I blame social media and reality TV. I blame reality TV because the flood of singing, dancing, housewifing and endurance series that became ubiquitous during the early 2000s were the catalyst for too many narcissists to believe that their big fish in a small local pond anonymity was only an audition and a bunch of ‘likes and shares’ away from stardom. And that belief, that, in the past, would have been knocked out of them by cruel reality, has gone right to our collective heads.
Argggh!!! Woke up in a ‘mood’ this morning, and the weather – grey, cold and damp – isn’t helping at all.
It’s not that I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, it’s more that I’m just tired of playing pandemic. In February, I could still see a path ahead, even though it wasn’t clear how long our preparations and quarantine would last. Still, I had hopes that the light at the end of the tunnel was a bright future. Turned out it was an oncoming train. Continue reading
On the day after 4 million students from all around the world marched to protest their respective governments’ lack of decisive action on climate change, Bob Lefsetz noted that the photos and the chatter had already been pushed off the pages of both terrestrial and online press sites.
A Message from Bob – This was originally written in 2011 or 12. This is an updated version from 2013. I believe these are the things that finally delivered President Stoopnagle and his like-minded skid marks around the world to power, and they have become a combination of shingles, rectal itch, hives, projectile diarrhea, herpes, yeast infections, snot-in-your-mustache, and that white foam that appears in the corners of your mouth when you’re tweaking. It is these “leaders” who have let the dogs out.
Why am I reprinting this today? …Because I am tired of having to shower to wash off the slung mud, ill informed babble, and negative angry horseshit every single time I read my Facebook Newsfeed. (…and I had sheepishly changed Assholes and Morons to Asshats and Headcases when this originally ran…I am no longer sheepish, and let’s be honest …assholes and morons are what they are.)
If it wasn’t for Roxanne Tellier and a few others, I would just give up and shit the bed like so many are doing already.
Maybe I’m just in a bad mood and had to climb up on my soapbox/high horse, and let it all out, and I apologize if you think I’m preaching, but I’m not…I’m just sick of all the bullshit. This column still speaks for me, still says what I feel needs to be said again.
You can read this or not. Please leave a comment at the bottom of the column if you do.
I love you either way….
Part Two of The Wackers will run on Monday
Ever have, oh, I don’t know… about 6 or 700 of ‘those days,’ where you start to wonder if it’s actually possible that you just might have woken up on another, identical, but much stupider, planet?
When I first landed on Social Media, I was smitten with the opportunity to reach 1000s of people with a few key strokes and hitting ‘enter’, or being able to have a conversation with someone without holding a phone to my ear by using Messenger to ask or answer a question without interrupting whatever I was working on for more than a few seconds.
Ain’t I a wonder, and ain’t you a wonder too!
Or so we’ve been led to believe, by all of our ‘likes’ and ‘loves’ on social media, which is where we go to show off our funny, pretty, and intelligent sides. It’s where we go to get our ‘strokes’ of approval, to find out who’s doing what, and it’s where some of us go to air our opinions and beliefs, and to challenge the opinions and beliefs of others.
Thintelligence: “The state of mind where a person does something without considering the consequences.” The idea may seem brilliant at first, but the after-affects usually prove to be deadly. This phrase was invented by Michael Crichton in his 1990 book Jurassic Park.
“They don’t have intelligence. They have what I call ‘thintelligence.’ They see the immediate situation. They think narrowly and call it ‘being focused.’ They don’t see the surround. They don’t see the consequences.
Dang! It always happens … I’m all gung ho about something I want to write about, and I get some of the research done, and then … life intervenes. Or, more accurately, social media. I’m looking at you, Facebook!
If you are very lucky, you have never, and will never, be in a situation where a group of ordinary people suddenly turn into an angry mob. It’s like the flip of a switch. In a heartbeat, centuries of evolution dissolve, and the hive mind kicks in. Whether you are part of the mob, the object of the mob’s outrage, or are simply caught up in the emotional frenzy, the mob mentality overrules the civilized mind and transforms perfectly ordinary people into raging, club swinging Neanderthals with a single purpose – destruction.
Bullseye Records of Canada
