{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "Mic's Drop: How Mic.com exploited social justice for clicks, and then abandoned a staff that believed in it.", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/164587152678/", "html": "<a href=\"https://theoutline.com/post/2156/mic-com-and-the-cynicism-of-modern-media?utm_source=TW\">Mic's Drop: How Mic.com exploited social justice for clicks, and then abandoned a staff that believed in it.</a>\n<p><a href=\"http://association-of-free-people.tumblr.com/post/164586383584/mics-drop-how-miccom-exploited-social-justice\" class=\"tumblr_blog\" target=\"_blank\">association-of-free-people</a>:</p><blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"/post/164585844068/\" class=\"tumblr_blog\" target=\"_blank\">kontextmaschine</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http://association-of-free-people.tumblr.com/post/164585553179/mics-drop-how-miccom-exploited-social-justice\" class=\"tumblr_blog\" target=\"_blank\">association-of-free-people</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https://sadoeconomist.tumblr.com/post/164585444939/mics-drop-how-miccom-exploited-social-justice\" class=\"tumblr_blog\" target=\"_blank\">sadoeconomist</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http://association-of-free-people.tumblr.com/post/164582299604/mics-drop-how-miccom-exploited-social-justice\" class=\"tumblr_blog\" target=\"_blank\">association-of-free-people</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https://trained-chimpanzee.tumblr.com/post/164567136819/mics-drop-how-miccom-exploited-social-justice\" class=\"tumblr_blog\" target=\"_blank\">trained-chimpanzee</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"/post/164514881293/\" class=\"tumblr_blog\" target=\"_blank\">kontextmaschine</a>:</p>\n<blockquote><blockquote><p>In retrospect, it looks like Mic\u2019s commitment to social justice was never that deep \u2014 which surprised and disappointed many of the young ideologues who went to work there. (The Outline spoke to 17 current and former staffers who requested anonymity due to nondisclosure agreements.) Mic chanced upon the social justice narrative, discovered it was Facebook gold, and mined away. Now the quarry is nearly dry.</p></blockquote></blockquote>\n<p>whoever drank that particular flavour of neoliberal koolaid deserved it\u00a0</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Oddly I haven\u2019t missed them. \u00a0Hell, I didn\u2019t even notice their absence. \u00a0</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>I noticed they were gone because Mic actually had me <i>blocked</i> here</p>\n<p>Every so often I\u2019d try to comment on some long discussion and I couldn\u2019t because the OP was a shitty Mic article</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>I was blocked also, but their pandering shit kind of blended into the rest of tumblr I guess. </p>\n<p>In a sense Tumblr stole their thing because any self-loathing hubris filled tween could write for them.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Wait a second don\u2019t bury the lede, Mic blocked people on tumblr (as a way of making sure the reblog chains of their official ports-to-tumblr never went through ancaps and were more hugboxy) ?? \n</p>\n<p>\nOne more thing I didn\u2019t realize could happen until someone broke a norm and it looked obvious in retrospect. 2017! </p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Yes, they actively blocked.  If you took them to task and had any sort of following where the criticism gained traction you got the hook.  </p>\n<p>They were basically a Gawker subsidiary knock-off sharing that over-processed corporate-plastic political facade formulated on race and gender baiting. </p>\n<p>They took the lowest of the low hanging clickbait fruit and were easy to trash for it.  The garbage heap is the best place for that incarnation of Mic. </p>\n<p>According to that article they\u2019re going to get into video production though.  Vice has become hugely successful following that track, I wonder if they\u2019re attempting to emulate.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>\u201cpivot to video\u201d is journalist-speak for \u201cthe money is shutting our click farm down, though they may reuse the brand for a Hail Mary attempt at video, which will also close down\u201d\n</p><p>\nI\u2019m not sure Vice is successful in \u201cmatch viewers to advertisers\u201d sense, they just have the deepest-pocketed and most patient corporate backers, they really took the magazine brand (Do\u2019s &amp; Dont\u2019s, cocaine gentrification) and sold out <strong>hard</strong> to like Disney around 2007 when we were going to ride the real estate boom to heaven drinking Sparks and wearing American Apparrel. That\u2019s how they invested so heavy in video so early, also why they sloughed off McInnes towards Taki\u2019s and Street Carnage (Pepsi VICE) and later the Proud Boys. VICE Media was gonna be the new Time-Life </p>"}