Collin G Brooke
@cgbrooke
I’m a rhetoric professor in upstate NY.
Collin G Brooke
cgbrooke.substack.com
Irony is a fancy word for saying “the opposite of that which is perceived.”
Carson Reeves • Scriptshadow Secrets (500 Screenwriting Secrets Hidden Inside 50 Great Movies)
we distrust to the point that it becomes dangerous to be a judge, a Capitol Police officer, a doctor, a librarian, a poll worker, or someone installing 5G equipment—our civil society cannot function. The winners then will be those who try to rule by force rather than consent.
Steven Brill • The Death of Truth
Discursive rationality is today under threat from affective communication. We allow ourselves to be easily affected by fast sequences of information. It is quicker to appeal to affect than to rationality. In affective communication, it is not the better argument but the most exciting information that prevails. Fake news is more interesting than
... See moreDaniel Steuer • Infocracy
Conspiracy theories, as we have seen, are both symptoms of confusion and powerlessness and tools of division and distraction that benefit elites.
Naomi Klein • Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
To succeed in today's media environment, “political leaders must appear as accessible, authentic, and relatable,” she argues,
Conor Friedersdorf • The Charisma-vs.-Charm Election
when people place value on the role of evidence as a means of updating their beliefs, they are less likely to believe misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Dannagal Goldthwaite Young • Wrong
One of the most intelligent case studies in design is the Chinese tea cup. They’re made without handles simply because if it’s too hot to touch, it’s too hot to drink.
Humans naturally want to add more. Add a cardboard sleeve, add a warning on the outside of the cup, add a handle. The result of all these things never cools down the actual contents.
... See moreIt has become increasingly possible to give almost continuous access to politicians—or that's the illusion. Think of our phones, these totemic objects we all carry—the intimacy of sitting in bed with the screen close to your face, watching a politician record a video or a livestream of themselves with their own phone. That's different from sitting
... See moreIt is also a broader cultural sensibility composed out of the steady drip-drip of bureaucratic acts, a loose constellation of practices and postures that is diffused throughout society via the legal and executive branches of the modern state. In short, suspicion is less heroic and more humdrum and routinized than we might think.
Rita Felski • The Limits of Critique
Scale and Conspiracism