this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2025
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This may be going off on a tangent, but it seems appropriate here. I am sick and tired of hearing about every little minutia of clickbait bullshit related to Trump. If Musk wants to buy and tank TikTok, great. I don't give a fuck one way or another. Trump isn't buying TikTok, and I truly don't give a shit what his opinion is on it.
I want to stay aware of current events in my country. If the president signs an executive order, I want to hear about it. I don't want to hear about what his friends are doing. I couldn't care less who made his wife's hat. I'd rather watch paint dry than a video of him and his wife dancing. I hate that I know he consumes McDonald's slop and Diet Coke in the oval office.
People argue about how news outlets are biased right or left. The real problem is that news outlets are just entertainment outlets, and not legitimate journalism. I don't care if you're reading Fox News or CNN; you're still going to wade through a river of worthless celebrity worship before you actually find something of substance. Scroll down far enough, and you won't be reading about Trump any more. Instead, you'll be reading about which actors are fucking each other and the latest and "this year's hottest budget-friendly Temu styles that are now made of only slightly toxic synthetic fibers." If you're lucky, you might find an article about how some random nobody met another random nobody on vacation and got married. Good for them. I'm glad they're happy. I still don't give a shit.
Great. Don't engage then. But somewhere between 30 and 50 percent of Americans use the app. It's fate is national news.
While I agree with the sentiment, I'd say this qualifies as news. Elons not buying shake shack, he's buying a social media platform with a very opaque algorithm that has the power to influence a large chunk of the American public. Even if he tanks it, twitter has shown that through network and data ownership combined with sheer inertia many people will remain on an app even after its been revealed to have its thumb on the scale for one side.
In addition to that, they're suggesting a government stake, which likely means using taxpayer money to help him subsidize it. Hmm. Where have we seen that before?