Please don't call family or friends on the phone!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2022

A Washington Post alert: We'll admit that we retain our fascination with the headlong devolution of the (online) Washington Post.

As our culture moves post-truth, are we also moving in the direction of post-newspaper? Consider what we found when we journeyed to the online Post at 9:45 this morning.

As always, the online paper's endless front page started with what seemed to be a set of major news headlines. 

Those headlines appeared at the top of the page. That's very much as it ought to be, but the first three headlines were these:

Nearly 9 in 10 covid deaths are in people 65 or older

Sea levels are rising dramatically off Virginia, threatening a community—and the entire East Coast

Calling out of the blue: Why would you do this to someone you love? 

The first two headlines seemed to relate to recognizable news topics. But what about the inscrutable headline on that third report? 

In the case of that third report, the full double headline said this:

Calling out of the blue: Why would you do this to someone you love? 
In the age of texting and DMs, a ringing phone can sound like nothing but bad news.

Believe it or not, this third report was a heartfelt, lengthy warning about the danger of calling family or friends on the phone. 

Why would you call someone you love on the phone? Your family or friends may think it's bad news, the Post's Ellen McCarthy was bizarrely warning Post readers. 

Yes, that's what it said! It was the third report at the very top of the online Washington Post's front page, and it started like this:

MCCARTHY (11/28/22): Adria Barich is a haunted woman. Her tormentor tracks her everywhere, threatening to ambush her in a dimly lit parking garage, as she drives down a desolate road or when she’s let her guard down to wash dishes or collapse on the couch.

“I’ve actually changed my ringtone a few times, because I start to associate it with terror,” says Barich, a 24-year-old California woman who works in marketing. “But every time that I do, after, like, a week or so, it just becomes terrifying again.”

There is nothing that makes Barich seize up with fear like an incoming call.

“I feel anxiety. I stiffen up. I also kind of make myself pretend that I didn’t see it,” she says. “And nine times out of 10, I’m not going to answer it. If someone really needs to reach me, they can text me, leave a voice mail or continue to call me again and again and again. I wait for their next move before I decide what I’m going to do.”

For the record, McCarthy isn't suggesting that Adria Barich is in the grip of some puzzling phobia. McCarthy's point of view is completely different. Soon, she's offering this:

MCCARTHY: If these levels of live-caller dread sound ludicrous to you, congratulations. Maybe your friends and family call just to chat, and you welcome these telephonic drop-bys even when they are not invited or forewarned. Maybe those conversations seldom veer into awkwardness or tedium.

For the rest of us, impromptu calls have become roughly equivalent to turning up unannounced at someone’s home and smushing your face up against their window. Our comfort and patience with person-to-person calls have eroded as text messaging became the preferred way of communicating all but the gravest of news. The ringtone grows ominous. For whom does it toll?

The lunacy proceeds from there in this latest offering from the increasingly bizarre (online) Washington Post. 

McCarthy's report goes on and on about the anguish people feel when they hear the ring of their phone. It's clear that McCarthy feels that this anguish is entirely sensible. Meanwhile, let us repeat our original point:

At 9:45 this morning, this was the third (3rd) news report at the very top of the online Washington Post's front page! To appearances, this was the third most important topic the online Post believed it was reporting at that point in time.

Please don't call your friends on the phone, this high-profile offering said. Below it, the next headline led to an absurdly frivolous, poorly reasoned report about the way politicians have gained or lost Twitter followers since Elon Musk took over the company. The headline there said this:

Shift in follower counts for Elizabeth Warren, Ted Cruz show how Twitter is beginning to change

From there, it was on to one last pair of reports. They completed the set of six which were given full banner treatment at the top of the Post's front page:

Pilot, passenger rescued after plane gets tangled in high-voltage lines in Maryland

I drove all 1,700 miles of Australia’s remote Outback Way. Here’s what it’s like. 

