Tag Archives: Fox News

Hearts of Darkness

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For the first time in a long time, I clicked on an Instagram story of a friend. It was a video of a Kid Carson podcast who, from what I’ve been able to glean, is trying to be the Canadian Joe Rogan. Carson used to be a radio guy here in the Great White North until he went on a pro “freedumb convoy” conspiracy rant on-air and was (quite justifiably, in my opinion) fired.

Anyway, in this video of his podcast, Kid goes on about how all 190-something nations part of the World Health Organization (WHO) are going to vote to give the organization “limitless power” over how countries deal with pandemics. Don’t forget, dear listener, that the WHO is funded by none other than… Bill Gates! Jesus Christ on a cracker, I watched about 3 minutes of this 6-minute video and my head almost exploded.

As for my friend who posted it, at least some members of their family have been sucked down the FOX News rabbit hole, so I shouldn’t be surprised that they’ve gone and jumped in to see what all the fuss was about. I wanted to reach out to this person and try to talk sense into them, but I know it won’t work. They will have some fallacious argument or unprovable rationalization at the ready; parroting some talking point from a big-mouthed, right-wing batshit nutjob.

I was disappointed and sad. My friend is such a kind and loving person, as is their entire family, but they’re spewing this conspiracy bullshit like sprinkles on a sundae – and it’s dangerous.

Distraught and upset, I reached out to my dear friend and world-renowned skeptic, Gordon Bonnet (check out his blog, Skeptophilia. It’s what’s for breakfast). I said to him, “I have this nagging feeling that we’re witnessing the fall of civilization.”

Gordon, unfortunately, has experience with people who’ve gone off the deep end and I was hoping he’d have some insight on how to navigate these waters. At the very least I knew he’d empathize with my situation. His suggestion was to leave them be. Hard as it is to admit, sometimes the only play is to walk away. This is fine on a small scale, but the slow goose step towards a fascist hellscape continues seemingly unabated. What the hell can we do about that? We have to do something, right? Left unchecked, those incapable of reason and critical thought will steamroll right into the vault and rob the rest of us blind.

Stephen King once said, “The effective half-life of evil is always relatively short.” The problem is they can do a hell of a lot of damage in a very quick amount of time. Just look at what happened with just four years of the tangerine shitgibbon in the White House. In the snap of a finger, the United States is on the cusp of rolling back reproductive rights that have been in place for two generations.

So what is there to do?

I have no idea, to be honest. This macro-scale stuff is beyond complicated (practically, not conceptually) but on the micro-scale taking Gordon’s suggestion and letting go is a good start – and that’s what this post is. Letting go. There’s an old saying, “If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it is yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.”

I hope these friends come back, I truly do, but they’re going to have to do it on their own.

~ Andrew

Related Reading:

“Fact” = Fiction

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* This post contains language which some may find offensive *
  1. Fact: something that actually exists; reality; truth
  2. Fiction: something feigned, invented, or imagined; a made-up story
  3. “Fact”: See #2.
Thanks to Dictionary.com for the definitions for #1 and #2. I added the third one. I added it because it would appear that there some people out there that are confused. That’s not normally a problem in of itself but it would appear that there are an inordinately large number of confused people who are also loud… and have internet connections.
Perhaps you have seen this meme (in red on the left) floating around on the internet?
Refutations to Anti-Vaccine Memes
 
