The Most Pointless Bullshit on the Internet, vol 2

I've written a lot about the positives and negatives of social media, and most of it has to do with the people using it. Kinda like any problem in human history: it's our own fault. When every person has access to social media, there will inevitably be some horrible opinions shared. And a lot of media outlets use headlines or write stories intended to get a strong reaction from you. There's not much we can do about those issues, short of blocking or unfollowing people/companies that behave in such a manner.

However, there are some issues built in to social media that quite frankly shouldn't be. One of those is Autoplay. Autoplay is a feature that automatically plays a video when it appears on your screen. So if you are scrolling down your social media feed and you stop scrolling for a split second, if there is a video onscreen it will play. Seems harmless, right? It's not! It sucks!

The Most Pointless Bullshit on the Internet, vol 2: Autoplay Videos


Before I get too far into this, I understand that you can switch the settings on your social media app to not Autoplay videos. However, the settings on all social media apps are notoriously obnoxious and hard to navigate, and the bigger issue is, why is Autoplay the default? Why do I have to do the work to turn it off?

So yeah, I know I could not complain about this because there are ways to stop it if I was more proactive, but we're talking about the most pointless bullshit here, it only makes sense to make an even more pointless rant, right? Right.

Anyways, the best way to actually stop this pointless bullshit called Autoplay would be to...not have it at all. What is the purpose? It's certainly not for the consumers. It's simply a trick that companies/apps use to get and keep your eyes on their products. When a video starts automatically, you're more likely to keep watching it. Even when it is your friend or cousin's videos on social media it is used to trap you; it's not your cousins fault, in that case, Facebook is trying to keep your eyes on Facebook longer.

There is no practical reason for the consumer to have Autoplay. It takes a millisecond to press the play button, so it can't possibly exist to save consumers' time. It literally only exists to trick you into watching. I don't appreciate that. But besides my personal feelings about companies using our natural biological instincts against us, Autoplay can be shitty in other ways as well.

I don't mind when the video "Cute Fluffy Animals Happily Playing Together" automatically plays. Trick me into watching that video all day! No problem. The problem is that the video "Asshole Beats the Shit Out of This Cute Puppy in Front of a Sick Child" also automatically plays. So does "Cop Kills Unarmed Man." So do a hundred other things I don't want to or don't need to see. And if I do want to see those things, I will see them when I want to see them, not when Zuckerberg wants me to.

Besides, it actually makes it harder to watch the video. If your phone's on mute, which mine usually is, you won't hear the video but it will start playing. If you want to hear it, you have to click on the video, which will then continue playing from when you clicked it. So if you want to hear the beginning of the video, you have to manually drag the video backwards.

If the volume is on already, that's an even bigger problem, one that is likely to cause some underwear stains, which of course becomes a significantly worse problem. When your phone's volume is on and you scroll past a video, the audio will play whether you want to or not. Luckily, I usually keep my phone's volume off, but there have been a few times where a late night, lazy browsing session has turned into a terror filled attempt to find my phone (which I instinctively threw across the room) and hurriedly turn down the volume. Autoplay has also snitched on me during work meetings. I'm scrolling social media to keep me awake during this pointless meeting, Autoplay, don't let the whole friggin room know!

There is no purpose for Autoplay that is not nefarious. In fact, other forms of media are using it too, and it's just as pointless and obnoxious. We've all been watching Netflix late at night. We've all fallen asleep during an episode only to wake up to see that four more episodes have played and now you're gonna waste 40 minutes trying to figure out where you left off.

Even worse, when you go to the Netflix homescreen, previews automatically play, and they're twice as loud as the shows for some reason. Listen, Netflix, I don't need to see a preview of Disenchantment to know I don't want to see it. And I certainly don't want to hear it in my bones. I'm gonna use your service regardless... relax!

Autoplay is one of those pointless features that doesn't even seem like a good idea when you think about it, and it's not a good idea in practice, but it stays around because it benefits the media outlet using it. If that's what Facebook needs to do to keep their service free, ok. (They also spy on us, sell our information, and track our every move to keep their service free, but that's a whole other issue.) We're all gonna need to be a little more conscious of the videos we share. You may love seeing a video of your neighbor's kids firing bottle rockets from their ass, but not everybody does. I mean, I do, so send it my way, but not everybody will appreciate it automatically playing on their phone.

