Something I wanted to talk about in the show, but I got long winded on other stuff, so I had to skip it, is something I talked about with a friend this week. That is, why is it that so many people have gone crazy all at once? There’s always been partisanship and fierce debates between liberals and normal people. People have always had heated debates about current events. Today, we have lots of people who seem to live in an alternative reality from the rest of us.
The issue that my friend and I were discussing is the riots. He had just had an interaction with someone on-line where the person told him the riots were fake news created by conservative news outlets. He pointed out that we have videos of arson and looting, much of it from left-wing sites. He sent him video of Minneapolis as proof that the riot actually happened. The person dismissed it all as a conspiracy theory saying that the protests have been peaceful.
Just as there has always been partisanship, there have always been crazy people who line their clothes with aluminum foil. What’s different now is it feels like we are overwhelmed by them. They work in the media. They work in government. They are in the schools. It is not just left-wing conspiracy stuff. The whole QAnon thing is another example of mass lunacy. It’s like the novella I Am Legend, except instead of turning people into vampires, the virus makes them crazy.
One theory on this is that these sorts of crazy people have always existed, but they existed in isolation. The person prone to Russian conspiracy stuff was not around others that indulged in that stuff. Paranoia and social norms kept these people from meeting in real life. The internet has allowed these people to freely and comfortably network with one another on-line. All of a sudden, this type of person knows lots of people who are prone to their type of madness.
What the internet has done is provide social proof. No matter how your madness plays out, you can find a Facebook group to tell you that you are not only not alone, but you are right. Instead of these people living in isolation, fairly sure they are alone in these thoughts, they now have lots of people who share their madness, giving them the confidence to be public with it. We are now plagued by highly confident, maladapted mutants, to use an Ed Dutton term.
There have been plenty of gags on television where the internet is suddenly shut down and people are forced back to the old ways. People suddenly must talk to one another and use maps. One likely outcome, if we shut down the internet, is the world would suddenly get much calmer and quieter. The plague of maladapted mutants would no longer be plugged into their networks. They would be reduced to shouting their lunacy on street corners wearing sandwich boards.
Human society evolved ways to peacefully manage the lunatics that are a part of every human society. A mild form of shunning, with the occasional witch burning, was enough to keep these people under control. Social shaming of gossipy women, for example, was effective at controlling the Karen problem. We have yet to evolve such mechanisms for doing this on-line. Worse yet, these gossipy women now control the discourse on-line as big tech censors.
The solution to the current unrest may be as simple as banning women from the internet or maybe just social media platforms. For that matter, just turn the who thing off entirely. Would the world really be so bad if you had to order from the Amazon catalog over the phone rather than on-line? is your life going to be worse or better without Twitter and Facebook? If all the internet billionaires were killed tomorrow, is anyone really going to notice or care?
This week I have the usual variety of items in the now standard format. Spreaker has the full show. I am up on Google Play now, so the Android commies can take me along when out disrespecting the country. I am on iTunes, which means the Apple Nazis can listen to me on their Hitler phones. The anarchists can catch me on iHeart Radio. I am now on Deezer, for our European haters and Stitcher for the weirdos. YouTube also has the full podcast. Of course, there is a download link below.
Note: The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is like a tea, but it has a milder flavor. It’s hot here in Lagos, so I’ve been drinking it cold. It is a great summer beverage.
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This Week’s Show
Contents
- 00:00: Opening
- 02:00: Uber And Lyft (Link)
- 17:00: Will To Failure (Link)
- 32:00: The Electric Fence (Link) (Link) (Link)
- 47:00: Russia Update (Link) (Link) (Link)
- 57:00: Closing
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