The Crying "Journalist" and the Death of Journalism
The Crying "Journalist" and the Death of Journalism
The Dreadful Taylor Lorenz Opens up New Frontiers of Shamelessness
“Words had to change their ordinary meaning and take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal supporter; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question incapacity to act on any.” - Thucydides [3.82.4]
Though journalism has always had its problems, there was a time where the press had some degree of integrity and actually strived, if imperfectly, to publish stories that were both truthful and relevant. As we’ve seen from the relentless propaganda campaign since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war, that time is wholly past. In between relentless misinformation, the Bezos-owned Washington Post and other organs of the legacy media still find time to harass random people they consider to have bad political opinions [usually they do still manage to include misinformation.] The queen of this genre is a something-old woman named Taylor Lorenz. I often say that the Democrats/media and their lies “open up new frontiers of shamelessness” but there is no one this is so true of as Lorenz. It’s notable that this broad goes around doxxing random people but it was relentless mocking which caused her to reveal her age, and people still don’t believe her.
Anyway, this woman only came onto my radar two weeks ago when she gave an absolutely ridiculous interview with MSNBC where she cried about online harassment. If you haven’t seen it yet, it truly does need to be seen to believed:
This is a woman who literally specializes in harassing and misrepresenting random people on social media, in the employ of newspapers owned by billionaires. Far from sticking it to the powerful she is using her privilege to harm those with far less privilege than herself. This bitch went to an actual Swiss boarding school, but has decided that she is somehow a victim of society. MSNBC misreported their own interview, in reality speaking to two reporters who do not fall into this category of “female journalists under 35.” It’s pretty incredible they could be this bad at their jobs, especially “misgendering” the lesbian-looking individual who purports to be a “they/them.” I don’t want to get into that broader issue here, but clearly MSNBC is failing at their own standards.
When, as anyone could have predicted, Taylor Lorenz was mocked far more for this bit of theater, she lashed out at MSNBC, in this Tweet that appears to have now been deleted:
This woman is in a war with the shitposters, what did she possibly think was going to happen? She could teach a class on this? I’m not a specialist in social media reporting and I could have told her that everyone would mock and harass her if she cried on TV about being mocked and harassed on the internet. That said, I do know a fair amount about this topic, as I was reminded in a Facebook memory from today:
Still, this is the internet, we all hate each other and are here to express it. She obviously knows this, she’s made some sort of a living off of it, though I would assume her primary income is a trust fund. She is truly a perfect avatar of the white, liberal, over-privileged fake victims who are one group ruining society.
Here is Glenn Greenwald’s excellent summary of this horrible woman:
“Even when one marvels, as one must, at all these impressive displays of cynical elite emotional manipulation and self-victimization, there is absolutely nobody who exploits it better than Taylor Lorenz. Raised in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, educated at Greenwich High School and lovely private boarding schools in the Swiss Alps, then graduating from the leafy private liberal arts Hobart and William Smith Colleges in bucolic upstate New York, Lorenz developed an intense and unyielding obsession with TikTok teenagers and their TikTok houses. This interest in the lives of online teenage culture was cultivated as she approached middle age, and she parlayed this unique interest into stints as a star front-page reporter with the two most powerful newspapers in the U.S.: The New York Times, which she quit two months ago, and The Washington Post, where she is now a star columnist.
It is almost impossible to envision a single individual in whom power, privilege and elite prerogative reside more abundantly than Taylor Lorenz. Using the metrics of elite liberal culture, the word “privilege” was practically invented for her: a rich straight white woman from a wealthy family raised in Greenwich, Connecticut and educated in actual Swiss boarding schools who now writes about people's lives, often casually destroying those lives, on the front pages of the most powerful East Coast newspapers on the planet. And yet, in the eyes of her fellow media and political elites, there is virtually no person more victimized, more deserving of your sympathy and attention, more vulnerable, marginalized and abused than she.”
Greenwald is an accidental longtime enemy of Lorenz because he once wrote a column critical of her awful work. And now when you criticize someone academics can study whether or not you “led” to an increase in online harassment. All is truly inverted when people like Greenwald and Taibbi are constantly called shills but Taylor Lorenz is some sort of brave and victimized journalist. The arch-libertarian Lew Rockwell has a quip he calls “Rockwell’s Law” which states: “When a government agent says something you should assume the opposite is true.” This really is the proper starting point for dealing with government claims, and indeed, such thinking was once key to journalism, but the same has become true of the media. In the midst of their cultural revolution it is as Thucydides said, words have lost their original meaning and have had to accept that which has been given them. So it is Taylor Lorenz, Swiss boarding school alumni working at a paper owned by the world’s second richest man who is the real victim, not the random people she unleashes hell on. And indeed, she unleashes hell.
For the horrible class of people like Taylor Lorenz, laid off factory workers are the oppressors if they are white, whereas Oprah, Lebron, and Meghan Markle are the oppressed. This view serves little purpose but to bludgeon their perceived enemies who are already weaker than them.
