a dozen axe wielding attackers went on the rampage yesterday , the kind of thing that happens only in the third world, yet got barely a mention in the media.
I think in the end the restrictions will end, a bunch of people will see their lives ruined and life will go on. Oh and the Conservatives will tie themselves up in knots over this.
In other words nothing much will change till it changes somewhere else first
It supposedly was 20 people armed with axes tipped 2 big backhoes and tore up one trailer with said backhoe (chopped a big hole into it). Twenty people with axes went on a rampage. No one was injured or arrested.
This would not be the first time the RCMP has embellished, smeared or tried to discredit solely to make themselves look good. They have quite a record of BS.
What is wrong with populism? It means they work for the people ! Do you prefer your Government working for themselves and globalist concerns while locking their citizens in their homes and they fly off to Davo’s ?
Maybe it’s because you’re in Germany, but the attack on the Coastal Gas Link site was covered in Canada by all the national newspapers and tv networks this morning. I am curious to see if Trudeau can rouse himself to condemn it.
The CGL site is almost literally in the middle of nowhere, northern BC thousands of clicks from Ottawa. Legacy media doesn't give two frigs, especially with a very camera-friendly 'emergency' unfolding right on their doorstep.
I recently came to the conclusion that if, in fact, I was *done* with the pandemic, then I should be *done* with twitter (twitter being the only social media where I've a large on-line community)
So many of us, forced inside and idle, turned to internet platforms for distraction, entertainment, and to replace our real-world routines and connections. In doing so, we've accelerated a problem that might have taken a decade to reveal itself.
I have found, since January of 2020 when I first started seriously thinking about Covid, that Twitter, used wisely, is a far far better gateway to information on controversial topics than legacy media. It's a lot more work, though, so if Covid madness subsides (still a big if, in my opinion) it may not be worth the effort - I can just file everything I get from legacy media in my head as "quite likely false".
twitter is usually 24 (sometimes 48) hours ahead of legacy media reporting. So yes, it has become my go-to for news. But even that immediacy of me wanting the news quickly stems from my boredom during quarantine. News used to be something we caught up with at the end of the day, Now it's both a reality show and an addiction (to me)
I feel the same way to a great extent. But I also find Twitter a very good gateway to online sources (eg substacks or journal articles) for more depth. The conversational nature of Twitter makes it easier to assess people for honesty, integrity, knowledge, and epistemic humility than legacy media. (Where, frankly, these days, my default assumption is little or none of any of them.)
this will be the hardest thing for me to give up when I finally give up twitter: it's a great curation platform. I usually start my day opening new tabs from articles mentioned in my twitter feed. I'll then close twitter, but I'll have 10 to 12 interesting articles open to read throughout the day.
Maybe when we are all done with twitter we need a new kind of in person social event. Imagine some software where you could trivially easily cast references from your phone up onto a big screen to discuss with people, you could copy the link onto your phone (into software optimized for this) for later review, but it was all in person. Like a nerdy cross between a sports bar, a dinner party, a salon, a book club, and the Symposium.
How convenient that today’s perpetrators happily reveal themselves (and their actions) by having their licence plates and company brand names on their blockade vehicles and letting their every move be put on widely distributed electronic images!
Surely a lot of Canadians know a lot of French. They even speak it fluently. It’s even their first language. Perhaps a lot of anglophone Canadians, like myself, only know a rudimentary amount of French.
Or maybe all of this individual live streaming was to give a more accurate account of what was actually going on. Legacy media was certainly not providing it!
