Who is Vox Media writing for?

feel like hamilton is what people who dont like rap music can listen to in order to be like YES I CAN SAY I LIKE IT NOW

i have never heard 'rent' straight through but i always assumed it was the same kind of deal, i remember ppl throwing the word 'punk' around when i first knew people who liked it

Oh man, I really like Hamilton and decided to give Rent a listen since people kept mentioning that as the last 'hip' musical. What a piece of crap. The first stretch is bad text being growled over the sound of guitar tuning, it's horrible. Then it becomes pure schmaltz. Worst musical ever.

if we're just talking about hamilton i feel like we're missing 2/3 of why that article is amazing. you sort of have to bear with it to see where it goes.

Schmaltz is the point.

why do ppl hate vox? anxious about the fact that i don't hate it, but i keep seeing ppl (coworkers, ilxors, friends) diss it, so i feel like i am missing something

i dunno, i am a hillary voter, so

serious answer: vox has lots of low quality writing that purports to explain things but is just rehashing wikipedia and it has bad editorial control. the article illustrates the latter.

what article? *scrolls up* the hamilton one?

yeah. on the other count see http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/46-times-vox-totally-fucked-up-a-story-1673835447

(i think they've gotten slightly better since but...)

its the buzzfeed model, but with "syria facts" in place of "cat gifs"

ok, so the van der werff piece seems...bad.

i don't have a problem with "syria facts," tho.

cock

that deadspin article is 100% of my experience with actual vox articles. they're as well researched as any bottom of the barrel clickbait sites but they have a professional logo and ezra klein or whatever.

I wonder if the phenomenally incoherent nature of the Vox Media properties is just the inevitable result of trying to force "smart" bloggers to write what essentially amounts to clickbait, with editorial QC to meet the standards of the latter. The null hypothesis is that this is not the case, and maybe I am just an old dad who doesn't get the Internet any more.

The majority of content on the flagship seems to be aimed at fourth and fifth graders; the mundane phenomena and news stories they "explain" frequently make it transparent that they have hard quotas to hit and the editors will let just about anything qualify as a post as long as it adheres to house style. I'm not exaggerating; it genuinely reminds me of the news digest magazines we would get to read and discuss once a week in the closing years of elementary school.

https://mobile.twitter.com/fivek/status/778246489910816769

Can think of a couple of examples...

I suppose there might have been a "in the post-war era" qualifier that got lost in editing? there's still Francoist Spain and the Estado Novo in Portugal, but they both "took" power before the war I guess.

I guess some people would see the establishment of the fifth republic in 1958 as being an example of the far right taking power?

there's some very decent journalism buried in here, but the subheads drove me insane. This conversational, occasionally sarcastic, trying-to-be-funny style might be tolerable in small doses, but seeing one after the other just piled up like this feels like drinking a bottle of corn syrup.

http://www.theverge.com/a/2016-best-of-verge

A common criminal was convinced the US government used a secret device to track him down. He spent months prison trying to prove it. Turns out, he was right.
The house bet big on Tesla – did it win?
West Virginia: wild, wonderful, and hiding a vision for the future of public transportation.
New York's Penn Station has been called "the worst place in the world" and that's probably an understatement. Time for an update.
Sure, you can make an app for that — but no one wants to pay for it.
Google's DeepMind took on Go champion Lee Se-dol, and humanity lost.
Too many dudes have colonized the final frontier.
Why yes, we would like to come spend some quality time with FLOTUS.
$15,000 seems like a reasonable amount to pay for a model lightsaber.
What stays and what goes on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter? And who decides?
He wasn't feeling well. So he scrubbed his body with bleach and ate feces pills.
The cost of calling home from prison can feel like highway robbery.
We lived to tell the tale. His business plan didn't.
The App Store changed how we used our phones. Now it's time to change the App Store.
Losing weight now means pumping food out of your stomach with a tube.
Cars of the future might decide who lives, and who dies.
Hiring spies to investigate your foes doesn't make you look guilty at all.
Real talk: this pilot is no longer a pilot.
It's so nice to meet you. Now pay me.
From Brooklyn to Bangkok, the conquest of Edison bulbs, refurbished wood, and minimal design.
A lot of nature documentaries are closer to fiction than fact. And that's what makes them so addicting.
In a world of cheap computer tricks, puppets still rule.
Forget a new bus line, communities across the country are turning to Uber for all their public transportation needs.
The day they killed jack.
Step away from your Kava drink.
What if you could talk to the dead in a chat box?
Facebook said it was unaware of a program that tracked the location of its users. But we caught Facebook using the program to catch an intruder in Mark Zuckerberg's office.
Uncovering sexual harrassment and misconduct, at one of the nations's most prestigious academic organizations.
The thin polyurethane line.
You know we're on the brink of the apocalypse when the beaches have run out of sand.
For too many, social media has become a space for abuse. How do we transform it into a space of activism?
We need to talk about Casey Affleck.
Surprise: disruption and mental health care just don't mix.

poll time imo

Sure, you can make an app for that — but no one wants to pay for it.

the ones in this format always make me think of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF6cBf133rA

New York's Penn Station has been called "the worst place in the world" and that's probably an understatement. Time for an update.