Not three weeks after Lorenz’s ludicrous display on MSNBC, this showed up on Twitter:
This woman is apparently Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s press secretary. She has no relationship with Libs of TikTok outside of interacting with it publicly on Twitter like anyone else. The reason Lorenz gave one hour to respond, like some sort of threatening mafiosa, is because she wanted to publish that Christina did not respond. She didn’t want a comment or interview, she wanted to falsely create the impression that Christina was scared to speak to the press about her Twitter activity. This is yet another example of this intrepid internet specialist not understanding how the internet works, as this is what broke the news that the story was coming and it did even more to raise awareness that Taylor Lorenz is a complete hack.
But it gets worse from there, much worse even. Let’s back up for a minute and explain Libs of Tiktok. As you probably know, TikTok is a videosharing app which is used to share short videos. I’ve never used it, but it is popular with the young. This Twitter page collects various insane things liberals say and publishes them unedited and generally without commentary. It turns out that public school teachers are a goldmine of such content and that there is ample public demand for it. The crucial thing here is these were publicly uploaded videos simply being shared.
Tucker started his piece on this with several examples of this content, watch it for yourself:
Indeed, these are lunatics teaching our children.
In and of itself, there is nothing wrong with a journalist profiling Libs of TikTok. It is a popular public page. Further, these videos were influential in the creation of Florida’s controversial anti-grooming bill which the media has labeled the “Don’t say Gay” bill [in reality, the bill prevents teachers from talking to kids third grade or younger about sex.] So it’s influential on public discourse, it’s fine to report what’s going on and the page runner doesn’t have a right to complete privacy from the media.
The problem is, the woman who runs Libs of TikTok is just some lady. It isn’t funded by foreign powers or the oligarchy, it isn’t secretly attached to the Republican Party. It is just some [former] anon being harassed by Jeff Bezos for republishing things liberals say that make them look insane. Any credible journalist would have stopped after realizing there isn’t a story about the page runner.
But Taylor Lorenz is neither credible nor a journalist, and at this point corporate media exists for little but propaganda and demonizing dissent. So, with her amnesia about the time she cried on TV this month and the support of a foreign government [for real, the government of Germany, through the “Prototype Fund”, gave her the woman’s name] our ageless heroine went about trying to destroy some lady who shares videos she finds on the internet. She even went to the homes of multiple relatives to try to contact the account holder:
[Of course she’s wearing a mask.] Some sort of talking point went out that this is “shoe-leather journalism”, but journalists for major newspapers are supposed to be challenging the powerful, not ambushing random citizens they believe have bad political views. This isn’t a scandal-ridden CEO or an embattled politician avoiding the press, it’s just some person being harassed by a Swiss boarding school neurotic wokestress in the employ of Jeff Bezos.
And so, after much of what could arguably be called work, this steaming pile of shit hit the internet:
It’s not clear how this is being done secretly, as it’s a public Twitter account that was already pretty well known. I suppose just her anonymous status, but knowing the woman’s personal information accomplished very little, since once again she primarily shares unedited videos and the point is that they are the craziest thing you would see, so even which videos she chooses to showcase isn’t much of a story.
But it wasn’t bad enough to give out this poor woman’s name: they linked to her real estate license, edited the piece to remove the link, and then lied about having done so:
Among other things wrong with this, her identity was absolutely not know, which is why it was found with sketchy German-funded software. Further, she took the opportunity to attack her enemy Greenwald by concocting a story that he “accidentally” confirmed the woman’s identity. In reality, once Raichik found out that Lorenz was harassing her family members she reached out to Greenwald for help:
[His syntax is poor here- Twitter famously doesn’t have an edit button. He is saying that Chaya provided him proof Taylor was doing this, and asked him to publicly report it so she would stop.]
Lorenz also proved that her shamelessness and pettiness are without compare:
She seriously called Glenn Greenwald an “online influencer.” Like Greenwald is trying to sell us the nail polish he is wearing. This is the man who broke the Snowden story and prodigiously reported on the documents. His journalism over the years could probably fill a bookshelf. Real, quality journalism which actually challenges the powerful and exposes government secrets, not which harasses Jewish ladies from Brooklyn.
On top of all of that, someone sent out this fabricated tweet in an ill-conceived effort to slander Libs of TikTok:
Presumably this is just the sort of libel which makes doxxing random people on the internet so dangerous, as *checks notes* Taylor Lorenz recently reminded us:
And of course, let us not forget that the real victim in this story is, of course, Taylor Lorenz:
You can only learn to be this entitled at an actual Swiss boarding school. It says incredibly bad and scary things about the state of journalism that Washington Post would publish this. It basically breaks every standard of journalism in several ways. But it’s not just one bad journalist, it’s part of a coordinated attack on dissent. This is not an isolated incident, as Taibbi outlines here:
They have been doing this for years and are showing no signs of stopping. Now, major newspapers are just mouthpieces of the billionaires who own them and a sufficiently ethics-free person can make a living destroying anyone’s life, assuming the person is guilty of wrongthink.