The Liberals lobbied the US to put the mandates in at the border as they were not going to do so. That is why the Canadian Government put it in on the 14th and then retracted it as they did not get confirmation from the US. People thought it was because they were listening to all Canadians and Premiers, not to mention the trucking industry!!!!! Everyone was worried that our already delicate supply chain would be further damaged by these mandates so they begged they not be put in. When they received confirmation from the US that they were going in, the lovely Liberals put the restrictions back in on the 15th, which caused more confusion. The US agreed to start theirs on the 22 of January which they did. None of these restrictions for truckers, at this late date and with all the information we have on the virus , vaccines, and the pandemic, not to mention the problems with the supply chain, were necessary. Premier Kenney also went down to Washington to try and get them to not put in the border restrictions that Trudeau wanted but had no success. The majority of countries are dropping restrictions due to the "science" but not here in Canada. It has become about control and has little to do with peoples safety. There are many things being learned that were not allowed to be debated during this pandemic due to the Governments and Experts wanting complete control. Scientists and other medical experts were demonized and cancelled if they spoke out. When the facts about the science are available more to the public there is gong to be some very angry people. The Government must maintain control to mitigate those people and they do this with the aid of our main stream media and our institutions. The demonization continues to anyone who dares speak out against their narrative or even breach their dictate regardless of whether it is done peacefully or not. That alone should frighten every single Canadian and the proof is in the actions of the Government and the Corporate news medias story telling that took place took place on the truckers freedom convoy.
A very interesting perspective. There's quite a few videos on Twitter of people yelling abuse at journalists; this is of course exactly what you'd expect to see online, where norms are weak.
For a good theoretical analysis, see Joshua Meyrowitz, "No Sense of Place," which applies Erving Goffman's dramaturgical analysis of social interaction to electronic communication. I also really like Bruce Sterling's description of electronic bulletin boards: https://russilwvong.com/blog/norms/
If the protesters are behaving in real life as they would online, this may also explain why the Ottawa Police had such a hard time keeping the peace. Hans Morgenthau explains that domestic peace is based on a combination of policing and social pressure, with social pressure being the stronger factor (policing is only needed when social pressure has failed). For the Ottawa protesters, social pressure didn't apply at all: they were their own subculture, transplanted from the Internet to Ottawa. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBlW3--zcSo
Well the Ottawa Protest is over. The truckers weren't shown any respect from Trudeau nor in the end the police but this isn't over. Truckers are the lifeblood of our nation not the politicians and certainly not the police. I have been aware of that from the beginning and the situation in Ottawa was untenable as a protest. Now come the consequences...
Went to pick up a few items from Walmart. A lot of shelves are empty, gee I wonder why? Everything Trudeau does turns turns to shit and cost us all more...
You are right about the role of truckers and thankfully except for a small handful the vast majority of truckers have continued to maintain the supply system despite the effort by a small minority to disrupt the political system and the economy. As for the carnival of chaos' cries for freedom, they only managed to trigger the repressive instruments of the democratic state. Doubtless this is not going away so folks will have plenty of opportunities in the future to participate in how our democratic society sorts itself out.
I would agree that the cybernetic world is what's new in the story of the various protests that have popped up across the country. The pandemic has been the superficial occasion. However, the underlying cybernetic developments have created the conditions for the phenomenon of the protests. For reasons we have yet to find out in full (many of course offer theories), our institutions appear to have failed in the face of what appears to be a relatively small number of actors involved in these protests. Obviously large trucks played a crucial role, however, that they were coordinating from diverse locations seems to be the remarkable feature.
Political partisans, of course, declare, on the one hand, they are a 'fringe' or, on the other, a ground swell of popular opinion. However, the cybernetic character of their loosely coordinated organization, the clear variety of agendas that percolate through the various protests, suggests that the media, police and the political class have yet to get a clear handle on what's going on.
Other than it's clear our institutions have been found wanting. Online politically motivated fund raising is one thing. Truly understanding what online communication means for democracy is another. And this strikes me as the central issue and why I support the Emergency Act if through the process of review and renewal, institutions may be brought up-to-date with this new (now 30 year old) reality.
Millions of people are online. However, that does not mean people have grasped the significance of that. As noted, we may need a McLuhan to help us understand it. Curiously McLuhan grasped something of the internet reality before it came into existence by extrapolating from the electronic communication shift from print to radio to television that he observed.
It remains unclear whether democracy can remain effective and relevant in the midst of loosely coordinated cybernetic groups of people animated by meme addictions. Collective algorithmic identities may not be the basis for the forms of collective compromise needed for democracy to be effective. Violent confrontation between uncompromising ideological fanatics may become the norm. In which case, authoritarian oppression where freedom means my uncompromising freedom not yours, becomes the norm. Democracy will have to find a path through this new reality.
And the American Committees of Correspondence were a paper-subculture flexing in the physical world? They got their war; the rate-of-transmission was slower, but not that much. YouTube has been around longer (16 years) than they took to organize a revolution (12 years, 1764-1776).
