After trying to read more weirdly lunatic shit from NiemanLab, I reached a conclusion.
Journalism isn’t entirely crazy, it’s a high-status cult like Scientology.
The members live in a completely isolated bubble of thought, surrounded by their fellow cultists and hearing only their fellow cultists.
Reprint of a more general version from 2017, which isn’t quite accurate for the cult model.
= = = = =
A culture that has an earth ground, a firm zero-point reference, can’t be yanked around in every possible direction to satisfy the blood-fetish of Maximum Leader. Human actions and cultural components have strict limits on gradients. When people and cultures are grounded, the parallel impedance of mass elements absorbs small delusions easily and refuses to be pulled up beyond natural limits.
Casual contact provides a steady slow discharge of both affection and anger. Productive MANUAL jobs channel emotions into the satisfaction of completion. Zero contact and zero production: all emotions build without discharge. Result: Violent unsatisfied desires. The unsatisfied affection is channeled into consumption; the unsatisfied anger into violent crime and permanent wars, both justifying STRONG tyranny.
Tyrants succeeded in cutting the ground wire for EU/US/UK. Now these areas can be charged up to infinite gradients by all sorts of bizarre unnatural voltage patterns.
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Illustrating the point.
First, we have our familiar Sorosian characters. Humanoid entities of variable gender, equipped with trapezoidal glasses and trapezoidal mouths. They live in Laputa, the cloudland of projectors. Of course Swift’s neanderthal gender-binary name is unsuitable, so it is Lxputx now.
Let’s put them into motion and place a voltmeter to ground.
As is typical of SorOS, their action is perfect chaOS, and their charge is equally random.
= = = = = END REPRINT.
Journalists don’t move randomly. Their thoughts are LOCKED onto the Holy Will of the Maximum Leader. Inside the cult they know what Maximum Leader wants at all times, and instantly follow orders without realizing that they’re following. They believe they are thinking independently and analyzing facts.
In electrical terms, each cultist has a coating of dielectric that doesn’t let reality pass through. Any reality charge that approaches the outer dielectric layer instantly causes an opposite charge to gather on the inside, which protects the Holy Leaderthought from contamination. When the charge on the inside gets strong enough, it bursts out through an ion gate called a “newspaper”, forming a biofilm called an “article”.
The good part: People on the outside also have an immune response to the lunacy inside the Journalist Cult. We simply refuse to support them with our money and clicks. They now have to solicit money from foundations and governments, which is less profitable and more risky than gaining smaller amounts from millions of customers. When Powell cut off the free money the foundations and Venture Capitalists dwindled, so the cult is gradually dissolving.
Polistra's Mill 