John Gruber of Daring Fireball is the poster child for former smart people who suffer from permanent Trump derangement syndrome, a TDS casualty. DF was my get up in the morning goto site but that changed in 2017 as Gruber obsessed and hated on Trump at the expense of doing what he was great at. And John was always a hack ‘off with their heads’ political blowhard. The polar opposite of his skillful Apple flavored tech writing.
I hoped those poles would remain fixed in their opposite separate positions and Gruber could still post good tech stuff. Unfortunately the Elon Musk takeover of Twitter pushed him over the edge into permanent political activist journalism territory. Something we have way too much of these days.
While the tech Gruber looked at all sides of a complex issue, asking good questions for us to think about together, the political Gruber stoops to political hack level of shadow banning practiced by social media activists, presenting his carefully crafted, highly selective narrative that surreptitiously refuses to acknowledge reality. The tech Gruber invited us to think, the political activist Gruber tells us what he thinks and what to think. Unfortunately the political Gruber is all we have now.
By 2018 it was clear that Twitter was a deeply dysfunctional organization, shadow banning people they didn’t like, especially in Japan. In COVID zero year 2020 everything went insane, honest science and medical debate was tossed out the window and banned as “misinformation”. Even as things seemed to cool down in the immediate post-Trump era, it was an illusion, over time deadly stuff started to surface. Then Elon finally bought Twitter after a long drawn out buyout drama with Gruber covering it at his gloating childish ‘Elon’s gonna lose big time’ political worst.
As Elon started cleaning the Twitter house as promised, Gruber gloated about the end of Twitter and moved on to the Mastodon ghetto, a safe haven for former cancel culture Twitter Statsi who can no longer cancel. People with poisoned minds need their Trump-hate fix, but now that Trump is no longer in power they have to get their fix with Elon hate. Or whatever hate object they find. People who dish it out but can’t take it. People like Gruber.
Maybe Twitter will die, someday, but I do hope Elon and company make a go of it. I hope Mastodon is a success. Social media platforms need honest, healthy competition, not more censorship disguised as protecting people from ‘disinformation’. Political Gruber completely ignoring the Matt Taibbi Twitter Files exposé, and lots more, in his gleeful Elon Twitter gloat posts speaks volumes about where his head is. Shadow banning and covert censorship is okay. If the former Twitter Statsi at Mastodon crowd thinks their chosen social ghetto platform won’t suffer from the same problems as Twitter over time, they are deluding themselves…again.
The old Twitter was bad design, by design, which is why all those unnecessary people were employed to keep it running. Bad by design job security. Supposedly smart people doing stupid things…for politics. The now full on political Daring Fireball blog gloats over everything from Tucker Carlson fired from Fox News to the latest Elon Musk brouhaha. The tech reporting simply echos that.
Hate kills all that is good in people. Shakyamuni Buddha taught in the parable of the burning house in the Lotus Sutra, life in this world is like a burning house. People with poisoned minds, blinded by righteousness and hate, will continue to play with their toys like the children in the burning house. And with the assassination attempt of Donald Trump, John’s hate has consumed the last of his objective reality. All he can spew is non-stop, HE’S HITLER! OUR DEMOCRACY IS AT RISK! THIS COULD BE THE LAST TIME WE VOTE! Pure poison. I’ll miss the old Daring Fireball but it’s gone for good.