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.
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 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 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
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.
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...
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.
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 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 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
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.
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...
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