Hopefully all the corporate executives subscribed to my blog will take this rant to heart!

I Love You All...Class Dismissed. 

Nuggets and Negativity: Internetting in 2017

Did you hear about the Wendy's Nugget Guy? If you're on Twitter, or a fan of Ellen, I'm sure you have, but if not, here's the backstory.

A young man asked the Wendy's corporate Twitter account how many retweets it would take for him to get free chicken nuggets for a year. The corporate account responded, "18 million." A clearly impossible, absurd number he had no chance of reaching.

However, he did break the retweet record with over 3.5 million retweets in about a month. That means 3.5 million individuals pressed the retweet button when they saw his post asking for free nuggets.

Wendy's, realizing the boon of good will and free marketing they were receiving, decided to reward this young man despite him not technically reaching the needed amount of retweets. To their credit, they did more than just give him nuggets, they donated $100,000 to the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption.

Besides being a cool story of a man shooting for the stars and actually catching one, it's a fascinating look at social media interaction, marketing, and our current zeitgeist.

With a simple tweet, you can capture the hearts of millions, the attention of major corporations and celebrities, and free chicken nuggets! Aaron Paul from Breaking Bad showed his support, Ellen Degeneres showed her support and even had him on her show. It was a moment, an idea, that completely united people around a random, silly quest. This kid probably didn't think much of his tweet as he sent it out, and less than a month later, he's appearing on one of the most popular shows in the country. And he got free chicken nuggets! For a year! That's truly amazing.

It reminds me of the Ice Bucket Challenge. A rather silly video/challenge catches on for whatever reason, blows up to the point where everyone knows about it even if they're not on social media, and we as a society end up doing something truly positive. These moments and events show the best side of humanity. We can accomplish anything we want when we come together! And it doesn't take much to bring us together!

However, being humanity, there will always be haters and naysayers. When the Ice Bucket Challenge blew up, there were certain people who just couldn't wait to bash it and the people participating. They found every excuse in the book to degrade the challenge, using relatively decent points (it wasted water) to completely absurd points (this is taking money and attention away from other diseases). Some people even got mad because, according to them, most of the participants didn't even know what ALS was. Even if that were true, it was raising money and at least some awareness for a good cause, so what's the problem? You don't need to know the biological make-up of ALS or HIV or breast cancer to know that it's bad and that we should try to cure it. But some people have to find the negative in everything. Whether it's to feel better about themselves because they take pride in going against the grain, or they are anti-social, or maybe they are just negative overall, they have to find a way to limit people's joy and excitement.

And to be honest, I get that urge. I'm quick to point out ugliness behind a false veneer of beauty. I'm the guy talking about the NFL's problem with domestic violence and CTE during the Super Bowl party, without a doubt. But there are some things that can and should be accepted as positive. There was literally no drawback to the Ice Bucket Challenge; even the wasted water complaint is a little ridiculous considering the actual amount of water. If you're that concerned, yell at people who water their lawns or take half hour showers.

Similarly, there was literally no drawback to retweeting or supporting this kid's quest for free nuggets.

And yet....

i really hate this guy that got all the chicken nuggets from wendys. i wanna kill hem. #darkrupy

— rupy (@norupy) May 9, 2017

i hate the nuggets kid with my life

— brandon zaboklicki (@sexualjumanji) May 9, 2017

i hate that dumb motherfucker and his stupid nuggets. No reason. come at me.

— brendan kelly (@badsandwich) May 11, 2017

Now I "get" internet humor and a lot of this is meant to be funny by way of exaggeration, but.....why? Is it something about human nature that when someone gets too popular, they are an acceptable target for hate? When a celebrity is hated on, Leslie Jones for example, many people will respond, "well, it's part of being a public figure." Receiving hate and even death threats are a part of being a public figure? I agree: that is the reality of the situation. But when you think about it, isn't that a little odd? We encourage civility across the board and we teach kids to respect others, but if your face is on tv every now and then, you deserve whatever awful comments are thrown at you?

Part of it is criticism of whatever they are famous for, and I think that is certainly acceptable. I understand hating on actors and sports stars and musicians. You don’t like their movies or music. You like their rival team. They are Jason Fricking Sudeikis. Whatever. I get it. It may not be right, but I get it.