It’s hard to even put a name to what this all is, the marriage of wokeness and billionaires. It’s clear that they are trying to destroy the social order, attacking all tradition while simultaneously demanding rigid adherence to whatever bizarre thing they are currently pushing. Who are you to question if a demented pervert is propagandizing your preschooler? Every day I try to get a thumb on what this even is, and besides a revolt against reality and an obsessive love with institutional authority as a counterbalance to democracy and the traditions of society, I have no answer. This quote from Thucydides goes far in explaining our opponents, from the Athenian demagogue Cleon:
“The persons to blame are you who are so foolish as to institute these contests; who go to see an oration as you would to see a sight, take your facts on hearsay, judge the practicability of a project by the wit of its advocates, and trust for the truth as to past events, not to the fact which you saw more than to the clever strictures which you heard; the easy victims of newfangled arguments, unwilling to follow received conclusions; slaves to every new paradox, despisers of the commonplace; the first wish of every man being that he could speak himself, the next to rival those who can speak by seeming to keep up with their ideas by applauding every hit almost before it is made, and by being as quick in catching an argument as you are slow in foreseeing its consequences.” [3.38.4-6]
It’s really a remarkable description of the sort of people who think Lorenz’s “journalism” is justified and that what these teachers are saying is fine but that it’s wrong to share it. They are miserable but hate the commonplace too much to have conventional lifestyles which could lead to happiness. They are not actually smart or clever but they admire anyone who can speak regardless of the quality.
For example, they consider Ibram Kendi to be a major public intellectual, a man who once defined racism as: “a collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity that are substantiated by racist ideas.” The man can’t even coherently define the thing he writes books about, he used the word twice in the definition. But simply for the reason that he has elite, institutional support his nonsense is fawned over.
We’re having the same problem in journalism, where a segment of the public has a philosophy you could only call “institutionalism” where they simply believe in saving the “system” at all costs…while simultaneously destroying it. They’re basically demented, which is why it is so hard to explain their views. Nowhere does this thrive so much as Twitter, as it is the home of this class.
This has had a chilling impact on journalism, as it now serves no purpose but institutional interests, which in reality means the billionaire class [its chilling to imagine their interest in these TikTok lunatics.] Any independent journalist who questions official narratives [so all independent journalists, besides, I suppose, self-funded people who cover niche hobbies etc] is constantly accused of being a shill by this class of people. To them, knowing that Jeff Bezos funds Taylor Lorenz means everything is above board. But despite the fact that Substack writers have semi-public paid subscriber counts (to the 6 people who have funded me, thank you) they always assume some sort of dark money funds independent journalism.
I saw a ludicrously bad take on this recently. If I had a large audience I might question the ethics of publishing some random person’s response, but I don’t and he was quite proud of it anyhow:
This is the most institutionalist thing I’ve heard since I saw some lady say she didn’t like “little free libraries” because they take business away from public libraries [the little free library in question was in fact sponsored by the public library.] This began when a hater questioned why Michael Tracey had a blue checkmark, but that’s a truly incredible take, especially for someone who clearly grew up in an era where blogging was a burgeoning industry. This ridiculous Taylor Lorenz article would not have gotten published at any institution with reasonable “ethical limitations and editorial oversight”, but surely the Washington Post constitutes a “legitimate news organization” in this person’s opinion, and those things aren’t there.
The most concerning thing about this overall situation is that journalism has yet again reached a new low. While I’m an enjoyer of vitriolic online discourse, the bar has been lowered for doxxing and it’s going to severely disrupt society living in this era of narrow allowed opinion. The shitposters consider it fair to retaliate. Chaya Raichik, as a realtor, is probably fine in her job, insofar as her trade is personal and she can work for another company and target political sympathizers for business, but it’s easy to imagine someone being financially ruined from this. People get fired over stupid bullshit and “wrong” political opinions all the time. That is to say nothing of the risk of physical violence. And this woman did nothing wrong: she reposted the videos they publicly posted. It shouldn’t be hard for Democrats to dismiss these TikTok’ers as deranged lunatics but for some reason they can’t. But we’re dealing with people whose worldview is fictitious and propaganda generated, so one shouldn’t try too hard to apply logic to it.
The most funny thing about this comes back to Taylor Lorenz’s comments about MSNBC. She blamed them for her crying on TV about cyberbullying causing more of it, as if that was not inevitable. Then, she writes this article- which serves no purpose but to harass someone and contains no other useful information- and feels she’s the victim when the same thing happens to her. I never stop being astounded by her privilege.
And now, in just a couple of days, Libs of TikTok has about doubled in size, being up to 900k followers. Surely, Lorenz also knew that would be her impact? Take that Taylor, you vapid, over-privileged, horror-show of a human.
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