I don't think a new MacLuhan is needed, either. The old one saw the constructed reality possible with video/audio immediate media, how it could help people live in a dream; now there's just democratization of who can sell the dream-world.
I grew up in Calgary, dressed in my hat and six-guns for the Stampede, and watching endless Westerns on TV (some 200 series in the Wikipedia). They were all of an "American Old West" where all cowboys were White (over half were Black, Mexican, Native) and the Natives were barely seen, probably dangerous if so. It was ridiculous. It was accepted.
I'm very glad to have lived to have seen a world where anybody can make a TV show. It's not like the old world was responsible with its power; I watched TV and the big papers go all-in on selling both Iraq Wars, with PR-firm packaged lies, and a conspiracy theory.
Do we now have bad guys "flooding the zone with shit"? Oh, yeah, but "yellow journalism" is very old. Fox News pumps out far worse disinformation than any social media amateur, because they're professionals at selling it better. Look up Dan Cooper, Fox founding producer, and he describes it as not "news" but a "24-hour political campaign", developed by Richard Nixon's campaign manager.
I have an endless, touching faith in the ability of people to sort it out in the longer run.
I didn't even get past the first line: "the Ottawa antivax convoy trucker occupation".
Was that a mistake, a Freudian slip, or an intentional smear? It undermines the author's credibility in the first line. Everybody knows that is a nonsense narrative. They are anti-mandates and passports. Most people there are vaccinated and support vaccination.
I suggest you edit to correct that.
Edit: Then later, "who posts photos and videos of antivax protesters".
OK, done. This author can't be taken seriously. Come The Line. You said No Bullshit. This author is saying multiple times the protestors are antivax either in ignorance or as a smear tactic. Come on. Don't throw away your credibility like this.
From Matt Gurney’s own on-scene report last week: “ And yes — I was told, many times, that vaccines are bullshit, or poison. I know that a talking point of the organizers has been that the protest isn't anti-vaccine, and I didn't check anyone's QR code, but in my thus-far limited experience, the general mood goes beyond mandate skepticism into outright enthusiastic embracing of anti-vaccine conspiracies. Make of that what you will.”
This is generally in line with other reporting from the protests.
No. Those participating who are genuinely pro-vaccination have been rendered irrelevant by the dominance of QAnon/new age woo/WEF conspiracy nonsense voices. To the extent that they exist I feel sorry for them, but they chose to lie down with these cults. This is widely perceived as an anti-vax “protest” with good reason.
What do you think of his overall point? The connection between online identity and physical presence, and so forth.
It's a good question. I don't really see an actual point. The article looks like a vehicle for flinging metaphorical poo, as a vanity blog for the author, and filled with irony.
Like this:
"livestreamed to YouTube by one of the countless hustlers who ride the line between journalism and activism, propagandizing for the convoy demonstrators while monetizing their online content."
This sounds like the death throws of a dying legacy media getting upstaged by better journalism from average joes with a phone. I mean, really, the legacy media have big production, network deals, funds from the government, and the author (apparently from CBC radio: https://www.writerstrust.com/authors/james-mcleod/) tries to smear some Youtubers who mostly are lucky if they get a few bucks to pay their bills, saying they are "hustling".
Really? So these Youtubers are rich and legacy media folks are starving working class, and just telling it like it really is?
Those Youtubers are getting everybody's views in their own words. They are journaling what is happening through unedited, livestreamed video in people's own voices. Mr. McLeod is writing a vanity blog about his personal opinions and using it as a vehicle to throw empty insults.
Clearly the Youtubers are acting far more professional, doing far better at journaling what is happening.
If you weed through the poo, well ... there's nothing less. But the wrapper around the poo appears to be this thesis: "All the participants are livestreaming their experience because it allows them to bring their network along, while also boosting their social capital with physical world cred."
