Noth­ing can be done about youth being “wast­ed on the young”, but squan­der­ing the pow­er of moral out­rage on the ridicu­lous is waste to the nth degree. Beset as we are by screech­ing to ban books for “woke” agen­das, uni­ver­si­ties more focused on ensur­ing stu­dents don’t feel “uncom­fort­able” than in spark­ing crit­i­cal think­ing and a Press will­ing to quote lies in the name of “bal­ance”,  it’s time to reha­bil­i­tate the Lud­dites, if only in spirit.

The 19th cen­tu­ry work­ers who made their point by wreck­ing machin­ery that was tak­ing their jobs have been por­trayed as self­ish ene­mies of progress.
In fact, the acolytes of the  myth­i­cal fig­ure Ned Ludd weren’t against new machin­ery as a mat­ter of prin­ci­ple. Their tar­gets were more accu­rate­ly focused than pro­tes­tors who today are excused, even glo­ri­fied, as “activists”.
The Lud­dites “… were tech­nol­o­gists; they loved tech­nol­o­gy them­selves in many, many cas­es. But they had an issue, a spe­cif­ic machin­ery being used in spe­cif­ic ways, name­ly by elites who want­ed to force them into fac­to­ries and degrade their stan­dard of living.”
They also object­ed to fac­to­ry own­ers cut­ting back on qual­i­ty for the sake of profit.
Today, the rich are kow-towed to by both the media and con­sumers, who they treat as the “great unwashed” by offer­ing “new” prod­ucts, espe­cial­ly elec­tron­ic devices, that are mere­ly slight­ly tweaked ver­sions of the ones they sup­pos­ed­ly surpass.
Think i‑Phones and laptops.
Utter­ances and pro­nounce­ments by the likes of Elon Musk, no mat­ter how self-serv­ing, disin­gen­u­ous or pal­pa­bly ludi­crous, are report­ed as if  issued from oracles.
The demands of tech giants like Face­book and Google are nod­ded at by polit­i­cal lead­ers and com­men­ta­tors until they begin to sound like com­mon sense.
Tweets, or what­ev­er the ungram­mat­i­cal ver­bal incon­ti­nence of “X” is now known, become facts mere­ly by being there.
News out­lets increas­ing­ly treat their tar­get audi­ence like cus­tomers in a cut-rate retail out­let. The line between inform­ing and per­suad­ing, always thin at best, is in grave dan­ger of being erased.
Online edi­tions of news­pa­pers, Google et al, rou­tine­ly offer ways to tai­lor what is pre­sent­ed. They call it “news you want”.
That’s fine if it means pro­vid­ing up-to-date and in-depth cov­er­age of a spe­cif­ic sto­ry or area of inter­est. Mak­ing it the only news pre­sent­ed is anoth­er way of offer­ing to will­ing­ly rein­force pre-exist­ing beliefs in exchange for sub­scrip­tion money.
The moral argu­ments of that aside, decid­ing what’s news is the job of jour­nal­ists, not their “cus­tomers”.
CP Scott, the great edi­tor of the then Man­ches­ter Guardian, said of a news­pa­per:“Its pri­ma­ry office is the gath­er­ing of news. At the per­il of its soul it must see that the sup­ply is not taint­ed. Nei­ther in what it gives, nor in what it does not give, nor in the mode of pre­sen­ta­tion must the uncloud­ed face of truth suf­fer wrong. Com­ment is free, but facts are sacred.”

                             USEFUL IDIOTS? 

Instead, news­pa­pers whose cre­do sure­ly includes that sen­ti­ment, increas­ing­ly allow it to be cloud­ed by the bot­tom line. Adver­tise­ments stuck in the mid­dle of copy have head­lines using the same (although a bit small­er) font as sub-head­lines and read like they are part of a news report.
EG: “Meet Upway — the No.1 Cer­ti­fied E‑Bike Expert”

The fact that it is an advert is con­ced­ed in a much small­er, and dim­mer type face.
A MESSAGE FROM UPWAY

How’s that for “fair­ness” and “jour­nal­is­tic prin­ci­ples”? Sure­ly read­ers should be giv­en the option of eschew­ing such insults to our intel­li­gence in the same way “cook­ies” can be reject­ed in the name of pri­va­cy.          The irony – and tragedy —  is that we are will­ing to embrace epit­o­mis­ing the proverb “a fool and his mon­ey are soon part­ed” with­out question.
Were there curi­ous, nev­er mind out­raged let­ters to the edi­tor, or (spare me) “Guest Essays”,  when a piece about how aquifers are being sucked dry and fires are ram­pant, had this adver­tise­ment slipped into the mid­dle of it like a para­graph of copy?
“Large Pond­less Water­fall Kits
Water fea­ture and Pond Design Ideas for Every Budget
View Our Water Fea­tured Dream Book”(Ital­ics mine)
News organ­i­sa­tions thrive or die by adver­tis­ing rev­enues. In the pre-dig­i­tal age how­ev­er, sub-edi­tors (known as “down-table subs”) had no idea what the adver­tise­ments they were fit­ting copy and head­lines around said. Adver­tis­ers could request (and pay for) space on a spe­cif­ic page of the paper, but the edi­to­r­i­al con­tent only reflect­ed or con­tra­dict­ed the adver­tis­ing copy by chance. There was no way of chang­ing it once the type was set and that glo­ri­ous, spine-tin­gling moment the press­es began to roll.
In the dig­i­tal age, it can be done with a few clicks of a mouse.

                         HYPERBOLE RULES

Maybe too many of us have sim­ply been ground down by hyper­bole. Every­thing is apoc­a­lyp­tic, prob­a­bly in part because what isn’t awful is “awe­some”.
Had the adjec­tive been as ubiq­ui­tous in the days of the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion as it is now, no doubt the own­ers of the “Satan­ic mills” would have over-used it to jus­ti­fy their innovations.
The Lud­dites might well have tol­er­at­ed the rhetoric, but by all accounts it wouldn’t have deterred them from mak­ing their point.
We’d do worse than to fol­low their exam­ple – up to a point, of course.

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