I. Get. It.

But hating on their work is different than hating on them as a person. Unless it's Jason Sudeikis, there's no reason to attack a person's humanity just because you think their movies suck or their music is derivative or because they play for the Yankees and you like the Red Sox.

And there's definitely no reason to hate on somebody for getting free nuggets. His good luck doesn’t take nuggets out of your mouth. Are people hating simply because he got a lot of retweets and he now has some vague semblance of "fame"? It's such a simple, random thing that anyone COULD have done, so to some people it doesn't seem fair that he gets such a great reward...maybe people are mad because they didn’t think of it first? Maybe they feel that if they can't have free nuggets, nobody should? That’s a 5 year old’s mentality, and its scary how many people possess that mentality.

Even Chrissy Teigen, a model/actress/wife to John Legend/celebrity I generally like, said on Twitter that she blocks anyone who retweets the "Wendy's kid." She has a somewhat irreverent sense of humor, and it was part of a conversation with another funny Twitter celebrity so it's not that serious, but it struck me as a bit off-putting. This is a person who gained a massive internet following because of the silly things she does on Twitter and Instagram. She's hating on someone else doing something silly on Twitter? Not to mention, this is a very financially secure woman. Wendy's boy is just a regular kid. Why is a rich celebrity denigrating a random young kid trying to get free nuggets? How is that funny? That's some "let them eat cake" levels of being out of touch with the proletariat. 

Again, it's Twitter. It's jokes. Har har. But why are so many of our jokes based on wishing for the downfall of others? What does that say about us as a species?

I'm not entirely sure. But I could go for some nuggets. Did you know their 4 piece nuggets is now 99 cents and their 6 piece is $1.29? For decades it cost 99 cents for 5 nuggets. What the hell Wendy's?

You know what? Fuck that kid and his free nuggets.


I Love You All (Even you, Wendy's Boy. But not you, Jason Sudeikis)...Class Dismissed. 

Anti-Social Media

I've written about my affinity for social media before, as well as some of its drawbacks. It's a common topic because of its omnipresence in society, but it's a relatively new and revolutionary phenomenon, so we don't really know its true effects yet.

For now, social media seems to be a mostly incredible thing. But for better or worse, it says so much about humans. Take Facebook. We all use it, yet we all complain about it, and we usually complain about it WHILE using it! Humans...what a species!

It says a lot about us in other more obvious ways, too. It's meant to share our personal experiences and thoughts with others through words and pictures, or to simply share memes and "likes." Fun! Yet when a controversial topic is part of the national conversation, we all dread opening up our social media apps. Do we even want to see what our friends and family members are saying? It can be so upsetting. I don't need to know that my good friend's cousin thinks that stupid fucking Wall is a great idea.

So what do we do? Stop using social media? Yeah right! You can always scroll past posts you don't like, but you still see them, and they still make some kind of impact on your feelings towards the poster. I can't unsee my cousin calling Trayvon Martin a "thug" who "deserved it."

What's the solution? Deleting or unfollowing all the family members and friends you disagree with? It's tempting, but as the great Thomas Jefferson once said:

You may have seen this quote/meme or some variation of it floating around, in particular during and after The Worst Election Ever You Guys, Like Seriously, The Worst.

Like most "thoughtful" memes or sketchily attributed historical quotes, it sounds great on the surface. And Tommy Jeff was a great president, one of my faves, so that certainly carries some weight. His words here express the seemingly noble idea that political affiliations or personal beliefs should not negatively impact friendships. That's an honorable desire, albeit impractical and illogical.

Every now and then, sparked by a controversial event, waves of people on social media say they will delete friends/followers for supporting [insert person/thing you hate most]. Those most likely to be unfriended will then call these people childish or immature: "Oh you can't even debate your beliefs so you just delete people? Grow up!"

Inevitably, a few "can't we all just get along!" type friends will see the commotion and "help" the situation by sharing a quote like the one above. "We shouldn't let political disagreements come between us!" they'll say, offering a virtual cookie to everyone if we all just go back to talking about how the series finale of How I Met Your Mother really didn't meet expectations.

