We could be like some, miss the point entirely, and just rage about evil media, and socialism, always the socialism, lol. You know, we could make complete jackasses out of ourselves, compose comments in such a way that the image of the poster that most readily emerges is that of a deranged, foaming at the mouth, lunatic.
Or, we could try to take an intelligent, deliberate, composed look at the root of some misunderstandings in a hyper partisan society. We could see if we can learn something here about how information travels in a hyper partisan climate, via viral videos.
For instance, Here's a good essay from the Atlantic, which suggests we stop trusting said viral videos. In this instance, by looking at the difference editing makes, rather then an endless search for truth through focusing strictly on the content of those videos.
This is a pretty thoughtful essay. We all have our style. I favor thoughtful over 4Chan nutjob. I'm glad most posters here do as well. Whatever side of our present political disorder one finds oneself, we can learn things that otherwise might have escaped our awareness. That's what I'm looking for, and this essay helped.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technol...udents-and-native-americans-explained/580906/
"To understand just how susceptible images like this are to total reinterpretation, consider an alternative scenario. Imagine that instead of standing silently and seemingly smug, the teen had maintained a neutral countenance and then removed his maga hat from his head. Such an act would have been interpreted, almost universally, as a gesture of meekness and respect. Some would have overinterpreted it, no doubt, taking it as a sign that the student had shed not just the cap, a symbol of Trumpism, but all the ideologies bound up in that symbolic garment. And this interpretation would have cohered and spread no matter whether Sandmann really meant any of it or not. (I
pointed out a similar feature in the Jim Acosta White House video, in which a small shift in the position of a camera could utterly change the apparent meaning of the resulting images.) The entire tenor of the viral moment would have flipped, and the students likely would have enjoyed being portrayed as meek heroes representing the tolerant promise of American youth.
Consider a change in framing or editing instead: Had the original clip been shot from the reverse angle, showing Sandmann and his classmates from the back, his maga hat visible but not his smirk, the meaning of the situation would have also changed. No longer does the student represent the worst stereotype of white intolerance, but now he becomes a mere prop for Phillips, whose drumming reads as both pacifist in its delivery and reception. My point is not to apologize for the students’ behavior, or even to explain it, but to underscore how a slightly different video might have convinced the very same viewers who censured the Covington Catholic students to reach exactly the opposite conclusion."
