Perhaps I commented as the Tentacles Facebook page on a news article about Beto O'Rourke and his campaign to unseat one of the greasiest, most loathsome Canadians ever to sneak into the US Senate. I have written a couple of posts about Tailgunner Ted, he is so reminiscent of Joseph McCarthy in his style and duck-speak that a Wisconsin Sea Monster had to take notice. So I get the feeling that the fundamentalists and authoritarians in Texas are ramped up and extra sensitive about anyone talking smack about their dumb ass senator.
Almost as soon as I posted the last blog about my new troll followers I got another one. This time a genuine Texas fundamentalist Christian clicked the "like" button on the blog's Facebook page. This one is so sophisticated she could not figure out how to change her current city of residence. Her favorite book is the bible, she loves movies about how persecuted the Christians are, but can actually post an occasional item that has nothing to do with politics. I welcome good faith arguments but my time is too valuable to swat down regurgitated talking points from professional liars and pre-chewed memes that confirm authoritarian biases.
So I guess I will post this advisory. You can lurk. You can ask questions in good faith. You can comment on why you think what I post is wrong or mistaken. What you cannot do is flood my posts with duck-speak, word salad, or endless streams of doctored pictures we call memes; okay?
Ted, Michael, and Corena you three can have an opportunity to be actual conservatives. Or you can earn my scorn as re-programmable meat-bags and gullible authoritarian followers without an original thought in your heads. You can continue to be led around the path to poverty and destruction by liars and sociopaths who laugh at how easy it is to get you to jump on command. Or you can step up, learn a few things, and earn your citizenship in our great Republic.
I doubt it, but it's your choice.
I'll say one thing though, if you choose to make a ruckus it will only increase my score in Facebook's algorithm and make my work more visible. More visibility means more likes from my side, more page views for the blog, and more valuable monetization of my writing.
Tuesday, September 4, 2018
Not the kind of publicity I am looking for
There has been an uptick in the number of "likes" this blog's Facebook page has gotten recently. At first I thought that the approaching midterm elections and general rising awareness of just how bad authoritarian government really is was driving it. And we're still talking about a tiny number of people overall, this page is just my hobby after all. I am not really interested in spending money promoting my work or doing the kind of shameless self-promotion necessary to draw a larger following. If people like what I write, great; but I'm not losing any sleep that I don't have more of an impact. The internet is enormous, the choices of political voices to follow are immense, and frankly it is more about expressing myself than winning hearts and minds or anything like that.
However, yesterday I noticed one of the new likes has as his profile page a man riding a horse while wearing a shirt made out of an American flag. Hmm, now that is interesting. So I fumbled around and finally figured out how to look at his page. I'll give you three guesses as to his political leanings and the first two don't count. Oh good, a troll. Then I looked at the next guy, who didn't have a profile picture of his carefully-coiffed, shit-dressed hairstyle. Yup, another one. Both old, white, baby boomers from the confederate states. Both have a huge number of right wing memes posted one after another on their pages. Did I comment on some other page they were trolling and that is how they found me? What are their plans? As far as I can tell don't know each other. A mystery in the making.
I guess this will be an interesting experiment. I haven't attracted trolls in quite a while. The last time I recall was several years ago and that was a one and done word vomit of a comment about guns. Very few of the shared memes and links I saw had even a personal comment from them, and very little interaction from their friends. Can we infer from that that these trolls are nobodies? Speculation can lead to stereotyping but I can't think of any plausible good faith reasons why two baby boomer wingnuts would "like" my page. Question is, are they as lazy and stupid as so many of their peers? Will they delve through my work to muck up my comments? Are they scouting for their handlers back in Moscow? Are they even real people? I have lost count of how many friend requests I have gotten from pretty young ladies with no friends or posts other than some generic landscape pictures. You can just delete those without any problems but how do you handle obnoxious fans on a public page? So far I have not experienced a concerted wingnut attack in my home turf.
It will have to be a "wait and see" situation. But if I had to scuttle the blog's Facebook page I would not lose any sleep over it. If I had to scuttle the blog itself, would I even think twice? Probably not.
Gin and tacos used to have a field day whenever somebody shared one of his posts and their right wing relatives would come and give GnT a hard time after seeing their insolent young liberal child or niece share some "offensive" thing where their snowflake baby boomer ass could see GnT's exquisite take downs of the authoritarians' talking point du jour and get triggered. It was like art watching a professor of political science run circles around these bigoted boomer assholes. If need be I can always take lessons from him.
I want to be very specific here though, many baby boomers aren't like that. Many did march for Civil Rights and against the war with sincerity, and even if they didn't just lived quiet lives not bothering anyone. No these are almost exclusively white men without college degrees who never had life shit on them outside of their control. Getting divorced or alienating their kids was a decision they made because nothing ever forced them to grow up and stop being so selfish. These are the people who at first listened to Rush Limbaugh during commutes or alone at work. Then started listening to Limbaugh clones as they began dominating the AM radio dial. They jumped up on their little hind legs and bleated with joy when Fox News started confirming all of their prejudices. And they got their children to set up email accounts for them so they could share every anonymous chain email that bashed minorities, women, or liberals. Now they use Facebook and Twitter without having much knowledge of how the platforms work. And everything is their business, if they can't butt into someone's conversation they will invent one to provoke a response. Everything is a power play and everything has to be politicized. They are the least self-aware Dunning-Kruger patients imaginable and never met a logical fallacy or hypocritical double standard that they didn't fall in love with.
