Kisin's Aphorism: Podcastistan is a place where people scold the mainstream media for failing to live up to their standards on honesty and accuracy, while having none of their own.
The Five Attributes of Podcastistan:
1) TRANSGRESSION: Since the new media positions itself as a challenge to the mainstream, it rewards, above all, ideas that are transgressive.
2) CHARISMA: All media, but New Media, especially, overindexes Charisma. That is because Charisma and Authenticity are not disconnected. People who say what they think are typically more charismatic, than those who filter and obfuscate. But just because someone says what they truly think does not mean that what they truly think is true.
3) CONSPIRACY: A key element of the New Media point-of-view is that you are constantly being lied to by the mainstream institutions. It's extremely helpful to proponents of this perspective that, you are in fact, being frequently lied to by mainstream institutions. In this context, ideas which appear to expose a hidden truth always have more appeal.
4) ENTERTAINMENT VALUE: In a world where culture, politics and history, and pretty much everything else is a form of entertainment, entertaining ideas, that are wrong, appeal more than boring ideas that are true.
5) POLITICAL ALIGNMENT: If bad ideas feed the narrative you are personally tied to, then you will buy bad ideas and feed the narrative, because narrative is personal. To not feed the narrative would become a kind of death to you. You must feed the narrative at all cost, especially in a New Media Environment, which is almost always launched, driven, produced, and controlled by one person. (I altered this last one. In fact I re-wrote it entirely. Let me know if you think I inaccurately relayed Kisin's point).
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