No citation to a psychological study, nor a claim of such. It is literally just the vanity opinion of somebody who works in legacy media, and has an obvious conflict of interest in this matter, and the irony of using an online blog just to put out his personal beliefs. The Youtube livestreams almost devoid of such vanity. The young 24-year old
Zot got arrested while he was being told he was allowed to go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kzqn9_smptk
Ottawalks keeps pretty quiet and just collects video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiJ5t-QRW6c
Travel Fun 69 does more talking, but gets input from people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtQNuKvTZBQ
Viva Frei gives a lot more personal thoughts, but he's constantly interviewing people, asking where they are from, why they are there, what they've seen, and anything else they want to say. He gives them all their voice: https://youtu.be/HWBEp5REwDo
He's the only one that probably makes a living from Youtube, and he had that prior to the protest.
This is what journalism is supposed to be. Journalism is not vanity opinions by people with journalism degrees. Why would we care any more about the personal opinions of James McLeod than any other random person at Tim Hortons? I want to know what the protestors, or counter-protestors, think.
So, just no. Nothing here to see. I can watch a nature documentary if I want to see monkey's flinging poo. I don't come to The Line for it. This is a shamefully bad article.
The reason why individual or private media are so successful is because it comes from on the ground reality. They are not attempting to create a narrative but trying to express a reality. Mainstream media needs a story to sell, so it must be made worthy of people buying it. With the subsidies coming from the government they are more obligated to put them in a good light. Truth becomes out of focus when you try to create a story with tainted glasses. The mainstream media already has the narrative before they show up to do the story, so they must make the pictures fit their narrative. Its why it is often so easy to see the flaws and why things often seem out of context. It is because they are completely out of context. The CBC's version of CNN's story, pushing the Russian interference was hilarious. Then Trudeau himself saying this was an insurrection was pure blaspheme. He and the mainstream media have no shame and nothing to lose at this point. Its horrific to watch and I hope that many Canadians have been shown the truth about the propaganda being spread by the mainstream news. Its horrific and disturbing.
Indeed. There seem to be many causes for the great failure of modern corporate press. For American contemporary media we might look at Matt Taibi's "Hate Inc." whose main thesis is essentially that divisive "clickbait" drives revenues, starting from the "if it bleeds, it leads" principle and adding in that divisive tribalism drives up our attention (and anxiety) on paying attention to what is important.
There's also the ol' "Manufacturing Consent" drive as well, which is more easily accomplished with "us vs them" tribalism. You don't need to convince people to go for policies that aren't in their interest; you just need to convince them that the other team ("them") are against the policy. Divisive rhetoric does that very nicely: "Those people" are putting our kids at risk (Trudeau, Aug 31); "those people" are white supremacists, racists, misogynists (Trudeau again). "Those people" carry swastikas and confederate flags (Trudeau, Singh, both parties). "Those people" are anti-vaxxers (McLeod, corporate media).
No need for evidence of any claims; just make it "those people" and tell the public to fear them.
Somewhere along the lines, the old journalistic practice of building a human narrative around the facts, rather than just reporting the boring facts, got corrupted into building "facts" around the narrative as you suggest.
One of my favorite examples from the CBC: https://youtu.be/Qz3UzInVhzA
It appears to be a terrible story about how this poor girl (visible minority, of course) lost her father to COVID-19 because he caught it at work from a co-worker who was at work while sick because he didn't have enough sick days, which was Ford's fault for having opposed more sick days.
Except, if you pay attention to the words ("if", "may have", etc.) they have no idea where the father caught it, if a co-worker was involved, if the hypothetical co-worker was knowingly sick and still at work, or if they had used up sick days. It is a completely fabricated, hypothetical story made to sound like it is factual and Ford's policies are to blame and hurt this young visible minority girl (and apparently killed her father -- but his interests don't seem to sell the narrative).
It's like a sick mental disease of the modern press, and body politic, to fabricate stories to fit narratives and pretend they are not lying. Yes, they contained the words "if" and "maybe" hidden in the story, but they are intentionally well hidden and downplayed in a story that makes no sense without the implicit story that it IS true, and done with clear intent to deceive the public.
The same with the swastika and confederate flags which clearly have nothing to do with the protest, but they can tell the narrative because there was at least one of each photographed there (in full face covering, with professional photographer in tow, took the photo, then left).
Same here with McLeod, and The Line for publishing it. These are not anti-vaxxers, but McLeod and The Line clearly don't care about truth or their own integrity; they care about selling the narrative. It's just so sickeningly repulsive.
