nickdouglas

[nickdouglas]

Sometimes, you actually should assume malice over ignorance

i'm confused, what do you mean by 'media literacy is a mostly fake concept'?

i just don't think it's like... useful, or describes something that's meaningfully real. like, the idea of 'media literacy', the ability to read media for its 'correct' meaning -- i don't place value on the ability to 'understand' what the 'author' 'meant'. i think that producing readings is, yknow, an active process that produces meaning, rather than uncovers it, and of course the meanings you can produce through readings depend on the contents of the text but they equally depend on its context, on you and your context... and of course, i think some readings are more productive, more useful, more grounded, or more interesting than others, but i don't think that's a matter of 'literacy'.

and, yknow, the ability to produce these readings is a whole set of different skills, not really one that can be put on a continuum. like yknow it is possible to be very good at like... psychological character analysis, or at producing meaning from vivid visual imagery, and then completely lack the background and understanding needed to produce coherent political-economic readings. it is possible to be extremely well trained in the vernacular of one medium or cultural tradition and lack fluency in another... there is just not one unifying skill that makes you Good at Understanding Media

& especially i think the concept of media literacy often gets deployed to kind of like, ignore or paper over ideology. like people will clown on ben shapiro whenever he says some stupid fucking shit about a movie, but like... y'know, he is misunderstanding the movie on purpose, to come to the political conclusion he wants to? like, his opinions on superman (2025) don't come from him neutrally trying to do Media Analysis in a vacuum, they come from him watching tyhe film through the lens of "what can i say about this on my right-wing talk show". and so on, right, i think the concept of 'media literacy' (and tyhe 'piss on the poor' meme associated with it) is often used to close one's eyes to people's ideological (& sometimes material--shapiro needs to be able to say dumb things about how movies are Bad because of Woke to make money!) investments that underpin their analysis

[nickdouglas]

i feel these needed to be compiled. feel free to add more genre related posts in the notes if you want

[nickdouglas]

My favorite SCP

[nickdouglas]

[nickdouglas]

"When i grew up, i had to walk to school by myself uphill both ways"

~guy who emigrated from an escher engraving

[nickdouglas]

I published my second short story!

"The Mountain and the Vulture" — 2024

Short story about a mythical friendship

Published on PodCastle

[nickdouglas]

[nickdouglas]

[nickdouglas]

pov its pride month in the succession universe

[nickdouglas]

✨ Please reblog the polls to make them reach out to as many people as possible, but KEEP IT SPOILER-FREE to make people listen to the music with an open mind 💖 Artists and titles will be revealed after the poll's conclusion, check the original post for an update! ✨

[nickdouglas]

OP turned off reblogs so this is my post now. Behold, the "Objective quality vs. degree of ferality" scale

Here are a few of my own personal datapoints:

[nickdouglas]

PSA: journalists aren’t supposed to put names in the headlines if the person isn’t a public figure. It’s not a matter of maliciously not giving credit

[nickdouglas]

On the subject of orwell and his rancid anticommunism, his flagship title "animal farm" is not simply a "satire of the USSR"; it is a full and total repudiation of the idea of proletarian rule at all. The entire book depicts the workers as dumb and incapable and easily manipulated by leaders. This is a fully aristocratic view of the proletariat and entirely anti-proletarian. This should be no surprise to people who are familiar with orwell's opinions and past, including the fact that he has "never been able to dislike Hitler" (actual quote, March 21, 1940) and that he was a colonialist cop.

[nickdouglas]

[nickdouglas]