ATTN Thinkpieceurs

Odradek

You can stop writing those "DAE think Donald Trump is the first postmodern Nietzschean president??????"

It's okay, leaders blatantly lied long before Trump, and getting elected based on lies is not new, truth is not disintegrating, it is, indeed, one of the few things that isn't, calm down.

Odradek

Also nobody outside of your offices actually listens to Serial or that Richard Simmons thing

Obā-san

this is untrue, i think i overheard someone mentioning Serial at some point once in real life

possibly

Odradek

My statement was an exaggeration, I intended to convey the way in which nobody cares about Serial in the way people who write for magazines and e-magazines think the whole of America cared about Serial

Tatterhood

I mean "whole of America" is obviously absurd but like...the first season of Serial was hella popular and I still hear people talk about it occasionally?

The second season apparently not so much given that I didn't know until checking just now that there had been one.

Obā-san

I literally never heard of Serial outside of thinkpieces on the internet (and that one time in real life, which i remember because i was like oh hey this is a thing that actually exists, innit?)

Odradek

Everyone is talking about "Serial," the true-crime spinoff of "This American Life." With just seven (as of today) episodes, the show is sitting comfortably atop the podcast charts on iTunes, and it seems you can't swing a beard in Brooklyn or on Twitter without hitting someone who wants to dissect every aspect of the show so far. The story of Hae Min Lee's murder is as mysterious as the killing of Laura Palmer, and Adnan Syed's guilt is as hotly debated as the identity of the Yellow King was. Like Twin Peaks, True Detective, and other slow-building TV shows, "Serial" has developed such an intense following because it rewards close listening: It's inspired internet sleuths to take to Reddit (or Twitter) to figure out the case, and Slate has devoted an entire "Spoiler Special" podcast to picking it apart. How has Sarah Koenig come to captivate audiences to such an extent that they sit by their podcast apps on Thursday mornings waiting for a new episode to drop? What makes "Serial" unique? Why are all so obsessed?

Obā-san

im beginning to think that one of the big reasons that so much internet discourse is fucking weird to me is that i dont live in a big coastal metropolis

like, maybe san francisco and seattle and new york are just filled to the brim with diabolically entrepreneurial liberals who love uber and podcasts?

Sredni Vashtar

I'm pretty sure it was really popular with This American Life-style non-fiction narrative radio fans and true crime/unsolved mystery fans, which are two fairly large demographics which rarely overlap, and most Salon-type thinkpiece people are in the former category and were confused by the abundance of the latter. Hence, the articles. It's also worth noting that those sorts of circles don't have a lot of contact with the mainstream pop culture side of the Internet, so when people who do come from those spheres tend to pop into the mainstream, they tend to sound like they're from another planet.

Sredni Vashtar

It was also big enough to get the guy a retrial, so the idea that it was unusually popular for what it was outside those spheres isn't exactly a ludicrous assertion either.

Odradek

Tamlin said:

im beginning to think that one of the big reasons that so much internet discourse is fucking weird to me is that i dont live in a big coastal metropolis

like, maybe san francisco and seattle and new york are just filled to the brim with diabolically entrepreneurial liberals who love uber and podcasts?

This is the only scenario in which I really feel people who go on about coastal liberal elites, this culture gap.

Though really I think my main problem with the liberal elites/working class Real America model is that it's very reductive and fails to represent major groups in America, especially non-white ones?

It's caught on amongst Less Wrong, which is a sheer sign a sociological theory is shallow.

Section42L

Have socialists gotten really mad about Missing Richard Simmons yet?

Odradek

https://thebaffler.com/bread-and-circuses/richard-simmons-knee-orr

Well this seems pretty even-handed so

Section42L

Huh, that's fairly reasonable.

Aliroz

Donald Trump is not, in fact, capable of killing Truth and shattering the barrier between dreams and the waking day, between potential and reality, between this world and the next.  He will not break the great seals and restore magic to this world.

Odradek

Donald Trump will make Nier real life

Odradek

Remember when the media made up the idea that everyone hated Anne Hathaway, despite nobody ever meeting anyone who so much as disliked her, and then it made Anne Hathaway genuinely depressed?

That was weird

Crystal

I had intentionally forgotten about that too.