You are 100% right that this is why individual private media is taking over. It's why Joe Rogan is so popular, and rising stars like Viva Frei (David Freiheit) resonate so well with the public; they don't bullshit.
One might like to see some professional journalists try to do the same instead of just claiming that is what they are doing. If not, they will lose against these citizen journalists. Unless, of course, they can cheat by having big tech censor the citizen journalists by calling everything "misinformation" or against arbitrary "community guidelines", and perhaps government getting legislation enacted to do the same.
It is just so disgustingly corrupt and immoral. I know The Line can do better. This is a big step backwards.
I found it timely (as my comments below will show)
Not sure I should even bother commenting, after Ad Nausica's epic takedown, but I have a couple of points:
Who would say "Everything is documented from every angle and objective truth is impossible to attain. "? That makes it far easier to attain objective truth, as we have many angles from which to view what happened. It just means that we have to approach all the evidence with an open mind, and sincerely try our best to figure out what actually happened, using classic tools like careful observation and logical reasoning.
And then "People stream themselves online because online is where they feel most at home." Also absurd. People stream news events online because they believe that legacy media will simply lie about or ignore what is really happening. Of course McLeod's claim that documenting things from every angle makes objectivity impossible simply proves them right.
The actual issue is that legacy media continues to want to control the narrative, and is threatened offended by any competition. And that they do this, all the while pretending to themselves that they are telling "the truth", even when that is not supported by simple boring facts.
I think it also demonstrates the limitations of the online world, where you can find tons of like-minded people, but also shield yourself from other points of view if you choose. The ideological underpinnings of the protest (if there is one) is a bit of a hot mess. If it's really about vaccine mandates, they should be at provincial capitals where most of the mandates originate. If it's really about the federal gov't (or the Trudeau gov't in particular), there are far better criticisms than the meme-worthy slogans that seem to be the limit of this "movement". Ultimately, protest is about raising awareness and convincing people of your cause. Looking at polling, 2/3 of Canadians disagree with this protest and it's pretty safe to assume that 100% of Canadians are tired of COVID and all the limitations it's caused, so only finding sympathy from a third is pretty weak given the times we are in.
This feels like Angercon; a chance for angry online communities to get together and act out their online rants IRL. Unlike a lot of other protests, it doesn't seem to have a point. The stated points are delusional and often pointed at the wrong level of government ("end all mandates"). It doesn't seem like it hopes to convince anybody who isn't already convinced. It feels like a celebration of a bunch of online folks who don't want to hear anybody telling them how ignorant or delusional they really are.
Maybe that's what online cultures are doing to the public space -- slicing us up into highly engaged subcultures that can be easily monitized and marketed too. But, if that's the case, it's sad that that's what we've chosen for ourselves.
The vaccine mandates were put in by Trudeau. The Provinces deal with what is inside their Province. They deal with health care and Provincial restrictions including vaccine mandates passports within their Provinces among their own regulations and resources as well. Federal Government is responsible for the Countries Borders , immigration, Foreign Affairs and diplomacy and trade along with cross Canada and Provincial border projects. The Borders of the country are the one to the United States and for international travel, hence It is Trudeau that put the mandates and passports on those for the truckers who have been exempt due to the supply chain need and they were doing this without vaccines when we had none. Remember they were Trudeau’s heros. He put the restrictions and vaccine passports for truckers in on January 15th 2022. The end of the pandemic, restricting unvaccinated truckers. They may cross the border unvaccinated, no restrictions and quarantine , only if they are moving vaccines. For some reason they are not dangerous if they have a load of vaccines, regardless they are doing nothing different than they have through out the pandemic and with different loads. Perhaps reading up on things first would be beneficial to every one. This is how everything gets twisted around. Three quarters of Canadians have no idea how our government and country work.,what is done in our Parliament, as if they did know, they would certainly not be praising Trudeau. He has corrupted the entire parliamentary system since he was elected. People would stop voting for someone intent on destroying the country and its entire systems. That’s why he gets away with it because Canadians are completely uneducated on their own country and the Parliamentary system let alone our history! I think it should be mandatory to know this before anyone is aloud to put in a vote!