I have a lot of problems with this line of reasoning, which I'll explain, but first off, I need to point out the glaring hypocrisy of this particular quote. It was indeed said by Thomas Jefferson (which at least makes it more accurate than most celebrity quotes online) but Jefferson also said "all men are created equal" while raping slaves, so we have to take everything he said with a grain of salt that a slave probably sprinkled on his meal.

And to be more specifically hypocritical, Tommy Jeff didn't talk to one of his best friends and closest confidantes, US President #2 John Adams, for over 20 years because of...wait for it...political disagreements! As they helped lay the groundwork for the country's government, they had vastly different views on how to best shape it. These powdered wigged, skinny pants wearing Political Geniuses did the equivalent of unfriending your best friend on Facebook over election results. They even trolled each other by sharing fake news stories about the other and calling each other names.

The Founding Fathers were just like us! That's...kinda scary, actually.

But it's important to understand. Even Thomas Jefferson wasn't "above" letting politics influence his personal relationships. It would be odd if he was, right? If he (and others like him) didn't take politics deadly serious, where would we be as a country?

Nobody is "above" politics. People may not be "into" politics, and I get that. Politics is maddening. But "politics" isn't just presidential elections. It's things like how much you pay in taxes, what is being taught in your kid's schools, who will fill the potholes in your roads, what type of scientific research gets funded, whether or not you can afford quality healthcare. You know, everything that matters in real life.

It makes perfect sense to me to judge people based on their politics. Politics represent our values. What should people be judged on? Looks? Smell? Taste in music? I'm all for judging based on those things (kidding...mostly) but judging someone based on their values and ethics actually seems like the more mature thing to do. It's certainly much less childish than blindly accepting everyone and claiming all opinions matter. No, some opinions are really ill-informed or hateful or both, and they don't deserve equal treatment.

And before you say we shouldn't judge people at all, shouldn't we be somewhat discerning when it comes to our friends? We tell kids to pick their friends wisely, but as adults we have to be friends with everybody? I know for myself, as I get older, I don't want to give any of my love, time, energy or thought to people whose values I don't share. I can absolutely be friends with a conservative or a liberal or an anarchist, but I can't be friends with racists or sexists or bigots. People who promote pedophilia are not worthy of any of your time, and there's nothing wrong with admitting that.

As far as social media, I spend a lot of my online time using it and I want an enjoyable experience. I treat my Facebook and Twitter feeds like a dictator, and I highly recommend it. Annoying guy comments on every one of your posts? Just delete his comments. If you don't want to offend someone but you also don't want to see memes about how Muslims are here to kill your entire family, unfollow that person. And if it gets too bad, unfriend them. Why are you worried about offending someone with insanely offensive beliefs? I guarantee that your desire to give everyone a fair chance and accept everyone's opinion does not equate to the feeling of absolute relief when you get an obnoxious, hateful person out of your virtual life. I've given people a lot of chances because I really do have love for everyone, but I've learned that in many cases it's just not worth it. There's no reason to put up with bullshit on your own social media.

So unfriend that shithead now! Free speech doesn't apply to your Facebook or Twitter feed.

On the other hand, I do see value in befriending those with opposing beliefs, for many reasons.

As a whole, it's not good to completely inoculate yourself from those you disagree with. It is absolutely important to listen to opposing opinions and hear different perspectives. Get out of your bubble or echo chamber or whatnot. Engaging with other's viewpoints causes you to either challenge and question your own beliefs or confirm your own beliefs, and either way, you will be more informed.

Therefore, I make a concerted effort to take in information from all types of sources to get a more comprehensive view of the world. However, when it comes to my social media, I want a positive experience. You can call it a safe space or whatever, but I don't want to have to read some bullshit on a daily basis. Yes I can scroll past it but I don't even want to have to do that (I already explained this!). I want positivity or information or entertainment. I sometimes get the urge to argue with others, and I often still do that! Now, I strictly do it on my own terms.

Maybe I've been through too much. I thank Ferguson for cleaning up my Facebook feed. It told me a lot about certain people. At first, it hurt to know how many friends and family were straight up bigots, but ultimately, I want to have that information. I want to have friendships and relationships based on reality and shared values. Most of the friends and family that stayed with me through Ferguson and Baltimore posts are on a somewhat similar wavelength. I had my time arguing at length with family members and friends whose views I find repugnant. I understand the sick satisfaction in destroying someone's ridiculous argument or even just making fun of someone for their idiotic statements, but that shit ain't healthy over an extended period of time. I can't do it anymore. I now carefully pick and choose my battles, and it makes for a much better experience.

