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Disinformation.com
The site's left-of-center-pieces -- with generous links to other POVs -- vary wildly in quality and usefulness, but you can find some real gems on disinfo.com. Taken together, the stories on this important, possibly even landmark site are a sharp indictment of the humorless and tepid way the popular media screen out opinion and commentary that's different, provocative or original.
We know too well that most mainstream media -- TV networks, major newspapers and newsmagazines, commercial news web sites -- have been corporatized, homogenized and mass-marketed by profit-obsessed corporate execs from Disney and General Electric. They could as well be -- and simultaneously are -- selling them park tickets and light bulbs as ideas and opinions. Newspapers have grown stupefyingly boring, their commentary relegated to snoozy op-ed pages. Cable TV, once the great hope, is becoming a nightmare of fragmentation, eternal argument and dogmatic fanaticism. Except for slight variations -- Fox News' interesting right-wing tilt, for example -- most mainstream news organizations stock to a militantly moderate point of view, veering a wee bit to the right or a tad to the left but never much further.
The target audience of most major media, from your daily paper to Time and CNN, is the appliance-and-car acquiring middle class, who seem to like their politics tepid and lite, the way AOL users like their Net. With media so firmly in the grip of market research, it's tough to know what they might cover if they were left to their own imaginations.
"Disinformation" is, to say the least, different. It was launched in l996 by Richard Metzger, now edited by Alex Burns. It's arguably one of the best-designed and most interesting alternative news and underground culture sites online. Apart from its own content, the site provides a subculture search engine which directs a reader to sites and relevant links. The site's political bias is clearly leftish, but its links are refreshingly open-minded, incorporating ideas, opinions and responses far beyond traditional definitions of "progressive." In fact, Disinformation is really, in many ways, a dogma killer. Despite the editors' viewpoint, readers get drawn into all sorts of opinions and debates any time they pursue a story or essay.
Apart from the excitement generated by a website that circulates about alternative ideas -- ideas the Net helps to keep alive -- Disinformation is beautifully designed. There's a Disinformation store, of course, offering T-shirts and books. There's easy access to stories by popularity and topic -- from activism and aliens to media, mind control, spirituality and technology. For all the ballyhoo and media hype about sites like Slate, with its heavy Microsoft subsidy, Disinformation really seems to get the fusion between interactivity and ideas. It's an exciting place to browse.
From the beginning, the Net was meant to open up information and give voice to different kinds of people and points of view. The Web, with its hyperlinking, took that idea still further. But in the past few years, that notion seems to have grown tired, in between the copyright wars, the dot.com era and the so-called Net slump. It seemed that corporate America -- Yahoo, MSN and AOL -- was devouring the Web whole. That's why sites like Disinformation are so important. They are the real heart of the Web.
Gee, Jon, you sound like a cheerleader for disinformation.com (ewww, yuck).
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I personally prefer www.fair.org. Disinfo, while interesting, are oftentimes too radical for my taste. It almost seems like they go out of their way to fabricat-err, uncover conspiracy in the name of "no smoke without a fire".
fair.org is more a kind of media watchdog. I like their work. You might too.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
This is what I get when I try to go there from work:
"Access to this web page is restricted at this time.
Reason: The Websense category "Alternative Journals" is filtered.
URL: http://www.disinfo.com/"
I guess some how what I would have read there would have made me a worse employee? I am glad they saved my eyes from seeing that!
This is cool and I have visited their site previously, but some of the stuff just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Its one thing to wish for untainted information, stive for truth and freedom, and quite another to spew frothing at the mouth about it, hidden in an amongst what appear to be good information.
AND it is yet even more of a shame when a whole bunch of conspiracy seeking, alien hunting, govermentphobes start giving, us good truth seekers a bad name....
Wheres the tin foil hat when you sighn up to their site, I thought that wsa a requirment.
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
Perhaps we could get a waiver for Farscape, though. Production values aren't everything...
Was that out loud?
God, that "cheerleaders" piece was awful. As reporting, it was incompetent and uninformative. As ranting, it was slow and anticlimactic. If this is the sort of feeble attempt at interesting writing that Jon Katz is urging us not to miss, then I think I'm beginnig to understand why he's so hated around here.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Disinformation is nothing. If you are looking for the web that was "promised" -- and who promised it, anyway, technofuturists drawing a paycheque on empty predictions -- then you should go to www.google.com.
What do you want to know about? Type it into the search box. Check your results. Read the ones that are interesting. Alter your criteria. Try it again.
Use their links to read newspapers from all around the world. Use babelfish to translate a German page to English.