Yes, I'm aware of how our government works. What you are conveniently leaving out is that the US instituted a similar mandate for truckers at the same time. Which means whether or not Canada lifted the mandate for truckers, truckers crossing the border to the US would need to be vaccinated to meet the US edict. So, what was the point of this again?
Of course, the demand of the protest was to life *all* mandates, which of course the federal government couldn't do even if it was foolish enough to want to. Their legislation only covers people who work for the federal government and in federally-regulated industries. For trucking (since that's the focus of this protest) that's cross border and inter-provincial trucking. It does not cover trucking done within a province. However, to meet many provincial guidelines, many employers do have mandates to allow them to operate more freely. Industry sources have said that there is such a driver shortage that unvaccinated drivers likely could find work focused on local routes (within a province).
All of which to say, the aims of the protest reflected a lack of understanding of the mandates themselves and who was responsible for what. A focused protest to exempt truckers so they could haul between provinces might have made some sense, but would not have likely attracted anywhere near the number of people. And, that is not what the focus of this protest was.
The author's opinion of the protesters, I believe, would not be widely shared by the many people who work with their hands, drive large trucks, work in gas plants and so on. His smear of the protesters is out of order, but he is free to his opinion. Would like to know what he thinks of the people who attacked a peaceful Coastal Gas Link worker's camp, threatening the workers with violence and causing millions of dollars in damage. Do some of these creeps also live in the internet/metaverse?
My exact thoughts. People who work with their hands and provide, live in the real world and that is why the author and those similar to him have such difficulty understanding and relating to the working class. Trudeau is the same. He lives in a completely different reality. If you left them outside on their own in nature, they would starve to death or freeze as they do not know how to live in this reality. They live in the metaverse of their own making.
I disagree. The "truckers/protesters" or whoever is a lousy example of the working class. 90+% of Canadian truckers actually were working these past few weeks. Kudos!
So Trudeau can't camp out? (Are you sure?) Can he drink beer? Can he drop the f-bomb several times in a single sentence? But he is the Prime Minister of Canada and you can vote him out next election in 2 to 4 years.
Can PP live in snow and cold as his metaverse is truly bent?
My own personal feelings are somewhat mixed, one that they should have packed up and left by now, that there is nothing to be gained and that public opinion will turn against them.
The other how the elite have massively distorted this (impression is Canadians support the elite) What is one to make of the fact that a dozen axe wielding attackers went on the rampage yesterday , the kind of thing that happens only in the third world, yet got barely a mention in the media.
I think in the end the restrictions will end, a bunch of people will see their lives ruined and life will go on. Oh and the Conservatives will tie themselves up in knots over this.
In other words nothing much will change till it changes somewhere else first
It supposedly was 20 people armed with axes tipped 2 big backhoes and tore up one trailer with said backhoe (chopped a big hole into it). Twenty people with axes went on a rampage. No one was injured or arrested.
This would not be the first time the RCMP has embellished, smeared or tried to discredit solely to make themselves look good. They have quite a record of BS.
https://www.straight.com/news/rcmp-history-of-smear-campaigns-warrants-skepticism-about-violent-confrontation-with-coastal
The other 64,000 dollar question is where does this lead? Said for a long time that Canada isn’t immune to
popularism but beginning to wonder if I’m wrong. 🤷♂️
Opps populism
What is wrong with populism? It means they work for the people ! Do you prefer your Government working for themselves and globalist concerns while locking their citizens in their homes and they fly off to Davo’s ?
Read this from Quillette. Explains populism was eye opening to me worth the time to read it.
https://quillette.com/2022/02/18/the-tribal-threat-to-liberal-democracy/
Maybe it’s because you’re in Germany, but the attack on the Coastal Gas Link site was covered in Canada by all the national newspapers and tv networks this morning. I am curious to see if Trudeau can rouse himself to condemn it.
Yes very possible
The CGL site is almost literally in the middle of nowhere, northern BC thousands of clicks from Ottawa. Legacy media doesn't give two frigs, especially with a very camera-friendly 'emergency' unfolding right on their doorstep.
100% spot on LOL
I recently came to the conclusion that if, in fact, I was *done* with the pandemic, then I should be *done* with twitter (twitter being the only social media where I've a large on-line community)
So many of us, forced inside and idle, turned to internet platforms for distraction, entertainment, and to replace our real-world routines and connections. In doing so, we've accelerated a problem that might have taken a decade to reveal itself.