According to those last two reports, there had been an unusual local accident in which no one was hurt. Also, some guy had driven across Australia, and he wanted to say what it's like!

For the record, today's print edition of the Post featured five (5) front-page news reports. All five of those reports concerned traditional "hard news" topics.

Three of those reports appeared above the fold on the front page of today's print editions. At 9:45 this morning, none (none) of those three reports were visible in any way on the endless, aggressively tedious front page of the online Washington Post. 

Observers have noted that we seem to be living in a "post-truth" world. Are we moving toward a post-sanity realm at the online Post?


16 comments:

  1. "We learned a lot of as we watched him on those C-Span interview programs—but we also thought we might have seen a certain unhelpful blue tribe framework rearing its unhelpful head."

    Our culture is NOT moving post-truth, even if Somerby decides to do so himself, such as by denying what happened to Native Americans.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is not be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost as if in sorrowing. There is no sorrowing. For sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death, and death and dying are the very life of the darkness.

      Delete
  2. "Why would you call someone you love on the phone? Your family or friends may think it's bad news, the Post's Ellen McCarthy was bizarrely warning Post readers."

    Somerby is yelling at those kids to get off his lawn again.

    Young people do not call and talk on the phone. Old people do that. Somerby coyly pretends he doesn't understand that people of different ages use technology differently. He is being an asshole when he does this.

    The point the article makes is valid -- it just doesn't apply to fogies like Somerby. Soon, the newspaper will be beyond his grasp too. Then maybe he will talk about something else.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. anon 4:01, there goes old fogie TDH wondering why it's natural for people to fear answering the phone, because it's like some uninvited stranger intruding on your safety. People are better off not engaging in human contact; today's youth have a better way, taking advantage of new technology and spend every waking minute on their smart phones. It's scary to have to talk to someone on the phone, and hard. Us old fogies just don't get it.

      Delete
    2. The main point is that Somerby doesn't seem to understand that some people are different than him. And you defend him in that.

      Delete
    3. What Somerby’s saying is that to think that being alarmed by a phone call makes sense is nutty. And he’s right. That applies to the old AND young.

      Delete
  3. Someone tell Somerby he doesn't have to read this paper if he doesn't want to.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Only Somerby's personal trauma, and "trauma" experienced by Whites (males), matter to Somerby.

    Everything else is trivial, and yet also somehow leads to Republicans winning all elections.

    Yo Somerby, thanks for the chuckle, you silly clown.

    ReplyDelete
  5. "Below it, the next headline led to an absurdly frivolous, poorly reasoned report about the way politicians have gained or lost Twitter followers since Elon Musk took over the company. The headline there said this:

    Shift in follower counts for Elizabeth Warren, Ted Cruz show how Twitter is beginning to change"

    We are just supposed to take Somerby's word that this report was poorly reasoned and frivolous. Meanwhile, counting various forms of activity has always been a valid way of assessing political support. Why wouldn't Musk's recent act to restore banned Twitter users have an impact on followers? But Somerby doesn't tell us why he dislikes the report -- he just condemns it without any specifics.

    This is his latest way of operating -- he descends from on high and trashes someone and then moves on. He doesn't have to provide any evidence or even explain himself any more. It is just name calling these days.

    ReplyDelete
  6. The big story of the last few days is the gutter the Republicans are willing to swim in if they are sticking
    with Trump. Bob simply has no interest in the story,
    because he is half as nuts as Trump, so he finds
    frivolous stuff in the news and bitches about the
    frivolous stuff being out there with the important
    stuff he refuses to pay any attention to.
    Bob is a piece of work. A very crappy
    piece of work indeed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. anon 10:30 - yet every day you keep reading. Are you a masochist?

      Delete
    2. Critic of nonsense.

      Delete
  7. Somerby hosted a luncheon for Holocaust deniers in the mid eighties and of course a ton of white supremacists showed up. Mexican and Latin white supremacists mostly. Maryland is full of them. But what a jerk.

    ReplyDelete