Social media gives us insight into people's thoughts and beliefs to an extent humanity has never really seen before. There's a common complaint that many people say things online they'd never say in public, but I think that can be a good thing. They may not publicly say the things they say online, but that doesn't mean they don't believe those things. They believe them, they just don't want to tell most people because of the reaction. The web gives them an easier, safer outlet for their views. It sucks when people you like or respect express bigotry or hate, but I'm glad when it's out in the open because now I don't have to give them my time or mental energy. I like knowing where people stand.

The fact that we are all typing on screens and not dealing with people's immediate reactions allows us to be more truthful. It also allows cowards to be more brave but that's fine. Tell us how you really feel so I can cut you off and never have to hear it again. That's a good thing. And while you are cutting out the assholes from your life, you can also connect with like-minded individuals. I've gained many friends/acquaintances from social media; oftentimes, when I'm arguing or just commenting online, other people will join in and we'll strike up a virtual friendship.

Sometimes all it takes is hitting "Like" on someone's comment. The whole concept of "likes" and "faves" is fascinating to me. I follow people just for retweeting my post on Twitter. I've become friends with people on Facebook simply based on a like. They appreciated my comment shitting on Mitch McConnell's turtle jowls? Let me be friends with this person!

I really enjoy the likes battles, too; they are a way to gauge who is "winning" a debate. Your comment got 8 likes? Well my response to your comment got 12 likes, I WIN SUCKER.  And if I see a random person arguing with some alt-right clown, I'll throw them a like any time, especially if the clown is getting a lot of likes. I can't let the clown win.

Nowadays, I try not to engage people unless I respect them. I'll ridicule some random friend of a friend if I'm feeling particularly saucy, but beyond that, I've found that there's literally no use arguing with most people online. Usually, you end up yelling into a bottomless void of stupidity, and it will only end with you being sucked in. Don't get lost in the void.

I Love You All...Class Dismissed.

Social Media Revolution and Big Media Laziness

We have all heard the term "Lamestream Media" or some variation of it. Depending on your political persuasion, you might see it as an obvious ploy by people like Sarah Palin to discredit any and all news reports about themselves and distract people from their own ineptitude, or you may see it as an honest indictment of the mainstream media. The fact is, it's probably both.

 Don't look so smug, lady, that sentence still called you an idiot. 

We all have some understanding that the media exists to sell us a story and that we shouldn't believe everything we hear on the news. We may recognize that a lot of it is bullshit or biased, but we still tune in, expecting some semblance of reality or professionalism. It's similar to how we all know not to believe the "Diet" or "All Natural" labels on foods yet we still hold on to the belief that there must be some level of truth to the claims. I truly believed that companies can't lie to sell their products because I was always told false advertising is illegal. They can't just make up shit and print it on their labels...the consumer protection board will handle it if they do!

Turns out, I'm dumb. Companies have no problem lying their asses off. Yeah, it is illegal, and some do get caught and have to pay out fines, but at that point the damage is done. The company has made millions and the general public tends to believe a company's initial claims despite any retractions or lawsuits. How many people still think VitaminWater is a healthy alternative to soda?

It's maddening but I can't blame individuals for their misperceptions; the media is happy to go along with corporate lies. Or police lies. Or government lies. 

A lot of that has to do with money interests and the few giant media conglomerates that control the news. Some news sites or individual articles are paid for directly by advertisers who absolutely have a say in what gets published. That has a crippling effect on the news we receive, without a doubt.

However, not everything is a conspiracy. Or at least, the conspiracy doesn't cover the whole thing. A big reason, maybe even the biggest reason, for the poor quality of news we receive is the sheer laziness of the media. So on one hand, the media is controlled by corporate interests, devoted strictly to getting clicks on their websites, thereby focusing on "click-bait" stories. On the other hand, they are simply fucking lazy. If a police chief or a government official or a company spokesperson tells them a story, that's what they go with because all they have to do now is summarize the report. Why question anything? When has the government ever lied?? If journalists decide to take it a step further and do some actual investigative journalism, most don't go too far out of their way. Instead of finding witnesses or interviewing people involved in the events, they can simply turn to the world's biggest supplier of firsthand news: Twitter. 