They love doughfacedonny because he is just like them and just like how they wish they could be with money. Gaudy, boorish, bullies who can use and abuse women anytime they feel like it. Donny is their ideal and his stolen election has given the red hat boomer assholes license to shit all over anything. They act as though they have immunity to any repercussions from their childish behavior. The baby boom generation was born into an almost paradise on Earth, prosperous and safe with good schools and plentiful jobs waiting for them after their school years. But something happened somewhere along the line to a large enough cohort among them and they pulled up the ladder after them, screwing their kids and the planet in the process. They voted for Reagan to cut their taxes once they were really secure in their professions and shred the safety net while giving them war boners with all the Pentagon spending and new toys. It has been a downhill slide since.
I wish beyond reasonable expectations that these guys would finally find a new hobby and leave the rest of us the hell alone. We have quite enough to do to clean up their mess.
However, yesterday I noticed one of the new likes has as his profile page a man riding a horse while wearing a shirt made out of an American flag. Hmm, now that is interesting. So I fumbled around and finally figured out how to look at his page. I'll give you three guesses as to his political leanings and the first two don't count. Oh good, a troll. Then I looked at the next guy, who didn't have a profile picture of his carefully-coiffed, shit-dressed hairstyle. Yup, another one. Both old, white, baby boomers from the confederate states. Both have a huge number of right wing memes posted one after another on their pages. Did I comment on some other page they were trolling and that is how they found me? What are their plans? As far as I can tell don't know each other. A mystery in the making.
I guess this will be an interesting experiment. I haven't attracted trolls in quite a while. The last time I recall was several years ago and that was a one and done word vomit of a comment about guns. Very few of the shared memes and links I saw had even a personal comment from them, and very little interaction from their friends. Can we infer from that that these trolls are nobodies? Speculation can lead to stereotyping but I can't think of any plausible good faith reasons why two baby boomer wingnuts would "like" my page. Question is, are they as lazy and stupid as so many of their peers? Will they delve through my work to muck up my comments? Are they scouting for their handlers back in Moscow? Are they even real people? I have lost count of how many friend requests I have gotten from pretty young ladies with no friends or posts other than some generic landscape pictures. You can just delete those without any problems but how do you handle obnoxious fans on a public page? So far I have not experienced a concerted wingnut attack in my home turf.
It will have to be a "wait and see" situation. But if I had to scuttle the blog's Facebook page I would not lose any sleep over it. If I had to scuttle the blog itself, would I even think twice? Probably not.
Gin and tacos used to have a field day whenever somebody shared one of his posts and their right wing relatives would come and give GnT a hard time after seeing their insolent young liberal child or niece share some "offensive" thing where their snowflake baby boomer ass could see GnT's exquisite take downs of the authoritarians' talking point du jour and get triggered. It was like art watching a professor of political science run circles around these bigoted boomer assholes. If need be I can always take lessons from him.
I want to be very specific here though, many baby boomers aren't like that. Many did march for Civil Rights and against the war with sincerity, and even if they didn't just lived quiet lives not bothering anyone. No these are almost exclusively white men without college degrees who never had life shit on them outside of their control. Getting divorced or alienating their kids was a decision they made because nothing ever forced them to grow up and stop being so selfish. These are the people who at first listened to Rush Limbaugh during commutes or alone at work. Then started listening to Limbaugh clones as they began dominating the AM radio dial. They jumped up on their little hind legs and bleated with joy when Fox News started confirming all of their prejudices. And they got their children to set up email accounts for them so they could share every anonymous chain email that bashed minorities, women, or liberals. Now they use Facebook and Twitter without having much knowledge of how the platforms work. And everything is their business, if they can't butt into someone's conversation they will invent one to provoke a response. Everything is a power play and everything has to be politicized. They are the least self-aware Dunning-Kruger patients imaginable and never met a logical fallacy or hypocritical double standard that they didn't fall in love with.
They love doughfacedonny because he is just like them and just like how they wish they could be with money. Gaudy, boorish, bullies who can use and abuse women anytime they feel like it. Donny is their ideal and his stolen election has given the red hat boomer assholes license to shit all over anything. They act as though they have immunity to any repercussions from their childish behavior. The baby boom generation was born into an almost paradise on Earth, prosperous and safe with good schools and plentiful jobs waiting for them after their school years. But something happened somewhere along the line to a large enough cohort among them and they pulled up the ladder after them, screwing their kids and the planet in the process. They voted for Reagan to cut their taxes once they were really secure in their professions and shred the safety net while giving them war boners with all the Pentagon spending and new toys. It has been a downhill slide since.
I wish beyond reasonable expectations that these guys would finally find a new hobby and leave the rest of us the hell alone. We have quite enough to do to clean up their mess.
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