the upside down

This contrast between the interactive content that “people crave” and the “traditional media” that has become outmoded has taken on a political cast since the election. In a New Yorker item, Joshua Rothman argues that “Democrats preach while Republicans riff” — i.e. Democrats operate like the nattering nabobs of traditional media while Republicans

Reality TV, for example, is a manifestation of legacy institutions trying to capture the vitality of the Down lifestyles in faux narratives that emulate non-elites in everyday situations. Music genres each have their own up-versus-down positioning—just consider your mental images of the audience for rap, classical, country, jazz, etc. (But genres

(3) When commentators give any attention to down-versus-up, they usually reduce the conflict to income disparities, but that is misleading. Down-versus-up is more attitudinal than economic. Sometimes the tension manifests itself along traditional class and wealth lines, with disputes focused primarily on money, but that’s only a small part of the

the battle between ‘up’ and ‘down’ could be as important in spurring social and cultural change as the conflict between ‘left’ and ‘right’. This is not an economic distinction in Ortega’s mind. The new conflict, he insists, is not between “hierarchically superior and inferior classes…. upper classes or lower classes.” A millionaire could be a

In her piece about Trump as a “podcast bro,” Tressie McMillan Cottom notes that “if you tune out their words (and who among us doesn’t tune out when listening to a podcast) you are still consuming the cadence and texture of the podcast bro style.” That texture remains the same regardless of the content or its political valence; McMillan Cottom

Put simply, the masses hate experts. If forced to choose between the advice of the learned and the vague impressions of other people just like themselves , the masses invariably turn to the latter.

In the ambiance of simulated co-presence, all the isolates project their own terms of recognition onto the leader and pretend that they are somehow self-fulfilling. Meanwhile moribund politicians cling to “messages drafted by institutions” that “don’t rise above the sea of information.” They are tuned out because they have nothing of the livestream

This more than anything feels like the prevailing pathology of men in this cohort. They feel small. They are looking for a way to get their power back. They do not deserve that power, obviously, but they do feel entitled to it. And women, to an extent, are enabling it. They are enabling it in the kind of sex they are having, in asking for things