Collin G Brooke
@cgbrooke
I’m a rhetoric professor in upstate NY.
Collin G Brooke
cgbrooke.substack.com
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
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
the life of thought, holding a position is like that: there’s a proper firmness of belief that lies between the extremes of rigidity and flaccidity.
Alan Jacobs • How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds
then how have irony, irreverence, and rebellion come to be not liberating but enfeebling in the culture today's avant-garde tries to write about? One clue's to be found in the fact that irony is still around, bigger than ever after thirty long years as the dominant mode of hip expression. It's not a mode that wears especially well. As Hyde puts it,
... See morethefreelibrary.com • E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction.
linguistic concept called the theory of performativity says that language does not simply describe or reflect who we are, it creates who we are.
Amanda Montell • Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
Word magic
But there remains also the truth that every end in history necessarily contains a new beginning; this beginning is the promise, the only “message” which the end can ever produce. Beginning, before it becomes a historical event, is the supreme capacity of man; politically, it is identical with man’s freedom. Initium ut esset homo creatus est— “that
... See morepeople who use social media frequently perceive significantly more political disagreement in their daily lives than those who do not.
Chris Bail • Breaking the Social Media Prism
because scale deals with perspective, it is intertwined with notions of the subject, experience, consciousness, and interpretation.
Joshua DiCaglio • Scale Theory
That growing alienation is a key point. This is not just about “bad” people. It is about how the death of truth, and, therefore trust, has caused so many “normal” people to be derailed into acting badly by predators or by people who have themselves been deluded. And it’s about the new tools that technology has given them to spread distrust.