I have all of the information I could possibly need at my fingertips through a combination of Google, Lexis-Nexis and sites like Everything2 and the Guerilla News Network. I have opposing viewpoints, case studies, major media coverage, independent media coverage, essays and fiction based upon pretty much every major event in the last twenty years. Going back a bit, the completeness level goes down for all but the most major of events, but nonetheless.
The Internet allows anyone to put anything up. Google allows you to find it. Your brain allows you to parse, to judge, and to collate it.
The third part of that equation is the important one.
If you're still using major media to define your worldview, you haven't understood a thing about what the internet has done (nevermind what it was supposed to do or what it should do in the future). I check in with major media sites because they tend to be well laid out. When I actually want the information, all of it, that's when MSN and CNN can kiss my ass good-bye, because they do not and never have provided anything more than sound bites.
Which is pretty much what Disinfo does, except with a snotty, leftist bent that doesn't do much more than pre-emptively derail most of the discussion that occurs.
The heart of the web? No. Just another meta. The heart of the web is that anybody with access to a PC and 20 minutes to learn can put a basic webpage up that will be indexed by Google so that somebody like me can stumble across it.
Google and the WayBack machine are the killer apps of the net. The provider of the content (Disinfo or whomever) don't matter. That's just branding.
And, hey, wasn't the 'Net going to take us away from all that? Or is it acceptable in the case of clearly lefty-biased sites?
One of the things I admire most about America is that you've got your sports groupies in uniform and parading on the sidelines. It's just so organised ! The unarguably subservient status of cheerleaders versus actual players is also a cause for wonder. It's so refreshingly old fashioned. It shows that at some level the country hasn't completely lost it's head up it's own ass in the fad of expecting identical roles for men and women.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
That cheerleader piece is really annoying. I agree with only the tiniest fraction of what the Christian Cheerleader Leaders say and stand for, but the guy who's doing the interview is the biggest dork I've read in a while. He sounds like a newish convert to his lack of religion, and like most new converts, he's all guns blazin' and basically a smug asshole. (I don't have religion either, but at least I try to have some dignity about it, even if I think concepts of faith help lead to stuff like WTC.)
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
And just how is Marty Beckerman's taunting a cheerleader different from the "cool kids" taunting "geeks" as was roundly condemned in the Hell Mouth articles? He sounds like a complete jerk to me.
I went and read "Death to all cheerleaders," and
it's utter garbage.
I'm sick of this type of satire. It's not necessarily funny or interesting to try to make people look dumb, especially when you're willing to make yourself look dumb to do so. Think Tom Greene. Think "The Daily Show." The death to cheerleaders could be a transcript of a Daily Show interview, it's that unoriginal.
It's easy to make fun of stuff. It's also pointless and boring unless there is some genuine insight to it.
The net has never succeeded in promoting free expression of ideas. Instead it has founded enclaves of like-thinking people, who need to have their own point of view reinforced by others. Take Slashdot for example -- a community of people who have similar views about free software and intellectual property law. When was the last time a justification of Microsoft's tactics was posted to the front page, without an immediate rebuttal? Or a repudiation of the GPL? The readership here wouldn't stand for it, because that's not what they are here for ... not free expression, but validation.
Really, we shouldn't be surprised that the "mainstream" media is boring -- most people don't like to hear views that strongly conflict with their own. This is a consequence of the popularization of the internet, and Slashdot is an example of that in microcosm.
"Alternative media" sites like disinformation.com are no different. They have their own axioms (the media is lying; the police are out to get you; corporations will enslave the world), their own jargon, and their own orthodoxy. Read an "alternative paper" for a while and you'll see what I mean.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Now true, I will grant that the first aim of the mainstream media is to make money, and thus, they are going to select the news stories that will attract the highest viewership. Which means if they have to drop details to keep people falling asleep and candycoat issues without stretching the truth, they will do so. There does exist some indy media that is less worried on the profit and more worried on the truth, and will report in greater depth than typical newsblurbs. However, again, the target audience for these indy media are not the population at large, but generally intellicuals that want more information than the mainstream can give them. Then of course, there is the indy media that goes on as little information as possible to stretch the truth as decribed above.
As from MIB: "A person is smart; people are dumb", and all that the national media is doing is catering to people. Indy media, in most cases, is trying to cater to persons. The same thing with AOL; AOL and most big content creators cater towards people - independant sites (such as /.) cater towards persons, and just as with the media, some of these indy sites are good and details, while some are poor and over-the-top. That's what you get when you limit the scope of your audience and worry more on the content than about the profit.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
From Disinfo's main "Paranormal" page:
"It is interesting to see how the Internet's development has been hand-in-hand with the mass proliferation of inter-dimensional information. The reptilian phenomenon is of the astral or imaginal realm. The process of our coming to grips with the possible existence of reptilians, and fully comprehending the dimension of the mind, has the potential to trigger a larger awareness of our own multidimensionality, our spirituality and our relationship with Creation."
