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gritty teens and pepe teens

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Blogger Carl Beijer wonders who's actually on twitter, or at least, how influential it is. Not sure what prompted this but it might have something to do with all the mainstream journalists who obsessively discuss "what twitter is thinking" or believe it's significant when "twitter erupts." How much thought leading is really going on over there? Says Beijer:

[N]ot everyone, it turns out, uses Twitter to talk about the news:

--One recent survey shows that only about 11% of the population ever gets their news from Twitter.

--Among respondents who ever use social media to get the news there is also significant variation in consumption: for instance, 30% of that group say that they "hardly ever" get their news from social media. If these trends holds for Twitter, then it is probably a significant source of news for something closer to 3-8% of US adults.

Beijer concludes with this paragraph:

This, I think, is a much more realistic assessment of Twitter's news reach: bring together all of the blue check journalists and unverified posters, the sinister operatives and the doe-eyed normies, the Pepe teens and the Gritty teens, the #TCOT grandpas and rose emojis - put them all together, and you are reaching a single-digit percentage of US adults, somewhere between 3-8%.

This hairball of newspeak might send a Twitter-unobsessed reader to the Urban Dictionary. A few people I asked didn't know what "Gritty teens" meant. Email if you have an idea.

edits after posting

Update: Thanks to Rubbercat for emailing a Gritty teens explanation: "'Gritty teens' refer[s] to an emerging contingent of meme-loving leftist kids. Its namesake is the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team's new mascot Gritty who, after a few initial weeks of universal revulsion, became jokingly recharacterized as this hip ultra-leftist antifa hero in photoshops and memes. There was a counterprotest recently and Gritty was on a lot of the signs."

public service announcement

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U.S. Media Refuses to Inform the Public When Its Commentators and Pundits are Paid Foreign Agents (Michael Krieger)

Tom here: It's ironic that the BezosPo, one of the worst offenders of publishing Saudi shills (as noted by Krieger), has also been a loud complainer about the fate of Mr. Khashoggi (who was also a Saudi shill despite posthumous rehabilition as a crusading journalist).

nyt burnishes u.s. "ally" -- for sixty-five years

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Jadaliyya (e-zine of the Arab Studies Institute) offers a tragicomic compendium: Seventy Years of the New York Times Describing Saudi Royals as Reformers*

Example:

1960:

“King Saud has increasingly assumed the role of liberal champion of constitutional reform.”

Note: The Saudi constitution was adopted by royal decree in 1992

Years later:

2009:

Announcing that local elections have been delayed for two years, this report nonetheless lauds the king’s reformist intentions before concluding with the following quote: “You have a reform-oriented king trying to push in the direction of reform, but you have a non-reform-oriented structure that is close to impossible to change.”

And finally, Thomas Friedman's fawning over the prince who is currently in the news for "whacking" a critic in the Turkish consulate:

2017:
[T]his Friedman piece includes such gems as “he is much more McKinsey than Wahhabi — much more a numbers cruncher than a Quran thumper.”

*Update: The timeline starts in 1953 so "seventy years" is an exaggeration. Post title changed,

divert and conquer

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clemente

"Liberal guilt" is a term that's gone out of fashion but it's weirdly intertwined with the Silicon Valley brand of paternalism. Witness the endless parade of Others on the search page of a company that, according to Fortune, "still hasn't fixed its diversity problem" in actual hiring.
The image above, from a few days ago, depicts baseball great Roberto Clemente as seen by uncredited artist Roxie Vizcarra. (Subject and artist are never written on the page -- you have to click somewhere to find this info.)
Vizcarra renders Clemente in a generic "clip art" style, transforming him from determined sports competitor to slightly vacant pretty boy. Like many of this company's illustrations it seems oblivious to human anatomy and perspective illusionism. The batting arm, for example, appears unnaturally twisted and lifeless. Clemente stares off in the distance, presumably looking at a high pop fly he just hit -- but appears stupefied rather than focused. In fact, the baseball seems to have sailed past him and landed in a pair of... severed hands. Is that a heart-shape on the ball stitching?
The map of Puerto Rico, Clemente's home island, appears to have been conquered by the sponsoring company, which has appropriated the territory's flag.
The blue molecule next to Clemente's elbow does not mean he is also a nuclear scientist. That's the "share" icon.