[carefulobserver]

I stopped reading when the author started to lean into how this must be a representation of "whiteness." No, how about it's an artifact of Internet enabled oligarchic capitalist technocracy like you started with? Ironically, the author's performative racism is part of the same trend.

[graemep]

Well, it is The Guardian.

[klyrs]

> Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.

[the_third_wave]

That works as long as there is not a pervasive trend to push the 'provocative thing', also as long as the 'provocative thing' is not something that would be totally off-limits if applied to a different group or category. Imagine an article which complained about thing X being a representation of blackness in a negative context and decide for yourself whether you would consider it in the same light.

[l3mure]

> Internet enabled oligarchic capitalist technocracy

Well let's see, American capitalist oligarchy has a deep root in the defeat of Reconstruction, specifically the fact that the planter class was not liquidated and its land was not redistributed - because of the continued insistence on white superiority and political domination.

Technocracy is similar, it's a manifestation of the fear of radical democracy and the notion that people are incapable of self-government, typically expressed in racialized (white man's burden, etc) form. It's very easy to see that line worming through the past few hundred years of history if you actually try.

[bazoom42]

I stopped reading your comment after “I stopped reading when…”

[jjulius]

It's unfortunate that you stopped reading in the one paragraph that touched on whiteness when there's so much of the article left to be read after that. Had you continued, you'd see that they don't stay on that subject. In fact, a CTRL+F for "white" shows that the instance of "whiteness" in that paragraph is the last time that "white" shows up at all - and every time "white" shows up before that paragraph, it's about colors in a coffee shop. They touch on it because someone that they interviewed mentioned it, and then they move right back to how it's "an artifact of Internet enabled oligarchic capitalist technocracy" in the very next paragraph.

I don't know why people so willingly bury their heads in the sand sometimes...

[carefulobserver]

I have the same response to people randomly mentioning how the solution to everything is accepting Jesus into my heart. Whether secular or non secular, this kind of thing is a tell for low quality content because it is indicative of the uncritical acceptance of nonsense. I'm aware of what they're peddling, and I don't have time for people who think like this, which is different from burying my head in the sand, I suspect.

[merman]

On the contrary, the struggle is to not see it. The article's point is "color/diversity" is better than sameness.

Look again for other keywords, "sameness", "homegen"-suffixes.

E.g. The summary > coffee shops are physical filtering algorithms, too: they sort people based on their preferences, quietly attracting a particular crowd and repelling others

[mixmastamyk]

Timely:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.