Yeah. I been thinkin that for years.
I just can't be bothered to sift through crap like this to possibly find something somewhere in there worth reading. Generally, when I hear something like:
"links are refreshingly open-minded, incorporating ideas, opinions and responses far beyond traditional definitions of 'progressive.'"
I consider it code for "they'll print any damn thing, even if it's silly, badly written, and completely devoid of usefulness." And sure enough, that's usually the correct assumption.
Some of this stuff, I'm sure, is ignored by the Man because it challenges the status quo. But for much of it, well, there's probably a good reason why it's never been picked up by the mainstream media: it sucks.
-brennan
Did anyone actually follow the link, read, and then take Marty's work serious at all?
Initially, I read the header:
Marty Beckerman is an 18-year-old humor and opinion columnist living in tropical Anchorage, Alaska. His award-winning writing has appeared most frequently in The Anchorage Daily News, though occasionally manages to pop up in finer national publications.
and thought, wow this is interesting, a young adult doing some actual work as a columist and apparently being successful... But then I actually read part of the body of his work labeled You Just Can't Lose when Jesus is on Your Cheerleading Squad.
After reading the first page of his column, I stopped and returned to the top of the page to make sure I read this correctly:
Beckerman's first book, Death to All Cheerleaders: One Adolescent Journalist's Cheerful Diatribe Against Teenage Plasticity was published September 2000 on Infected Press.
What sort of crack addict book company would publish the crap this kid is writing... well Infected Press I guess, but the question was rather hypothetical, heh.
This kid is not a columnist, nor does this work represent that he is able to relay any sort of humor. Although, it appeared that he was attempting to do some sort of column with some investigative reporting included in order to back up... the... uh... opinions? or something I guess... that he had. The column started off ok, not of very high quality but decent enough to continue reading. But there are various points in the column when you can realize that this guy is actually just a jackass trying to rant a few loose viewpoints. Here, he starts off asking about the modesty in the cheerleader's dress, and then before the topic has even been finished he throws in an inflammable remark-type question that the guest responds to anyhow (Marty = MB, Guest = Rose):
MB: You dress more modestly?
Rose: Yes.
MB:
Rose: Right.
MB: They're like, knee-level instead of mid-thigh, or what?
Rose: No.
MB: By the way, how does Jesus tie into cheerleading again?
Where did this guy get his interviewing skills? Seems like he pulled them out of his ass. Note to self: Never pull interviewing skills out of Marty's ass, you can get better ones out of your own ass.
He then goes on to ask completely ridiculous questions in what apparently is supposed to be a semi-serious interview:
MB: Would you ever, like, consider taking one of the girls' pompoms and painting it green, and then setting it on fire so it would be like the Burning Bush or something?
Rose: No. We're not extremists.
MB: But that would be hilarious, wouldn't it?
Apparently, Rose thinks she is too good for my question.
This could maybe be classified under humor (section: lame) but what is it doing in an interview within an investigative opinion column? This is ridiculous.
The first page then ends with this portion of a second interview with the president of another Christian Cheerleading Organization:
"So obviously both cheerleading and religion have come under scrutiny and criticism over the years," I say. "How would you respond to people who might themselves say 'Death To All Cheerleaders And There Is No God?'"
"They would say what?" Coleman inquires.
"You heard me," I inform. "They would say cheerleading is worthless, and then go preach glorious Atheism."
"Anytime you get students involved in anything extracurricular, that's meaningful. You get them off the streets. Cheerleading is a character-builder, and there's a lot of positive things you can learn from athletics. As for faith, I think you have to walk the walk."
It's at this point in the conversation I realize I'm completely bored, and proceed to hang up the phone. Fuck walking.
You can finally sort of see where this kid is coming from: a place of no direction, morality, or ethics. He starts out with an inflammable question, hoping to get a repsonse he can poke at. But, when he is faced with some actual facts and serious views about life in the response, he cowers away and avoids all contact.
I gave this guy a tad of my attention, believing that he might have some serious views on things... boy was I wrong. Don't let this guy pull a fast one on you - don't read his column (and possibly any other columns). He is, simply put, a jackass not worth paying attention to.
Anyway, the 'Media Patrol' over at cursor.org is much more my cup of tea - it draws a lot on the mainstream press (American and foreign) but does so in a way to point out the deeper issues and expose the spin that major media puts on things.
its content ranges from "The X-Men" and "Space Mutation" to "The Matrix" to pieces on the Real Jesus and Radiohead.
