The Misunderstood History of American Wrestling

Going Viral

Few writers have exercised journalism’s gossip muscle more than Taylor Lorenz. A prolific tech reporter who covers everything from influencers to start-ups to the ethics of taking selfies at Chernobyl, she has become one of the most prominent figures in digital journalism. Her public-facing persona has also made her more than a journalist and, in some sense a brand, a celebrity. But, as Tarpley Hitt writes in an essay found in this week’s Books & the Arts, is this not true of many prominent journalists today? Haven’t Maggie Haberman, Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey, Tom Friedman, and Bret Stephens also become personalities and celebrities in their own right? “As the news business has shrunk over the past 20 years, the work traditionally done by legacy institutions—building an audience, securing funding, promoting pieces—has fallen to the writers themselves,” Hitt writes. The subject of self-commodification now sits at the center of Lorenz’s book, Extremely Online. “A history of social media from the perspective of the poster rather than the tech executive,” as Hitt writes, Lorenz’s book “sketches the genesis of our sponsorship-saturated ecosystem, outlining the early days of platforms from YouTube, Facebook, and Tumblr to Twitter, Instagram, Vine, and TikTok.” According to Lorenz, “self-commodification online…began before contemporary social media,” but it has now pervaded almost all fields of “content” creation. A new economy arose in which people “gamified social media clout and converted it into income, often despite the hindrances of the platforms they used.” But while Lorenz celebrates this story of a new generation coming into its own, Hitt asks whether this new era of self-commodification is desirable and if it really helps level an economy cut up by class and power. “For the millions of content creators who have not reached the heights of digital celebrity,” Hitt writes, “the entrepreneurial success of the few does not” mean” stable incomes for the many.” Read “Influence and the Rise of Digital Celebrity”

Make the Economy Scream

“The 1973 coup in Chile,” Vincent Bevins observes in this week’s Books & the Arts, “looms large in the Pan-American imagination.” But why is the military takeover of 1973 more famous than so many other US-backed and -sanctioned actions in the region? It could be because it was a paradigmatic event, changing the connotations of the very words “coup” and “US-backed.” It also, Bevins argues, could be because the coup inaugurated a new and detrimental economic moment in the Western hemisphere—from the ashes of the putsch, emerged a laboratory of neoliberalism, where privatization and free-market reforms touched everything from utilities to pensions. Indeed, defenders of neoliberalism must contend with the fact that University of Chicago–trained economists (Chilean nationals who were called “the Chicago Boys”) were able to transform the country’s economy by aiding and abetting the mass-murdering tyrant like Pinochet. A new book attempts to wrestle with this dark legacy. Written by the UChicago-trained economist Sebastian Edwards, it in fact “tries to separate the neoliberal project from the very illiberal regime that first put it into practice.” But as Bevins notes: “There is nothing about human beings that makes them spontaneously create a society in which capitalists get to decide who can afford to have dinner—someone with a lot of guns had to make it that way.” Read “How Pinochet’s Chile Became a Laboratory for Neoliberalism”