^^^this is the most egregious one on a few different levels imo

Time for an update.

you'd never heard of the show kilroy -- but it is amazing *cupping gesture*

The Verge started as a mid/long form article site and they keep trickling other types of content into the mix, but I've seen a few like this lately that make me wonder what they're up to: http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/13/14268906/chainsmokers-new-song-paris

It's like a mix of the "youth listens to old album and article revels in naivety about context" articles done elsewhere and the sarcastic back-and-forth that's sometimes funny but their version of it is completely inscrutable to me.

It's been over a year. Let's see:

657 global, 301 US: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/theverge.com
1989 global, 551 US: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/sbnation.com
1481 global, 584 US: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/vox.com

Thus concludes the top, uh, 600 bracket. It gets worse!

2175 global, 745 US: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/polygon.com
5135 global, 1044 US: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/eater.com
8604 global, 1749 US: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/curbed.com
7695 global, 2407 US: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/recode.net
23732 global, 5715 US: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/racked.com

I think I've grown to like The Verge more over the last year, but that's probably mostly stockholm syndrome.

The Puppy Bowl, explained

25 Super Bowl commercials that explain Super Bowl commercials

Liberals are the new Tea Party
ABOUT 6 HOURS AGO

vox.com: a list of ideas you threw away a week ago

https://twitter.com/ashleyfeinberg/status/828992942207594496

the verge is for people who like SCOOPLETS

I think I've grown to like The Verge more over the last year, but that's probably mostly stockholm syndrome.

― The beaver is not the bad guy (El Tomboto), Saturday, January 14, 2017 8:11 PM (three weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm, I feel like I enjoy the occasional article and then Nilay Patel shows up and makes me shake my head

@voxdotcom
A defense of Betsy DeVos
https://t.co/MWQlI4p7Gv

Indeed, as the alternative schooling movement spreads, one can imagine it attempting the same kind of capture that every other large industry aims for in its relations with the federal government.

oh indeed, indeed, maybe one should try to imagine that some more

yo vox your corporatist roots are showing

Joel and 9 Others ‏@joeljohnson 3h3 hours ago
@johnjcook @reckless @pkafka @benpopper I was there. Direct ad pulls and interrupted deals were about a million. More importantly: who cares

Ashley FeinbergVerified account
the people who experienced it firsthand deny it, seems like it’s worth an update especially when you’re giving gg-ers a false sense of power

v convincing. it wasn't what u said but more importantly, who cares. also let's not say things that make gg-ers feel powerful.

yeah, sorry, the thread got dropped and I linked to the fun potshots part

https://twitter.com/johnjcook/status/828979581923241984

John Cook
‏@johnjcook
@reckless @pkafka @benpopper our '14 revenue was $45 million. GG started in august and didn't become a thing until october

so there's no way, unless their total revenue was incredibly inconsistent throughout the year, that they were disrupted by gg so badly they dropped that much money

tbf yes, all of these people that are no longer employed by a company that no longer exists are not presenting a unified front

also fucking yeah, make sure a number that seems large is real when it could provide encouragement to the dickhead anti-social justice keep on trumpin' brigade

i'm just saying that the only reason why that number is wrong is because it either is or isn't wrong, not because it might embolden some anonymous online dudes and saying "who cares" is the kind of thing that sets my internal veracity bells off.

the only reason why that number is wrong is because it either is or isn't wrong

this is actually a very reasonable thing and based in the idea the number matters

in fact, it does matter as a gauge of scale, but on the other hand, the people using it as a gauge of scale will deride any correction to the article. cook's right -- it doesn't matter, the $7 million number is out there, if anyone wanted to be emboldened by it, they have their number and they'll deny any correction

there aren't any reasonable people out there who think "gamergate was bad, but if they had a multi-million dollar effect, then maybe I will reevaluate my stance"

http://www.heartofthedreaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/trustnoone.jpg

imo that's a weakness of the "facts matter" brigade I am a part of too regularly

they only matter if:
- they are relevant
- they're part of a reasonable argument or narrative, single facts are ignored by people
- you're arguing to people who will pay any attention to you whatsoever

http://gamedesignreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/dontbe.jpg

imo the greatest science is recognizing biases and emotional responses, very underappreciated

that's what all these dickhole data journalists think

touche

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/behind-the-internets-dark-anti-democracy-movement/516243/

“No,” said Nick Steves, the pseudonym used by one NRxer well-known within the movement. “It will only lend false credence to the misleading facts and outright errors you will inevitably print irrespective of my involvement.”

Asked what he thought I would print, Steves explained that “115 IQ people are not generally well equipped to summarize 160 IQ people” and that only one journalist, Vox’s Dylan Matthews, had “come close to permitting NRx to speak for itself.”

160 IQ people who reference their IQ, as if citing that number wins every argument, are too stupid to understand what a 160 IQ is.

"Nick Steves"
"Dylan Matthews"

xp otm

I would say we need a eugenics program to keep anyone who goes around professing a 160 iq from reproducing, but they're doing pretty well with that on their own.