I have found, since January of 2020 when I first started seriously thinking about Covid, that Twitter, used wisely, is a far far better gateway to information on controversial topics than legacy media. It's a lot more work, though, so if Covid madness subsides (still a big if, in my opinion) it may not be worth the effort - I can just file everything I get from legacy media in my head as "quite likely false".
twitter is usually 24 (sometimes 48) hours ahead of legacy media reporting. So yes, it has become my go-to for news. But even that immediacy of me wanting the news quickly stems from my boredom during quarantine. News used to be something we caught up with at the end of the day, Now it's both a reality show and an addiction (to me)
I feel the same way to a great extent. But I also find Twitter a very good gateway to online sources (eg substacks or journal articles) for more depth. The conversational nature of Twitter makes it easier to assess people for honesty, integrity, knowledge, and epistemic humility than legacy media. (Where, frankly, these days, my default assumption is little or none of any of them.)
this will be the hardest thing for me to give up when I finally give up twitter: it's a great curation platform. I usually start my day opening new tabs from articles mentioned in my twitter feed. I'll then close twitter, but I'll have 10 to 12 interesting articles open to read throughout the day.
Maybe when we are all done with twitter we need a new kind of in person social event. Imagine some software where you could trivially easily cast references from your phone up onto a big screen to discuss with people, you could copy the link onto your phone (into software optimized for this) for later review, but it was all in person. Like a nerdy cross between a sports bar, a dinner party, a salon, a book club, and the Symposium.
The law relies on evidence.
How convenient that today’s perpetrators happily reveal themselves (and their actions) by having their licence plates and company brand names on their blockade vehicles and letting their every move be put on widely distributed electronic images!
A prosecutor’s dream.
Surely a lot of Canadians know a lot of French. They even speak it fluently. It’s even their first language. Perhaps a lot of anglophone Canadians, like myself, only know a rudimentary amount of French.
Or maybe all of this individual live streaming was to give a more accurate account of what was actually going on. Legacy media was certainly not providing it!
The Liberals lobbied the US to put the mandates in at the border as they were not going to do so. That is why the Canadian Government put it in on the 14th and then retracted it as they did not get confirmation from the US. People thought it was because they were listening to all Canadians and Premiers, not to mention the trucking industry!!!!! Everyone was worried that our already delicate supply chain would be further damaged by these mandates so they begged they not be put in. When they received confirmation from the US that they were going in, the lovely Liberals put the restrictions back in on the 15th, which caused more confusion. The US agreed to start theirs on the 22 of January which they did. None of these restrictions for truckers, at this late date and with all the information we have on the virus , vaccines, and the pandemic, not to mention the problems with the supply chain, were necessary. Premier Kenney also went down to Washington to try and get them to not put in the border restrictions that Trudeau wanted but had no success. The majority of countries are dropping restrictions due to the "science" but not here in Canada. It has become about control and has little to do with peoples safety. There are many things being learned that were not allowed to be debated during this pandemic due to the Governments and Experts wanting complete control. Scientists and other medical experts were demonized and cancelled if they spoke out. When the facts about the science are available more to the public there is gong to be some very angry people. The Government must maintain control to mitigate those people and they do this with the aid of our main stream media and our institutions. The demonization continues to anyone who dares speak out against their narrative or even breach their dictate regardless of whether it is done peacefully or not. That alone should frighten every single Canadian and the proof is in the actions of the Government and the Corporate news medias story telling that took place took place on the truckers freedom convoy.
A very interesting perspective. There's quite a few videos on Twitter of people yelling abuse at journalists; this is of course exactly what you'd expect to see online, where norms are weak.