In February, 2015, three Muslim students were killed by a man in North Carolina. Apparently he was enraged over a parking dispute, but the man had a history of lashing out and even threatening the three students and their family. They felt it was largely because of their faith. We won't get into the absolute obviousness of the reasoning behind the murders (hatred of Muslims); instead we'll focus on the coverage of the incident.

Most media outlets rushed to deny any faith-based motive for the murder and instead went with the official police report that said it "may have" been caused by the parking dispute, completely ignoring the family's claims of past harassment and hatred. Unlike the people shouting "damn liberal mainstream media!" I don't think the mainstream media has a liberal slant; however, there are plenty of media outlets that have clear biases, both liberal and conservative. The more liberal minded media outlets focused on the faith aspect . Although I have a very liberal viewpoint on most issues, and I do think the violence was motivated by Muslim hatred, I still have issues with their coverage.

Besides pushing the faith angle heavily (which I understand since mainstream outlets were denying the faith angle heavily) they also used a lot of social media feedback. Now this can sometimes add context or... something (I guess?) to the story. It allows readers to hear what others are saying about the story, which is good. They could go talk to people, or I don't know, go on Twitter themselves, but sure, it's legitimate "journalism." Anyways, on any article nowadays (and even on some television news, especially ESPN) there's always a few tweets included in the coverage. Now, I love Twitter because you get to hear from some very smart, funny, and/or informed people, and often you can hear firsthand accounts from people involved in the story. It's also ridiculous because you get to hear from every backwater hobo with a wifi connection (how do they get wifi in the swamp anyway?). That's why a tweet from "@AmericanGriper" (that's me! Follow back y'all!) was included right next to a tweet from esteemed biologist Richard Dawkins in a story about the NC murders on the website ThinkProgress.org. Click this link to see the story, scroll to the bottom to see the tweets.

Now, I agree that my opinion on any given topic is just as important as Richard Dawkins', but I don't think most people would. In fact, when I saw the article and came across my own tweet, I was really fucking confused. Proud. But confused. I'm not saying it's completely unnecessary to hear from Average Joe about news events, but when everyone is given an equal platform to speak on, who do we listen to? If the media is simply going to use tweets for research, at the very least, they should look into who is tweeting. Otherwise you end up in really embarrassing situations.

Such as...

When Kanye West released the first of several songs with the last surviving Beatle (shhh Ringo, go back to the basement) Twitter was set ablaze with posts asking who this guy was and why Kanye would work with such an unknown artist. One commenter even posted: "Kanye has a great ear for talent. This Paul McCartney guy gonna be huge."

Idiots! How can you live on this planet and not know who Paul McCartney is?

Well, turns out the real idiots are the media outlets who reported on this. Apparently they had never been on Twitter and were unfamiliar with the concept of "sarcasm" or "humor". The guy who made the above post is Desus Nice, an absolutely hilarious Tweeter with his own podcast and show. He's know for his sarcastic wit and if you looked at any other tweet on his page you would recognize that instantly. Apparently that is too much to ask of the media. They saw one tweet, decided that the narrative of "stupid millennials don't even know music icons" was click-bait worthy and ran with it. All the old people can laugh at the stupid millennials and all the millennials who know Paul McCartney can laugh at their inferior peers. The perfect story!

#PEAKCAUCASITY https://t.co/t3V8EzNbJ6

— Desus Nice (@desusnice) January 5, 2015

 Giving Desus another golden opportunity to make fun of white people...dammit media! 

You make it really hard to be a white guy! Waaah!

This happens a lot. Like, a friggin LOT. "The scoop" has always been important to media outlets, but with the speed of the internet and social media (and social interest) it is even more vital for news organizations to be first to report, even if they are wrong. Combine that with perpetual laziness, and you end up with the shitty reporting we have now. The worst part about this is that whoever gets the "scoop" on the story sets the tone, and in fact, provides all other media outlets with the particulars of the case. Take the Freddie Gray/Baltimore story for example. When the Washington Post published a story titled "Prisoner in van thought [Freddie] Gray was ‘trying to injure himself’" every other outlet rushed to publish the story, using only Washington Post as the source. The absolute least amount of effort is put into covering a story. Simply find the stories already written and rewrite. Oh, and if you happen to be wrong, which they were in this case, don't worry about it! Simply update the story with slightly different wording and make sure not to promote the corrections!

