Speaking of Ethics in Games Journalism, it turns out that Milo Yiannopoulos (of the blue checkmark scandal) essentially farms out most of his articles to unpaid ‘interns’ who appear to be largely made up of 8chan posters.
Yiannopoulos confirmed in an interview with BuzzFeed News that he has “about 44” interns — “a mix of paid and unpaid” — writing and conducting research for him. But he denied that other people write stories for him start to finish….
Yiannopoulos told BuzzFeed News that all uses of the n-word in PROJECT MILO were ironic. “A lot of these guys are young 4chan guys,” he said, referring to his interns. “They use it in the sense that message boards use it … It was the n-word with an -a, not with an -er — they were quoting hip-hop lyrics.”
As one can tell from the screenshot of his slack channel, it proudly contains channels like ‘Trump’, ‘Shitposting’ and ‘Blackcock’.
“I know they don’t mean it in a racist way,” he continued. “It wasn’t like I had to police racism out of my Slack.”
This is amusing because just this week, Milo posted what can only be described as a dog whistle to the white supremacy/MRA laden ‘alt-right’ movement. Which to be honest, is way more fucking terrible than the first story. And also, tells you everything you know about the relationship between GamerGate and this cancer-ridden part of the Internet.
/ The former intern said Yiannopoulos delegated frequently. “I wrote articles for him,” he told BuzzFeed News. “His articles on Breitbart. He writes some of them, but most no. He has other people writing his shit.” /
Milo, you’re only as good as your work, and you ain’t shit. Having your own typewriter-monkey corps doesn’t make you a writer. It makes you an egomaniac who thinks he’s an editor.
Know who should be ashamed? His Breitbart editors.
1) This is April Fools’. While I have no doubt that Schubert is serious, perhaps Bernstein was just pulling the internet’s collective leg. One would hope that BuzzFeed might now act above the site’s former approach to life due to its embrace of serious news, but perhaps it hasn’t learned that lesson yet. Caveat lector.
2) Even if Bernstein is serious, there is always the possibility that he was the victim of a hoax. Milo of course is complicit in every joke involving him. Naturally he would confirm to Bernstein that he has 44 interns. He’s a trickster who knows even a little self-deprecation can get him ahead — everybody should realize this by now. Milo does it to hide the very ugly core that sometimes appears anyway. He’s one of those people who troll because they couldn’t say the same with a straight face and get away with it. He gives the illusion of trolling, but he means every word.
3) This is why, even if the 44 interns is a joke, the accusation of antisemitism is valid. The antisemitism is just wrapped in trolling to discourage noticing how seriously intended it is. Classic Chan MO, of course.
The reason I don’t buy the “44 interns is a joke he’s playing” is because I think it requires a level of self-depreciation that is not possible for someone who throws a two month tantrum over a checkmark, culminating in asking a White House spokesperson about it.
Your comment assumes that Milo’s checkmark tantrum itself was serious. I think he was clear-eyed in seeing how whipping up outrage over losing that checkmark, in a way to engineer that he would never get it back no matter what, would be more profitable to him in the long term than regaining that checkmark followed with an “everything’s forgiven, Twitter”. He gamed Twitter’s system, and he won: he showed the checkmark was a moralistic good-conduct medal rather than an authentication mechanism, he can now play the victim, and on top of that, he’s gained followers.
You could even call his White House question an act of high trolling. Milo doesn’t mind appearing ridiculous — I think his mindset is that he already despises himself to the extent that anyone else loathing him would be just superfluous — and so far he’s taken it very far indeed. I think he would play along with the idea of having 44 interns — it’s the kind of assertion that on its face sounds so far-fetched that he wouldn’t hesitate to encourage it.
Where Milo is objectionable is because, in the self-perceived train wreck of his existence, he doesn’t care about collateral damage — hence giving voice to very unsavory ideas, whether he believes them or not. He used to wear an Iron Cross, for chrissakes.
Sigh.
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/04/01/hold-understanding-milos-manpower/
I’m curious how they’re going to deal with the fact that Milo’s “haha, the alt-right isn’t really racist, they’re just being shocking” column got responded to with “we’re not joking, we really are racists.”
http://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2016/04/01/breitbarts-milo-yiannopoulos-rejected-by-internet-nazis-who-really-do-hate-gay-jews/
presumably by claiming “the daily stormer” aka full neo nazis aren’t the real alt right
Anything associated as closely with racism and bigotry as the alternative right will inevitably attract real racists and bigots. Calmer members of the alternative right refer darkly to these people as the “1488ers,” and for all their talk of there being “no enemies to the right,” it’s clear from the many conversations we’ve had with alt-righters that many would rather the 1488ers didn’t exist.
These are the people that the alt-right’s opponents wish constituted the entire movement. They’re less concerned with the welfare of their own tribe than their fantasies of destroying others. 1488ers would likely denounce this article as the product of a degenerate homosexual and an ethnic mongrel.
aka milo already “addressed” this counter in the article.
does that make the article good/the argument morally good/neutral? No it just means the link isn’t making a very good argument and the counter he’d throw is obvious. if it’s a good or bad counter is irrelevant because it’s perfectly internally coherent.