Matt Yglesias' effort to make a Kotaku blogger the embodiment of why the Online Youngs don't understand politics offers a tidy account of what Matt Yglesias doesn't understand about politics https://www.slowboring.com/p/whats-wrong-with-the-media

The reader—or an editor, if Yglesias hadn't just declared himself done with things like editing—might notice that the Kotaku blogger did not, in fact, make the claim that Yglesias is rolling up his sleeves to pedantically debunk

All the Kotaku passage says is that it seems a little weird to be evaluating a new-generation game console at a moment when the world is coming unglued and millions of people have been plunged into economic crisis

Yglesias' response to this is to say that #actually one of the interesting economic effects of the pandemic is that the people who haven't been killed by the virus or left destitute by losing their own jobs have in fact seen their consumer spending power increase

You may say "What does a new game console really matter in this moment of unspeakable horror and loss?" but Yglesias says that question is stupid and ignorant, because from a business standpoint this is a fine time to be selling consumer electronics

The Kotaku piece never at all advances the claim that it's not possible to make money right now by creating new consumer desire via planned obsolescence in the game console market segment, which is the claim Yglesias attacks it for making