Modern Day Bullshit

Al Gore may not have invented the internet, but the American taxpayer funded it.

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I tripped across a meme the other day that made me go “Hmmmmmm”.

As in “Yes!”

Exactly that.

It read: Remember when the internet was just people disagreeing about whether a dress was blue or gold? A webcam trained on some company’s coffee pot? Or an osprey’s nest brimming with newborn osprlets?

Simpler times.

I think we — as taxpayers — will forever regret monetizing the internet without much thought as to how it would work out.

I know. I know. I know!

It has brought us so many wonderful life enhancements, advancements, improvements. Paying bills effortlessly. Locating where we are while on the fly. Making reservations as you drive cross country. Video conferencing your loved ones. Keeping track of your fantasy football team at the top of Mt. Rainier. Arranging transportation. Working out your vacation in Europe well in advance of your trip. Staying on top of all of your finances. Checking in at the hospital before you go to the hospital or clinic.

The internet is a godsend. In so many ways. I could fill this approximately one thousand word column and still not run out of the positives.

But…have you been doxed?

Have you had your identity stolen?

Have you been on the receiving end of death threats?

Have you had an endless, ugly argument with someone you don’t even know? Or someone you vaguely know?

I know you’ve been saturated with some form of advertising. Hell, you can’t even pause a movie or streaming series without getting an ad that — if you are especially susceptible — will try to persuade you to click on it with a QR code or link.

I’d calculate that I’ve watched and been subjected to more advertising online in the past five years than I was ever subjected to while watching television as a kid.

I’m not willing to subscribe to ten thousand different media apps, so I’m prone to have to wade through tsunamis of advertising. Last night — I shit you not — I watched an advertisement for one-wheel scooters being sold to — get this — ranchers! You know, the demographic that would die from embarrassment if caught transporting themselves in anything that did not include monstrous tires.

In case you want to buy one to round up your cattle…Photo courtesy of homeli.co.uk

My first thought was astonishment to the nth degree. My second thought was that advertising on “television” must be magnitudes cheaper than it once was. I couldn’t get my third thought in because I was choking with laughter on my spoonful of Kozy Shack gluten-free pudding.

My wife’s secret pleasure dessert.

(As an aside, don’t you think we should NOT have to pay for a streaming service if we choose to be saturated by advertising? It seems to me if you pay for a subscription you should be exempted from ads. If you choose to be lobotomized by Corporate America, your streaming service should be FREE. This is why, of course, I am not a billionaire.)

Our interconnectedness via the world wide web is wonderful, while simultaneously moving us one step closer to midnight on the Doomsday Clock.

It’s too much. We all know it. We all feel it.

Yet there is no way around it.

These words reach you courtesy of the internet. I doubt I’d have the stamina to print and mail newsletters like I once did. If I want my words to reach any kind of audience, I’ll use the internet.

Trapped in the convenience-cycle once again.

Social media sites are anything but social. Garden parties could be called social. “Socials” — in the day — were social. Bingo and Trivia Night at your local brewery fall under the classification of social. Human interactions online run the gamut — from intellectual salons to non-stop verbal jousting (a kind way of putting it) or the literary equivalent of Ultimate Fighting Championship bloodbaths.

Of course, they don’t have to be that way. But too many of us have to have to the last word, too many of us have to lord it over someone, too many of us enjoy the anonymity while being dicks, too many of us relish the attention — even if its negative. And then there are the paid accelerationists in some forums who just want to stir the shit.

These shit-stirrers would not have coalesced — no, the word I’m looking for is metastasized — without the internet. The internet rebirthed white supremacy, the KKK and nationalist tendencies. The internet has grown hate speech by orders of magnitude.

The internet makes it possible for nefarious organizations to stir shit around the clock. It makes it possible for unscrupulous humans to earn a living stirring shit and it makes it possible for traffickers to force humans to stir shit in exchange for their life and a pittance.

I have no answers, but I think, in a sane world, reins would be under consideration for every single online platform. I think it should not be possible to be anonymous online. I think professional shit stirrers should suffer real consequences (remember I’m fantasizing about a sane world where the rule of law continues to account for something). I think monopolies in the tech and media world need to be dismantled and blocked to begin with.

Guess I’m looking for a kinder, gentler internet rather than the shock and awe we have to endure at the moment.

In the meantime, it’s a tool to be used to create the world we wish to see. At the same time, we need to acknowledge that actual social contacts are a thousand times healthier.

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Hey! Are you aware our current occupant in the White House pardoned 1500 January 6th insurrectionists who were tried and convicted by a jury of their peers? Many of them were found guilty of beating The Blue, aka police officers. Ironic, huh? Blue Lives Matters adherents concussing and whomping on our men and women in blue.

Well, a few of those convicts have already landed themselves in hot water. Some are just as much convicts as they were to begin with.

NPR brought a few “receipts”.

Matthew Huttle at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Department of Justice photo. Huttle was shot and killed during a traffic stop days after being pardoned for trying to overthrow the government of his United States.

I hope you didn’t miss the news story about the Idaho granny who had fallen all the way down the MAGA rabbit hole, but has had a 180 degree change of heart. She declined the ‘second coming of Hoover’s’ pardon.

“Accepting the pardon would be an insult to the Capitol Police officers, to the rule of law, to our nation,” Hemphill told the Idaho Statesman by phone Tuesday. “The J6 criminals are trying to rewrite history by saying that it was not a riot; it wasn’t an insurrection. I don’t want to be a part of their trying to rewrite what happened that day.”

She deserves a Medal of Honor. Or she should go on a speaking tour and see if she can break through to some of our numbskull citizens.

A former Trump supporter, Boise resident Pamela Hemphill has since changed her stance on the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol that she participated in. (David Staats/Idaho Statesman/TNS)

Also, I haven’t begun using Ground News but I’ve been checking it out and, if you are inclined to continue immersing yourself in current events, it looks like a winner.