A Society In Crisis - V2

[Zorro]

This is the second of a series of threads I'm posting here at CiX illustrating the negative direction modern society is headed. Today we're going to look at the following seemingly harmless article by Dave Seminara:

http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2013/08/15/7-things-not-to-do-at-campground/

We've all seen articles like the one above in our news aggregates and our search engine results. While this article seems quite harmless at first glance, I find it to be a perfect example of an awkward and disturbing trend.

This is an example of a typical independent journalist who thinks he's smarter then everyone else and who overestimates his personal insight. I find it appalling that this guy has the brazenness to insult his readers' intelligence with such simplistic arguments and observations. This article assumes that the people reading it are, quite literally, stupid. Yet despite this, it's interesting to see the number of positive comments the article has received, all from people who don't seem the least bit offended at the premise or presumptions that the author is implying. Such dumbed-down opinion pieces from today's so-called "journalists" are becoming more and more common, and are yet another example of a society in crisis.

[BlackCat]

Well said. I've always stayed away from Fox News because they have a history of doing things like this alongside Christian-themed media outlets. Most recently, if I see a headline entitled "Atheists smarter than Christians? Not exactly" then a quick glance at the domain name reveals "jesusrocks. or christiannews., etc. It comes with no surprise to me that religious outlets want to appease their audience, Christians, and by doing so will pump out articles polluted with logical fallacies to make the readers feel better and have confidence and loyalty to the outlet while the fallacies within the article go undetected to someone who doesn't know them or doesn't care to educate themselves. After all, questioning or doubting a consensus supported by biblical text could be seen as defiance toward God. I wouldn't have any issue if the consensus was someone's opinion but when the publisher skews statistics and tries to pass something as fact, I get angry.

In short, propaganda isn't cool.

[Zorro]

The article mentioned was published on Fox News, but was written by Dave Seminara, a left-leaning independent journalist. You'll frequently find the exact same type of articles on CNN, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, Mail Online, The New York Times, etc. so please don't hijack my thread and use it as an excuse to mount an ambiguous attack on conservative and Christian media outlets. The dumbing down of information to appease and influence low-information audiences is happening everywhere in the media, and low-information audiences traverse the entire political and religious spectrum. I believe there's a difference between journalists who think their audiences are low-information or ignorant and journalists who think their audiences are downright stupid; I was attempting to illustrate the latter.

[BlackCat]

Okay but Fox News and Christian media outlets are more likely to commit logical fallacies than Fox's competition (CNN, MSNBC etc.) and nonreligious outlets through what they publish, many University studies show. By the way, not once did I mention any attack on conservatives, rather I was simply attacking those media outlets that are most likely to have flaws in logic, although I understand this has nothing to do with journalists saying so much about so little. Carry on.

[Zorro]

Thank you. Saying things you know I, and others in these forums, will inherently have some fundamental arguments against, just for the sake of seeing what type of response you get, is kind of disappointing. You're too dang smart to fall into the troll trap of purposely trying to start pointless arguments.

By the way, how's college going? You still self-employed selling bikes and stuff?

[BlackCat]

I shouldn't have hijacked this thread. I didn't realize this wasn't in the spamming section. My apologies, Zorro.

College is going well, thanks for asking. In May I graduated with an Associate degree in Science and right now I'm not fixing up or selling as many bikes as I had years ago; it's just that I'm not learning anything from working on bicycles anymore. I still have about 200 bikes lying around, half of which are parts bikes and half of which are good enough to be fixed up to sell, but I'm just getting kind of bored of working on bicycles everyday. I still don't mind it every now and then though.

Instead, I've been working on a huge project that involves lots of coding and programming. Of course I'm not as good as you guys but I've learned a lot these last few months and hopefully my project will be found useful or admired by lots of people in the near future.

How's the big job as the senior programmer, Zorro? Lots of headaches or have you seen it all not to worry about anything?

[Zorro]

Congrats on your degree! I'm anxious to hear/see your new project. Might I ask what the project is in general?

My job is kind of at a standstill at the moment. My health has taken a turn for the worst these past few months and I've been forced to hand over a lot of my projects to some of our other programmers since I don't know one day to the next how I'll feel. I make $38/hr, but with the downturn in my health, I'm only getting about 10(ish) hours of work in a week. When I have weeks where I feel better, there's no work outside of my regular maintenance stuff, because I've already handed off all of my projects.

Bullet Magnet is doing right well for himself lately with his new internship; he's made his 'ol Zorro pal proud.

[BlackCat]

Sorry to hear that; that must be irritating. Is the discomfort from Crohn's disease? Years ago I remember you telling me that you had cancer too. Are you undergoing frequent scans or treatment?

That's cool that your apprentice BM is mastering his way around the Jedi.. I mean coding academy.

Thanks about the degree.

[Zorro]

Sorry to hear that; that must be irritating. Is the discomfort from Crohn's disease? Years ago I remember you telling me that you had cancer too. Are you undergoing frequent scans or treatment?

There's different types of Crohn's Disease, and I have the fistulating kind. At the moment I have three enterocutaneous fistulas and a peristomal fistula; this results in chronic infections (not to mention it's just downright disgusting). I have severe inflammation of the small intestine, as well as scaring, ulcers, bleeding, and constriction. I'm not responding well to any treatment. I've already had a large section of my colon removed. Surgery on the small intestine is not something doctors ever like to do since removing a section of the small intestine pretty much starts the clock on a slow death sentence. Yes, I've had cancer - I had my left kidney removed many years ago from kidney cancer (Wilms tumor). Just a big mess, to say the least.

Anywho... What do you plan on doing with your degree? Does your degree reflect your career goals in general, or are you wanting to pursue an IT related field?

[Bullet Magnet]

I mentioned to Zorro earlier in a Skype chat that I disagreed with his opinion on the article in question.

However, once we clarified that this was more of a big-picture thing, I agree. This belongs in amateur blogs and such.