That's a range? Basically sounds like Newberry Comics to me.
Let's see, we don't like mass media because the information they present is filtered, edited, spun, and content-stripped away until there's little left besides indoctrinary pablum fit for the lowest-common-denominator viewer, John & Joanne Q. Public.
But we LIKE disinformation.com because the information they present is filtered, edited, spun, and content-stripped away until there's little left besides indoctrinary pablum fit for the lowest-common-denominator "independent thinker", John & Joanne Q. Public.
Oh yeah, sure. That's a HUGE improvent.
Granted, disinfo.com is much more of the category of "oh look at me, I'm a free-thinker not beholden to mass-media" club, or perhaps the "look I'm different like everyone else" category. IMO you're just sucking at a different tit, and fooling yourself that it's more 'significant' because it's not mainstream. Well, sorry, that only means its got fewer error-checking hurdles.
The 'real' web is what you make of it, not what someone shoves in your face as 'important'. I choose my content, and I find my own primary sources. I refuse to see ideolgue-flavored ranting as an example of the best the web can be, rather, it's an example of the crap that one has to wade through to GET to the good parts.
And by the way, in re Marty's rant about cheerleaders: maybe we will never know if there is a higher power, but it certainly IS relevant, or does he disagree with Pascal's logic in the matter?
-Styopa
In the words of Mike Haggar, have my ears gone insane? All the Web has ever offered as it became popular are 10,000 different versions of the truth. As wrong as The Media can get things sometimes, it's simply fantasy to think that the Internet has it any better. In fact, it's probably worse because at least in the mainstream media their profile is high enough that when misinformation is caught, it is brought to light and reputations are tarnished. I know this has happened to some of the news shows on the tube. On the Web it's every man for himself and there is no penalty for misinformation. It always worries me when people say, "Guess what I read on the Internet..."
For other media watchdogging, also check out The Daily Howler. An incomparable site for shredding those pundits who twist the facts to sell you The Truth.
Who put this thing together? Me, that's who.
As someone who observed Beckerman's firing from the ADN (Anchorage Daily News) first hand, I must disagree with Katz's statement that he was fired for calling cheerleaders "a urine stain..." That piece passed the scrutiny that the editors desk gave all of the younger writers (the ADN had a number of reporters under the age of 18. they would write a weekly feature (sort of like a kid's page, but a little better) and if they were good, as beckerman was, some of them would get offered columns, usually on mondays)
Beckerman was fired because he was a rude little bastard. He'd badmouth his bosses infront of god 'n everybody, he was rude to the copy editors, he would miss deadlines. He was just a bad employee, and using his death to cheerleaders piece as an excuse for why he was fired is just a ploy.
Brant
Argle. Bargle.
As for the "information" being disseminated on disinfo.com, it sounds pretty useless to me. The X-Men, Space Mutation, The Matrix, Real Jesus, Radiohead? How does this qualify as an alternative culture? It's just the standard, blank-stare, low-IQ pop culture that the USA, and increasingly other parts of the world, are already swamped with. We need less of this tripe, not more.
Also, I'd like to point out that the net can itself be a source of disinformation, particularly if you are trying to do scientific research. The net is full of bullshit scientific claims, proofs, and experiments, to the point where it is much more productive to just go to the library and get the information from the best source: peer-reviewed journals. The net has a long way to come until it's truly a source of unbiased, variegated, and correct information.
Once again, Jon Katz takes aim and misses...
Good job, Jon - I guess you found it in the last 13 days.
----
WWJD...For a Klondike Bar?
The only mildly entertaining part were the transcripts, and the whole time I was thinking about how The Daily Show would have done a much better job making fun of them. I love it when they find someone with a completely insane theory, back the person into a logical corner using their own answers, and ask that one question that inambiguously reveals the glaring error in their thought that everyone else can see, leaving them completely silent as those of us watching at home laugh their asses off. And they do that in the middle of making fun of them in ways that the person often doesn't even notice, with over-dramatic narrative and wacky commentary at the end. Comedy genius.
Yeah, I'm gonna get an Offtopic for this, but as Gir would say, "I love this show."
Qualify that. Pascal's wager works, but if and only if the spiritual world is binary, which it pretty much was in 17th century France (i.e. everyone believed in the same God, and were *supposed* to believe in the same way (the Huguenots, of course, would take exception)). The problem with Pascal's wager is that it's a logically sound deduction on false premises.
That's my big problem with it, really; of course, logical deduction regarding faith coming from a Jansenist (anti-rationalist cult of the 17th century and thereabouts, to those of you who don't know) is ironic to the point of being funny...
/Brian