As the side on the right (cleverly put together by the folks credited tot image) shows, it’s really easy to make stuff up. The problem is a lot of really loud, ignorant people, are too lazy to do a simple Google search to check to see what level of bullshit it contains. The falsified information presented to them supports a position they already hold and they latch onto it like their lives, and everyone else’s, depend on it. My friend Gordon over at Skeptophilia has done numerous posts on this. In fact, if confirmation bias doesn’t come up more often than any other single topic on his site I’d be surprised.  
It would be one thing if this was  limited  to a few internet memes but unfortunately it’s not. Apparently misinformation isn’t limited to the 1’s and 0’s of the World Wide Web. It’s infested our news outlets as well. Of course not all of them, but there are a few out there that don’t seem to care much about actual facts so long as what they’re saying supports their position. The real problem with this is that these questionable news sources are funded by some astonishingly rich, racist, elitist men – who also fund lobbyists, politicians, and their political parties. 
There used to be a time when things were different. Before information was published, in any form, it had to be fact checked. That is to say, there needed to be actual research done to substantiate what was being said. Whether it was an eyewitness, a document, or a peer reviewed research paper… there was always something to back up the claim. Apparently none of that matters any more and what we’re left with is a bunch of people yelling at each other, ideologies firmly in hand. The really scary part? The only one left standing will be the one with the most money and the loudest voice.  
I saw a FOX News piece rhyming off some statistic that was the complete opposite of the truth. A simple Google search would have pointed you to numerous government websites that provided the correct information but they ran with the lie because guess what? It’s all Obama’s fault. Someone I know pointed out that the statistic, reported correctly was still an indication of a poor economic forecast, but guess what? That’s not the conversation that was happening. It wasn’t a question about what constitutes economic prosperity. It was a question about the propagation of lies. A point lost entirely on my acquaintance – and a whole lot of people just like him. 
So where does that leave us? Well, at absolute best there are people who are condoning the spreading of false information and at worst there are those who encouraging it. 
The great Richard Feynman once said, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” Well I’m sure he’s rolling over in his grave  because apparently simply being an opinionated asshole with axe to grind qualifies you to be a scientist these days. 
Dictionary.com includes a “difficulty index” for all their words. It’s a measure of how many English speaking people are likely to know the word. 
For the word “fact” it tells us that, “All English speakers likely know this word”, but for the word “fiction” we get, “Most English speakers likely know this word.” I added the emphasis to highlight my point. “Most” is not the same as “all”. Written mathematically: most < all, which means that there are some people out there that don’t know the difference between fact and fiction. These are people perpetuating memes like the one on the left at the start of this post. These people should not be allowed to have internet access. 
What angers me most is that we, the scientifically minded rational thinkers of the world, the ones that know the difference between fact and fiction, spend so much time defending our position only to have it wiped out in one 5 minute misinformation segment on FOX News or one blatantly false infographic on some spurious website. And it’s not limited to Autism or vaccines or GMOs. It’s climate change, it’s institutionalized racism, the economic state of North America, democracy… the list goes on, seemingly forever, and it’s fucking exhausting defending against it. 
Well if it’s war they want then they’ve certainly got it. My biggest fear though, is that they’ll win it through attrition because too many people, just like myself, are tired and just want some peace and quiet and a good night’s sleep. I’m so goddamn fed up with all the ignorant assholes with loud voices ruining my quiet time. Fuck you, ignorant assholes! Fuck you to hell and back you sorry pieces of shit. /endrant
~ Andrew

The Power of the Internet

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I am fortunate enough to have experienced the creation of one of the greatest inventions of all time: the Internet. Granted, there were a whole lot of events that had to transpire over several decades before it became accessible outside of military or academic circles, but when it did… it’s hard to argue that it didn’t have a major impact on society.

Image Courtesy Wikipedia

Much like anything else it didn’t take long for the Internet to become commercialized. Rest assured (and if you read my last post this won’t come as a surprise) if there’s a newer/better/faster/easier way to sell you something then the people selling it are going take advantage.

Then something interesting happened. People started using the Internet for something that wasn’t commerce. Of course, traditional media outlets began (and continue) to use the Internet as a cheap and easy way to get your attention, driving you to their paid services and racking up page views to satisfy deep-pocketed advertisers, but ordinary people also started to use it to share their message. They quickly realized that there was the potential to reach a tremendous audience and in less than a decade the Internet became the greatest resource the world has ever seen.

As with anything that’s publicly available and unregulated you’re going to get quite a wide collection of individuals involved. The Internet user community is, unsurprisingly, just a reflection of society as a whole. One quick peak and you’ll find:

  • the innovators; 
  • the salespeople; 
  • the socially conscience; 
  • the clueless; 
  • the intellectual (and the intellectually deficient); 
  • the radicals; and of course, 
  • the liars and the cheats. 
If you need to put “fair & balanced” in your logo
I have news for you…

It’s not just corporations like FOX News that are in on the game either. Sometimes our cravings for attention and the insatiable need for our 15 minutes of fame take control, and sometimes the less honourable see an opportunity to take advantage of the good nature of others. If you’re on Facebook you have most certainly seen the posts. The ones where some tear-jerking picture is accompanied by some text that reads “If I get a million ‘likes’ then…” or “So and so or this and that needs your help!”

Some of these are undoubtedly true… and some most certainly are not. I choose to focus on the good. It takes a bit more energy but the end result is worth it (my favourite sources of truth are currently Snopes and Skeptophilia). With just a little bit of research and minimal digging the same Internet that brings you the lie also brings the lie and the people behind it to light. Just as easily, the Internet can be used to affect positive change, and as it turns out there are more people out there using their powers for good instead of evil.

I firmly believe in the power of the Internet and all of its social media sub-components. Aside from allowing everyday folks like myself to have a voice, it can bring people together and affect change like never before.

Just ask Egypt.

~ Andrew