We often see this rush to get a scoop mixed with ultimate laziness in stories of people being outraged at an incident/person/event/any number of things that outrage people these days. There is plenty to be outraged about (police brutality, lgbt equality, pollution, endangered species, etc.) but some people choose the most random, inconsequential things to obsess about and they make sure their feelings are heard. Over and over and over again. So when you hear a news story about people being OUTRAGED that so and so did this, try to get a sense of how many people are actually feeling this way. Ten people raging about the fact that there are not enough straight white men on national television is meaningless. In the grand scheme of things, a thousand people outraged about something, let's say a sports team's new uniforms or whatever, probably doesn't mean anything, unless that team has only a thousand fans. The Mets would probably be in trouble but that's about it.

 

I don't care about baseball anymore but I will absolutely take any opportunity to bash the Mets.

The Westboro Baptist Church is a good example. They seemingly show up at every military funeral and are on the news almost any time the topic of gay marriage or gay rights is discussed. You would think the "Church" has a million members with the amount of publicity their "cause" receives.

They have 40 members. Most from the same sick family. Yet we all know who they are and what they stand for. They are the perfect villains. Even ordinary homophobic people think Westboro crosses the line. So why do we hear about them all the time? Media outlets understand that if you include their name in a story, you're guaranteed to get some hate clicks: people literally reading the story to become enraged at the group and feel better about themselves because no matter what they've done in their lives, nothing is worse than what these assholes do every day.

So here's how it works: a small group of people (e.g. Westboro) get OUTRAGED at something. Media reports on it, never mentioning the size of the outrage. People (red-blooded Americans like you and I) get outraged about those other people being outraged. Media reports on the backlash outrage. Outsiders who don't care much about the topic are forced to pick a side because neutrality is for cowards. Stand up man...you too must be outraged!

The media wants your outrage. It draws ratings. When you're angry, you are more likely to comment on the article, which means you have clicked on their page and given them your precious view. When you comment, especially an angry, impassioned comment, you are likely to check back to see if anyone responded to you, thereby driving their number of views up even more. All they care about is whether you clicked on their website. They don't care about accuracy, ethics, accountability, nothing. They don't even care if you read the whole thing. They only care about clicks.

All of this gives us a false sense of the magnitude of any outrage; even worse, when topics arise that do deserve outrage, people don't take those things seriously, lumping them in with the "false outrage" group. So now everyone is simultaneously outraged by nothing and everything.

Thanks media!

And if you think this is all bullshit and you're in the comment section typing in all caps "HOW IS THIS NEWS?" hoping that the Editor in Chief will read your comment and reassess his purpose in life, causing him to only publish stories worthy of your highly esteemed readership, you have fallen directly in their trap. You clicked on the article to comment. They won.

And we--all of us--lose.

But hey, at least I got on the news! That's cool right?!

I Love You All...Class Dismissed. 

Africa/Twitter

So I was just doing research for this blog (searching randomly on the web for something interesting) when I went on twitter and looked at "Worldwide Trends". On 8:16 PM Eastern time today on Twitter, #inanafricanhouse was trending worldwide. I have no idea why. I can barely figure out how the hell twitter works. But there it was, the third most popular phrase on the third most popular social media forum. In An African House. Normally, I would have looked at that phrase, giggled, then kept looking for hot women to follow on twitter. However, it just so happens that I will be living in an African house (hostel, close enough) beginning in May. Yeah. Tanzania. Teaching English. 

So I thought that was interesting. 

I'm going to write about that experience more on this blog, and I'm going to keep another blog during the trip as well. My family thinks that the language on this particular blog would be inappropriate, considering that I will be working with nuns in Africa. I don't know what the fuck they're talking about. But anyways, I'm really looking forward to the experience. And I'm looking forward to writing about it. 

Thank you, Aunt Jane, and Mom, and Dad :-)

I love my life. 

I Love You All...Class Dismissed.