Tag: social media

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Terrible Politicians Birth Terrible Bills.

A bill was recently proposed in New York that is so stupid, that even people well aware with how stupid New York’s government officials are might do a double take. This is the very same state that just elected a woman to the House of Representatives who literally doesn’t know what the 3 branches of government are or how unemployment rates work. I give it about 3 more decades before New York actually turns into a John Carpenter movie.

The dumb bill in question (because there are many) proposes that anyone looking to buy a new gun, or renew their current permit, must legally allow the government to snoop through three years (I’m sure we can trust them to stop at just three) of their personal online data. This includes things like social media accounts and online histories. Holy absolutely unconstitutional authoritarian overreach, Batman.

What are our benevolent overlords in the government going to be looking for? Threats to the safety of others, intentions to commit terrorism, profane slurs, or biased language pertaining to race, color, origin, gender, religion, age, disabilities, or sexual orientation.

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

Jokingly call your friend a retard on facebook? The New York Gestapo might see this as “biased language” disparaging the handy-capable. No guns for you.

What about if you threatened to kill another person on twitter in jest. You know, like Kathy Griffin and countless other blue checkmarks have done to President Trump and members of his family. Sorry folks, but no gun rights for you any more.

How about if you voice sentiments critical of Israel on your myspace page? Well that could be (and quite often is) misconstrued as antisemitic speech. Congratulations! You’re possibly guilty of biased language pertaining to matters of race, origin, and religion. That’s a three-hit wrong-think combo. The second Amendment no longer exists for you.

The fact that there are actually people who think a proposal like this is a good idea is beyond depressing. This is ironically similar to the stop-and-frisk policies (also a New York staple) that liberals absolutely hate and conservatives foolishly justify by saying “well, if you don’t do anything wrong you have nothing to worry about”. Except now it’ll be the conservatives complaining about government overreach, and liberals taking the brilliant “don’t say something wrong, you have nothing to worry about” stance.

It’s also quite ironic that the people so vehemently outspoken against George W Bush’s NSA overreach (though most remain pro-Obama, even though he was a far worse violator of privacy rights(irony²)) seem to be the ones backing this gross violation, because what even is moral consistency?

The bill currently violates the first (freedom of speech), second (right to bear arms), fourth (unreasonable search and seizure), fifth (due process), and fourteenth (forbids states from passing unconstitutional laws) amendments. That has to be some sort of new record for legislative incompetence. Good job, Kevin Parker, you simple human being.

This bill is a problem for the same reason no-fly lists being a factor in firearm eligibility is a problem. It would be great if we lived in a utopian world full of rainbows and unicorns, wherein some magic list existed that provides the easily-digestible answers to every issue. This is far from the reality we live in though. In reality, the U.S. government tends to be far from efficient, and not very capable of balancing a budget, let alone maintaining any kind of valid list.

As it turns out, people have ended up on no-fly lists before, with no way of knowing why they were on said list, or how to get off of it. It’s like some twisted Schrodinger’s cat thought experiment mixed with a dash of complete bureaucratic incompetency.

People have ended up on no-fly lists due to name mix-ups, random human errors, mere speculation, and outright political discrimination. When you combine this with a complete lack of due process, you end up with people being unfairly screwed over, and prevented from flying due to no fault of their own. To further start stripping these people of their constitutional rights on top of that is a recipe for disaster. The ACLU, for all their numerous faults, have actually rightly protested these no-fly lists.

Allowing the government to root through people’s personal data takes the terrible idea inherent in no-fly lists to the next level. Who exactly is going to be the final arbiter of what’s intended as a joke, and what’s serious? Is the government going to ask you whether you said something in jest, or do they simply get to assume the context behind a statement regardless of the intent? This opens the door for rampant abuse of power.

Keep in mind, a man (Mark Meechan) was prosecuted in Scotland for uploading a video in which he taught his pug to do a Nazi salute. At the beginning of the video, he mentions that he is doing so as a joke, and that he was going to “turn [the dog] into the least cute thing I could think of, which is a Nazi.”

Yet somehow, the fact that the video was intended as a joke was outright disregarded, as the government decided that they, and not Mr. Meechan, would get to be the ones to determine the intent of the video. The government ultimately decided that he intended the video to be pro-Nazi propaganda, and not the joke it was in fact created to be.

The person who made the joke didn’t get to decide his intent, the government did. That is dystopian, and that is what an absolutely idiotic bill like S9191 would be ushering in within the U.S. judicial system.

A bill like this is just another shiny object created by the government to distract everyone from that fact that most high profile shootings could be prevented if our government was simply less incompetent. Law enforcement and the FBI fail time and time again to enforce laws that exist, and properly conduct investigations pertaining to those laws. Look into practically any mass shooting, from Nikolas Cruz, to San Bernardino, to The Pulse Night Club, and you’ll see that just about every one of them could have been prevented if the local police or FBI had done their jobs correctly.

