We are at war.
Every damn day, we are bombarded by propaganda designed to lead us astray, divide us and do us as much actual harm as possible.
And that’s just from family.
Ba dum tsss.
As a student of Homo sapiens, our hairless siblings and cousins, the effect of social media has been a profound change for good and ill.
When social media was “innocent “, pre Musk, pre AI algorithms at Meta, I would argue that the potential for world changing connections between all people was a tantalizing possibility.
Who remembers the first time you connected with a celebrity idol, or a great scientist or a noted sage?
In pockets, such things are still possible.
But in the main, paradise has turned to Passchendaele.
I get approached a lot, by friends and fans of my combative style on this creaky platform.
The reason I’m combative and the reason they’re fans is the same reason: we all love a fight. The algorithm is the audience, the audience is the algorithm.
The recipe is simple, antagonize, denigrate, block and move on.
I have no illusions that I’m going to change anyone’s mind on particular issues. The minds I antagonize, denigrate and block are usually closed anyway.
Or paid shit disturbers.
As Ricky Gervais says “Twitter is not a real place, now fuck off, grow up and start working for global peace and shared prosperity.” (or something like that.)
I look forward to the day when social media is prosocial, not antisocial; prodemocracy, not prodivision; free, and not bound by Friedman edicts to only serve its owners.
Assuming we don’t all die in horrible conflagrations caused by flaming sentiments of purest hate and vitriol first.
As Sunday morning reflections with a black coffee on one side and a black dog on the other are as gentle a topic as I’ll ever post on X (or as I call it the Upside Down), time to wait for the next wave of hate to roll in on another day in Passchendaele.
I remember finding my grandfather’s bayonet as a child. It had been bent on some European’s ribcage.
Don’t suffer the illusion that it takes anything more than harsh words and hateful stories to drive us all to mayhem and madness.