I joked a few months ago about betting @bonenado I could make it to 100,000 by this next Pinkyblogversary and then promptly slid out of the fast track. On purpose. But I'm still doing ok. Last year I was at 22,300 on my one year anniversary. As of writing this sentence I'm spot on 61,600 just under a month till my 2nd anniversary, so I've not only doubled, but nearly tripled. I'm sure I could have done better, but I'm not going to kick myself. I've watched a lot of people playing the blog game over the last ten years, and I'll stick by what I've always said- this dedicated blog property is officially declared bounce rate efficient by google analytics and heavily controlled for bots and spam. Numbers are just numbers until you lay the autopsy out on the table.
I tend to let thoughts percolate for months before I finally put a finger on whatever, and I've decided lately that the narcissism jabs I see in other places should be using a different term instead of lumping something they don't like about someone else into a disorder, because that really does undermine the actual disorder and people getting real help. How about we just call it like we see it, ok? I think "attention hog" would be a better term. And I think some of the people who point are just as deserving of that term as the people they very publicly pretend not to point to.
Attention hogs butt into convos, draw comments away from the originator, collect 'friends' like trading cards, turn awareness about #allthethings other people deal with into a competition over their own growing stash of compassion, and parasite off others in order to feed themselves. It's your basic bad manners thing.
This is probably the last time I'll bring that up. I'm so done with 'friends' whining about each other and the tiffs and tussles and hurt feelings. I'm not understanding why people who've known each other for several years online can't let go of each other if a whole year is slipping by and the same hurt feelings keep coming up over and over. In one case, I feel like I'm watching a married couple pouting, but they live on different continents, so it's just weird. I mean, even if I lurk only once a month, I see the same thing over and over. Do you guys not notice how redundant you are? *wow* I'd like to think we've evolved beyond monkeys flinging poop and acting surprised if someone flings back. Just because we do it digitally and virtually now doesn't mean we've risen above exactly that.
But maybe you're not supposed to notice. The whole point to social media is brain training the masses.
I don't care about either side of the argument in this vid, I could care less who is right or wrong, because I've been saying all this has been part of human history for so long anyway that it's already who we are. What this youtuber missed, though, is how smooth doublethink is. Every bit of this is about embracing 2 conflicting ideas at the same time. It's not about awareness and beliefs and truth, it's about being so slick that you don't realize you just agreed with something you disagree with, and now you'll go around reinforcing it because you don't realize there is a double meaning. I'm not talking about the Illuminati or the alchemy blurt or Stefani's confessions or hidden meanings, I'm talking about the researcher himself making it through this entire discussion without once realizing the doublethink was already planted. He thought he caught the alchemy, big deal neal. He didn't catch the concept that speaking to preformed society about freedom to choose is a controlled guide through a cattle chute. There is no freedom. If there were true freedom, we wouldn't even have the need to bring up freedom to choose being an option.
There is fear out there that Stefani will be murdered like other big stars for spilling the beans and rising up against the fame machine that made her. I see her still playing the game here. She didn't once cross the line. All good players know what lines not to step over. She is speaking to an audience who have been playing the game since birth. I mean, look at the college they're in. And I don't believe for one second that Mark Z. wasn't pressured on all sides and had the choice to say no.
This is not new stuff. My dad was saying all this stuff back in the 70s. It's all over the webs now. There is no excuse not to know this stuff. And frankly, I don't think it's dire. It simply just is.
Dire Warnings From Past U.S. Presidents and Other High-Profile Leaders About an “Invisible Government” That Runs the U.S. With “No Allegiance To the People”
All the moaning and fussing and flinging going on out there, all the emotions sparking- you guys are being brain trained to react certain ways on purpose. The more something or someone on social media (or talk radio, or whatever) affects you emotionally, the easier it is to create doublethink in your head. Pictures of animal abuse and political hate scroll by. "I hate people." A kitten or ducklings are saved on a highway. "Faith in humanity restored." Do you not see them doing this to you... Srsly, that is so ridiculous it's all I can do to stay on social media at all sometimes, but dang it, I'm on a mission.
As long as we snark out things like 'narcissist' when someone doesn't respond to us the way we want and then turn around and share loving all the beautiful things memes, we don't see that we are literally being split in half. We become part of the big machine, jerking each other around in rhythm, all because social media brain trains us to step up and play the game and shit on those who don't, even if they are polite about saying 'no', the way Lady Gaga was modeling for us.
She knew going into this that the industry training was a one-way ticket, and she still pays the price. There are so many people out there caught in the giant web of pretense and allegory, and now it's shedding down to us at the street level, and we're all caught between this pressure to perform and the belief that we are free to choose not to.
You know why so many people are critically anxious and depressed? Because from the very start, we've lived this dichotomy and don't know how to reconcile it. Fortunately, aspienado is like the Electric Monk and has no problem believing many mutually exclusive yet coexisting ideas without frying circuits. You know, like knowing when a meme is just a meme, not a trigger.
I really wish the youtuber doing the narrative about his research (and pushing his book sales, don't forget that) had done something with the 'digital matrix' phrase of the facebook part of the discussion. How long have I been saying one day we'll be using brain chips to tweak brain waves to control depression and anxiety?
Some of you are going oh thank god this wasn't minecraft, the rest of you are grumbling go back to minecraft. Or something.
I dug my bitch music out today for the road into town. Got more thinking done.