Either the authorities were notified about the individual numerous times and never followed the proper course of action, or the FBI investigated, but never took the necessary steps to prevent the shooter from making a legal gun purchase. All three of the above shootings involved people the FBI had already been investigating, but for whatever reason never followed through on, ultimately allowing 80 deaths to occur.

But hey, lets just strip people of their constitutional rights, instead of holding people whose salaries we pay to any kind of standard as far as actually doing their jobs. That’s the far better alternative, obviously.

 

Wall Street Journal article on bureaucratic incompetency:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fbis-parkland-fail-1519255068

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That Time Angel Soft® Fucked Up

A few months ago, for Father’s Day, Angel Soft tried to be obnoxiously progressive, and it blew up in their faces.  On June 15th, the toilet paper company, who for whatever reason actually has a youtube account, posted a video called: “Happy Father’s Day, Mom”.  Now, anyone capable of rational thought wouldn’t even need to view this video to see where they went wrong right out of the gate.  Obviously, we have a day called Father’s Day for fathers, and a day called Mother’s Day for mothers.  Equality.  No heavy-handed, try-hard, progressive agenda needs to be applied to this situation.  If there only existed a Father’s Day, the premise of this video would actually work.  This isn’t the case however, so the video fails, and hundreds of thousands of eyes collectively roll.

In case you weren’t able to deduce what the video is about yet, it is a series of heartfelt, dramatic testimonials from various individuals, telling stories about how great, and appreciated their mothers are.  In a Father’s Day video.  Not a Mother’s Day video, mind you, but a Father’s Day video.  Why on Earth would a company do this?  After all, it’s sort of like celebrating Black History Month by releasing a video of people giving examples of the accomplishments of white historical figures.  It completely undermines what the entire month or day was created for altogether.  Maybe we can start celebrating Chanukah on Memorial Day, or Halloween on Martin Luther King, Jr Day.  I’ll make sure to thank my toaster for it’s service the next time Veteran’s Day rolls around.

It seems what Angel Soft was trying to do here is cash in on all that popular social justice feminism hashtag gluten madness.  That same madness that is allegedly carried out in the name of equality, all the while exhibiting the very properties of inequality.  Somebody at the company probably thought to themselves: “What hot new trend is going around out there in the streets that we can use to make toilet paper sexy again?”  After 2 minutes on twitter, they found their answer in aimless third-wave entitlement feminism.  “Ah yes!”  The toilet paper lackey exclaimed.  “We’ll take any given situation and focus solely on the female, and write the male out whenever possible.  It’ll be a smash hit!”  Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite the smash hit that Angel Soft has hoped for, and they learned an important life lesson that day.

People were none too thrilled with their fatherless Father’s Day message, and took to the company’s social media profiles to let loose.  Their facebook page, which would receive maybe two comments on each post on a good day, was flooded with over a thousand comments, most of which overwhelmingly criticized the ad for downplaying the importance of fathers on the very day set aside to celebrate them.  Not only that, but facebook users took the opportunity to go back though Angel Soft’s profile and leave snarky comments on all the previous posts.  Posts of children’s art would have comments like: “Is that a mom calling a dad a deadbeat?” or “she’s probably tired from wishing her mom a happy father’s day.” on a posting of a sleeping child.  Many of the posts are quite hilarious.

The barrage of comments continued for a solid month after the Great Father’s Day Debacle of 2015, before tapering off, back to the 2 or 3 comments lonely housewives were previously leaving on the toilet paper company’s facebook page.  It seemed like things were back to normal, with the posting of children’s artwork and constant influx of comments asking about toilet paper coupons, when Angel Soft fucked up again.

On Labor Day, they posted an image of a father (They had started to acknowledge fathers by this point) playing with children on a bed, with the caption “Not All Workers Get Today Off.”  It was by no means the shitstorm of three months earlier, but nonetheless another influx of comments greeted whatever poor individual has the job of handling social media for the dookie paper company.  Some people complained that parenting is a blessing and not a job.  Others complained that plenty of them had to work that very day.  Somebody even played the deployed servicemen card.  Normally, all this social media complaining wouldn’t catch my attention, but I couldn’t help but feel that by this point, people were just waiting around to find things to chastise the company for.  I find that spitefulness to be very funny.

In the end however, I guess any publicity is good publicity, because the company that makes paper to wipe booty holes has over 300,000 likes on facebook.  The Father’s Day joke posts have all but ceased at this point, and people other than lonely middle-aged women are actually posting on their page now.  The funny thing is, the company never once acknowledged any of the angry posts, and seemed to act like they didn’t even exist.  They obviously saw them however, because most of the image posts they’ve put up since actually have men in them, or revolve around fathers.  I have no idea how to end this post.  So, uh, bye I guess.

