• build_a_bear_group [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      I don't know what it is, but I interact with a lot of white collar liberals, and they think he is very informed and makes great points. There are times that I feel like I am insane for being the only person around me that doesn't think he is one of the most informative journalists to exist. Like I hate listened to a few episodes of The Weeds (Matty's podcasts for Vox) and after describing it to a formerly self-described "communist" (she will admit to being a liberal now) said "that sounds like a cool podcast, I will listen to it". Hexbear and Chapo mocking him are the only times I don't feel like reality is melting around me when thinking of Yglesias.

      • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
        hexagon
        ·
        1 year ago

        I sincerely don't understand why people like him so much. He's an obnoxious troll. But I must admit that he's great at doing PR for himself. He tries and usually fails to be elliptical but the vagueness is good enough for trolling. Nate Silver does similar shit and he's much better at it. Silver's got it down cold.

        Yglesias starts by intentionally stirring shit up. Then he pretends to be surprised (or shocked) by people's "wrong" opinions of his take. He plugs his substack as a way to say "See - I'm with you!" In this case "I want people to have abortion rights!" And he might do another tweet to buttress his "I'm just a slow, boring substacker... But if somebody misunderstood me - although I'm sorry-not-sorry - it's purely their fault. Their impatience and their misdirected anger was stirred up by my haters and the Twitter mob."

        The "the GOP position is unpopular and I'm pro abortion rights" stuff is typical Yglesias. I'm certain he'll do some follow up trolling. "I'm pro abortion rights which is not the same as being pro reproductive rights. I believe that's the appropriate position. People vilify the GOP's position. It's unpopular position but it has merit if you consider it enough. My substack explains..." He always does that crap.

        The conservative position on abortion is unpopular but the other thing Republicans need to accept is that the weirdly timed election gimmick now plays into the hands of Democrats' highly educated neurotic base.

        Welcome people who've arrived at this tweet via haters mischaracterizing its meaning! If you'd like to know my views on abortion rights — I am strongly for them.

        [link to his substack]

        If you are interested in correlations between political ideologies and Big Five personality attributes (including neuroticism) then this is a good overview.

        If you want my opinion on whether it was wise to give this personality attribute that particular name, I'm inclined to say it wasn't. But unfortunately the field of personality psychology did not ask for my permission and that's what they went with.

        Nitter