The Internet is an Entertainment Machine
Sunday, January 12, 2025
Charlie Warzel and Mike Caulfield argue that the internet is a justification machine. Dan Williams responds that justifications have always been readily available, and thinks that Warzel and Caulfield romanticize past media environments, for their own self-justificatory purposes.1 I think Williams is mostly right, but that both pieces are missing an important component of how changing media environments change how people engage with politics.2 That component is choice: how many entertainment options people have readily accessible to them.