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Facebook Betas Are Ruining America

Traditionally, the term beta is used to refer to a male who tries to get in a woman’s good graces by doing as little work as necessary.  This usually entails doing things like throwing out compliments or being overly agreeable or helpful towards a woman, merely for the sake of trying to win said woman’s affections, rather than doing those very things simply to be sociable and friendly.  These beta types are often stereotyped as wearing fedora hats and uttering things such as “You first m’lady” and “You wanna come over and play D&D this Saturday?  Maybe afterwards we can watch Dragon Ball Z together if that’s cool with you”.

Facebook betas are people who “like” everything posted by someone whose good graces they’re trying to get in to, whether they actually find the post to be interesting or humorous in the least.  They engage in this constant “like” button mashing because they are hoping to endear themselves to the person in question without actually having to put in the work that would be necessary in a traditional pre-social-network relationship.  Validating somebody’s “posts” in real life would require more than flashing them a thumbs-up.  One would actually need to give some sort of reasoning as to why they though somebody’s shitty instagram picture of absolutely nothing was a great idea to share with everybody, which would no doubt require some degree of lying.

You’ll see this happen a lot when somebody in a social circle has some slight level of fame, success, or is a woman whom the beta male finds appealing.  If someone on facebook constantly posts trite, uninteresting content, yet continues to have a flurry of likes for every uninspired post they make, they clearly have amassed a small army of beta-types vying for their attention.  The individuals who receive all this validation for doing something as banal as taking an overly filtered picture of themselves (if not hundreds), or posting some half-baked, poorly written social commentary, are never ones to reciprocate with the excessive thumbs-upping themselves.  These aren’t relationships of equality, but alpha-beta relationships, borne of one parties constant need for attention and the others need for acceptance.

The problem with these facebook betas, is that their constant positive reinforcement of other people’s narcissistic, feeble posts, establishes an unwarranted sense of accomplishment in the recipient.  The attention-seeking poster is rewarded for constantly engaging in empty, egotistical ventures, and is never held to any kind of standard, insofar as improving their ability to tell a story, formulate an idea, or post a photo that isn’t inherently drenched in vanity.  It’s the social media equivalent of the rise of individuals like Paris Hilton, or Kim Kardashian, who obtained celebrity and fame, all without having any discernible talent.  Mrs Hilton and Kardashian are the alphas in this case, and all those commoners who hold them in high esteem for no good reason are the betas.

This constant beta-fluffing isn’t likely to result in the attention-recipient ever accomplishing anything, or achieving any real degree of success in life however.  The recipient of all these empty compliments develops a skewed sense of reality, wherein they are more interesting, talented, or attractive than they actually are.  These delusions of grandeur bypass the natural order of improvement, which occurs through a series of successes and failures.  If every single thing somebody produces, regardless of quality or significance is praised, that individual never develops a sense of what actually has quality or significance.  Essentially, they are turning in D+ work all their lives, yet constantly receiving “A“s for the minimal degree of effort that is actually invested.

A good example would be the “worst of” contestants on American Idol, or other glorified talent shows.  These contestants apply to these programs, then show up to sing in front of large groups of people, all the while legitimately believing themselves to be accomplished singers.  After they inevitably crash and fail in a cringe-inducing fashion, they always seem to be genuinely confused as to how the judges weren’t absolutely floored by their performances.  As it usually turns out, they had friends who constantly buttered them up with praise and adoration for their horrendous performance skills, so they started to develop delusions of possessing some sort of talent or skill, which they never actually had.  They were never told that they were terrible at singing, so they never felt the need to actually improve, or to find something they were actually good at.

Ultimately, it’s better to have legitimate criticism or praise for the content you put out into the world, rather than receive fake approval or a complete lack of feedback.  A complete lack of feedback is actually better than fake approval, since it tends to drive the ambitious person to continue honing their skills until they finally get the results they are looking for.  People seem to have issues being perfectly honest with others on social media however.  Nobody wants to tell that person who posts 12 pictures of themselves on a daily basis to maybe tone it down a little, because it comes across as desperate and needy, so the empty thumbs up continue to pour in, and the narcissism grows.  You can’t really blame the one inundating social media with self-centered postings however, as social media enables this behavior.  In the physical world, anyone who talks about themselves all the time, or constantly tries to turn the focus of a conversation onto themselves tends to be ignored or disliked, while on social media, this behavior is positively reinforced via some sort of point system.

The way to fix this, is quite obviously to have social media where thumbs-ups are replaced with thumbs-downs.  That way, these beta’s ability to positively reinforce terrible content and narcissistic behavior is greatly limited.  Either the shitty post gets no feedback, or the beta has to actually formulate some sort of thought-out response to leave as a comment.  If you “like” that stupid out-of-focus instagram picture of somebody’s terrible looking food, you’re going to need to actually explain why, since taking the easy way out via a thumb’s up is no longer an option.  Obviously, nobody will ever be truly honest and click a thumbs-down on shitty content though.  That would be far too honest.