For a good theoretical analysis, see Joshua Meyrowitz, "No Sense of Place," which applies Erving Goffman's dramaturgical analysis of social interaction to electronic communication. I also really like Bruce Sterling's description of electronic bulletin boards: https://russilwvong.com/blog/norms/
If the protesters are behaving in real life as they would online, this may also explain why the Ottawa Police had such a hard time keeping the peace. Hans Morgenthau explains that domestic peace is based on a combination of policing and social pressure, with social pressure being the stronger factor (policing is only needed when social pressure has failed). For the Ottawa protesters, social pressure didn't apply at all: they were their own subculture, transplanted from the Internet to Ottawa. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBlW3--zcSo
Well the Ottawa Protest is over. The truckers weren't shown any respect from Trudeau nor in the end the police but this isn't over. Truckers are the lifeblood of our nation not the politicians and certainly not the police. I have been aware of that from the beginning and the situation in Ottawa was untenable as a protest. Now come the consequences...
Went to pick up a few items from Walmart. A lot of shelves are empty, gee I wonder why? Everything Trudeau does turns turns to shit and cost us all more...
You are right about the role of truckers and thankfully except for a small handful the vast majority of truckers have continued to maintain the supply system despite the effort by a small minority to disrupt the political system and the economy. As for the carnival of chaos' cries for freedom, they only managed to trigger the repressive instruments of the democratic state. Doubtless this is not going away so folks will have plenty of opportunities in the future to participate in how our democratic society sorts itself out.
I would agree that the cybernetic world is what's new in the story of the various protests that have popped up across the country. The pandemic has been the superficial occasion. However, the underlying cybernetic developments have created the conditions for the phenomenon of the protests. For reasons we have yet to find out in full (many of course offer theories), our institutions appear to have failed in the face of what appears to be a relatively small number of actors involved in these protests. Obviously large trucks played a crucial role, however, that they were coordinating from diverse locations seems to be the remarkable feature.
Political partisans, of course, declare, on the one hand, they are a 'fringe' or, on the other, a ground swell of popular opinion. However, the cybernetic character of their loosely coordinated organization, the clear variety of agendas that percolate through the various protests, suggests that the media, police and the political class have yet to get a clear handle on what's going on.
Other than it's clear our institutions have been found wanting. Online politically motivated fund raising is one thing. Truly understanding what online communication means for democracy is another. And this strikes me as the central issue and why I support the Emergency Act if through the process of review and renewal, institutions may be brought up-to-date with this new (now 30 year old) reality.
Millions of people are online. However, that does not mean people have grasped the significance of that. As noted, we may need a McLuhan to help us understand it. Curiously McLuhan grasped something of the internet reality before it came into existence by extrapolating from the electronic communication shift from print to radio to television that he observed.
It remains unclear whether democracy can remain effective and relevant in the midst of loosely coordinated cybernetic groups of people animated by meme addictions. Collective algorithmic identities may not be the basis for the forms of collective compromise needed for democracy to be effective. Violent confrontation between uncompromising ideological fanatics may become the norm. In which case, authoritarian oppression where freedom means my uncompromising freedom not yours, becomes the norm. Democracy will have to find a path through this new reality.
And the American Committees of Correspondence were a paper-subculture flexing in the physical world? They got their war; the rate-of-transmission was slower, but not that much. YouTube has been around longer (16 years) than they took to organize a revolution (12 years, 1764-1776).
I don't think a new MacLuhan is needed, either. The old one saw the constructed reality possible with video/audio immediate media, how it could help people live in a dream; now there's just democratization of who can sell the dream-world.
I grew up in Calgary, dressed in my hat and six-guns for the Stampede, and watching endless Westerns on TV (some 200 series in the Wikipedia). They were all of an "American Old West" where all cowboys were White (over half were Black, Mexican, Native) and the Natives were barely seen, probably dangerous if so. It was ridiculous. It was accepted.
I'm very glad to have lived to have seen a world where anybody can make a TV show. It's not like the old world was responsible with its power; I watched TV and the big papers go all-in on selling both Iraq Wars, with PR-firm packaged lies, and a conspiracy theory.
Do we now have bad guys "flooding the zone with shit"? Oh, yeah, but "yellow journalism" is very old. Fox News pumps out far worse disinformation than any social media amateur, because they're professionals at selling it better. Look up Dan Cooper, Fox founding producer, and he describes it as not "news" but a "24-hour political campaign", developed by Richard Nixon's campaign manager.
I have an endless, touching faith in the ability of people to sort it out in the longer run.
Viva is the best one.
https://youtu.be/HWBEp5REwDo
Harper was a cruel man and a vain one. But he wrote a book about hockey so all is forgiven.