My time in FB jail is over in a couple of days, but I don’t know if it’s worth posting in gen pop again. I’d be too tempted to just waste my time pointlessly yelling at stupid people.
I can still read FB, and I have been, mostly to keep up on what’s going on in this time of lockdowns and weirdness. Except the vast majority of the information is crap, and far too many of the people posting have their heads shoved up their asses.
Being able to read but not participate has been interesting, in that it’s given me a chance to observe without getting involved. My take away over the last few months is that most people are cool, and just want to handle their business, and they worry about their families, their country, and their world, but there is a percentage of vampire assholes who just basically suck, and need everyone else to be as miserable as they are.
I’ve mentioned this a few times over recent weeks, but the people who have nothing in their lives outside of political team sports are the worst. Well, actually no. The media is the worst. The people who feed the click bait vultures are second worst.
Take for example, quite literally any news story recently. First off, it’s going to be factually incorrect. Across the board, these people really suck at their jobs–assuming their job is to convey good info (which let’s be honest, it’s not). But then in addition to being error ridden gibberish, it’s also got to be twisted to serve whatever their partisan hack team is. And they’re not even subtle about it. This pandemic is the worst I’ve ever seen the media at being out right, ham-fisted, clowns at twisting. It’s painful to watch.
So there’s a headline. “Politician/CEO/Celebrity From The Other Team Says Something Horrific!” And then I see dozens of otherwise intelligent people read that headline, and have a massive come apart freak out about what a horrible monster bad person that guy is. So then I actually read what he said, or watch the video, and of course, it’s nothing at all like the headline twisted it to be. In fact, what was actually said is quite different than the headline.
Of course, as I describe that situation, each of you thought of a different actual event, and guess what? You’re all right. Because they do this for quite literally everything now.
And each time, there’s a bunch of virtue signalling half-wits in the comments screaming about how outraged they are. For every ten virtue signalers, there’s one person who actually watched the interview saying “but that’s not what he said at all”, and then the rest of the thread is that person getting screeched at. How dare you defend this horrible crime that guy committed in my imagination?
This stupid behavior goes both ways, but when the vast majority of our national media bats left, of course you get more of it from them. And it’s incessant, non-stop, grating, painfully dishonest, and annoying. Basically anything any republican does is the worst thing that’s ever happened, pure evil, and they want all the old people to die. Ask for a travel ban months ago, and you get decried as a racist fearmonger. Then when you get a travel ban, get screamed at that you did it too late. Say anything positive, and it’s giving false hope (that’s literally the headline). And my personal favorite, talk about a drug treatment being promising, then having the news freak out that if you take a massive overdose of that drug you’ll die (well duh), and then get blamed when some total dumb shit eats a mega dose of fish tank cleaner because it has a similarly named chemical in its list of ingredients.
Wow.
Of course, the guy who talked about the drug treatment to give people hope is responsible for the dumb ass eating fish tank cleaner, and even though the media has been scaring everyone non-stop with talks of apocalyptic doom and millions of potential deaths for the last few weeks enough that some poor dumb ass got scared enough to eat fish tank cleaner, the media bears no responsibility whatsoever.
The media is trash. They are absolute garbage people. They don’t care if you live or die, as long as they can score a few points in the process.
But watch, just by me saying this I guarantee that someone will say I’m not taking this threat seriously and I’m a science denier. On the contrary, my ass is home, socially distancing like I’m supposed to. I can recognize something is serious, without having an emotional come apart. I can also recognize that the cure for this problem might not be all it’s cracked up to be, if it puts millions of people out of work and thousands of companies out of business. I can say that without wanting people to die. It’s not one or the other. In reality, shit is complicated, uncomfortable, sucks, and there’s not a super easy, simple solution for every problem. Sorry.
On that note, I want to amend my earlier statement about the media being the worst, and the click bait suckers being second. Let’s move the media to #2, and the morons to #3, because holy shit… Nancy… What the hell?
Yes, I already know the talking points you have been given. Blah, blah, blah, evil corporations. (what do you guys think a stimulus bill is supposed to do exactly?) I’ve already seen a hundred people who couldn’t explain what stock buybacks are, regurgitate their talking points about why the democrats needed to kill the stimulus bill because of the evils of stock buybacks.
I’m not even going to talk about whether I think the original bill is a good idea or not (I don’t. I think it’s got short term positives, and long term negatives, and I’m not particularly convinced on either). But I do at least understand what they’re going for.
However, this is not the time or place to shove a bunch of asinine pork projects. Green airline emissions? Collective bargaining? Early voting? Racial quotas? Are you fucking kidding me, you useless, fucking morons?
You want to debate sending stimulus checks to people who are currently broke, can’t go to work, and scared? Sure. But you’d better hurry. Or you want to debate giving money to companies so they can still be open in a few months? Sure. Have that debate.
But if this is the dire, apocalyptic, millions could die crisis you keep making it out to be, is now really the fucking time to stick in funding for performing arts centers and racial quotas? You fucking gerbils disgust me.
My take away from the last few days are that the government sucks at literally everything. Anything you count on it to do for you, they will let you down, either through stupidity, corruption, or outright malice. Republicans are the stupid party and democrats are the evil party.
The FDA slowing everything down comes as absolutely no shock to anyone who has ever worked with or for the government.
However, regular Americans, when given the opportunity, will do amazing things, really fast. Between all the stupid click bait articles are the stories of people rising to the occasion, being creative, selfless, caring, and kind. Luckily, most people are still awesome.
