I stopped watching as many tumble people [two years] after I realized it was making me mad. I thought “hey why not track the updates of people you (me) actually have met in person rather than forklogans from the internet that I don’t have a realistic idea of?” This was a stupid idea. I traded tumblr for the facebook I had ignored since I signed up and it was just as dumb.

Hey did you hear that something blew up in Boston last week? What I got from this explosion business –being emotionally detached from things that I don’t directly experience– was the face book face folk behaved exactly as I thought they would (nobody I encountered in public mentioned it). A few had legitimate worry or concern, and some others had to grasp at whatever they could to -appear- concerned, because corporate public relations departments are our strongest role models. This fortunately did not happen nearly to the extent that it did after the twin tower situation, although I haven’t been watching television, and I wrote that sentence after only one day of it.

Oh excuse me, I shall watch my terminology in the future. Right, in the aftermess of the initial mess some of the people started complaining about “the media” not leaving them alone, and also that “the media” got facts wrong, and then THIS showed up. In the lower right corner is a url for a page on facebook “conspiracy2012andbeyond.” Facebook is very much “the media” and if there was a conspiracy facebook would be in on it. Tell Lie Vision can’t actually watch you back yet. The 1980s model in the picture certainly cannot and may have been deliberately broken for other reasons.

One thing that seems to be increasing is the tendency for those who criticize the behavior of others to point out “death and disaster happen EVERY DAY in this country or that.” I think people are entitled to grief, provided it is their own. The trouble is when America expects other countries to sympathize with its grief, and then they do, even though America has never shown an inclination to pay this back unless a disaster meets a minimum threshold for publicity. As if there is some chart like outside a trabant “your disaster must be this famous to get recognition from Americans” and then its exposure is way over done and underthought, with celebrities and music videos all over it, to the degree that it seems like a marketing campaign for a product and not something that people have gotten dead from (see also: Kony, unless you’re like me and only found out about it after the point when people were laughing at other people for having seen it and fed it dollars).

Some of the slightly less cynical types still do nothing but reblog solid garbage all day, just of a more saccharinely “inspirational” tone, and it was hard to notice the difference from before. I can imagine someone thinking “i will look truly moral and righteousness if i “share” THIS…” and it would have to be imagined because I don’t reckon that much thinking occurs.

and they like it that way. Think too much and you’ll notice that this is actually an ADVERTISEMENT for a total scam. But since the only form of expression that you respond to is made like an advertisement, you no longer notice.

Another person watches a page that insists every disaster in this America country was perpetrated by the government to further its aim of taking Our Guns (despite the government exhibiting more interest in taking Our Roms), or the banks because they control the government, and sure enough they came up with an in-character angle on this.

One of them had SURELY discovered evidence of a conspiracy when a page begging for “likes” about the bombs had supposedly been made hours or days prior to the attack. Ha! Got em! But that can’t be it because there is no reason that would be part of the plan. “hey chums our false flag terrorism will NEVER SUCCEED if we don’t have a facebook page about it ready to go immediately!” and quickly the thing became stuffed with comments from boraxes saying the equivalent of “Oh ho! found out about you! This page was made yesterday!” repeatedly, because nobody reads the comments before theirs, because they want to think they are the first to say something, even though each only came because someone else told them that.

Intermittently there were ignored cries of “you can change the name of a page!,” . The implication, which none of the defenders had the clarity of mind to include, was that the page had been made for another purpose, which must not have worked too well since nobody knew about it, and the page owner retrofitted the page to be about the explosion situation, a guaranteed “like” getter, for some reason, which is therefore also scummy.

People who were aware that the page wasn’t a conspiracy had no complaints; it was just an honest hard working person trying to leech weird disaster popularity from an act of terrorism. There are probably thousands of empty facebook pages just waiting for caking news of a disaster or fad (often both) so that the page’s name can quickly be changed to be about the disfadster, because that is faster than making a new page, and then golly! looks like *I* had the first page about this dumb fad which means I am a visionary with BIG THOUGHTS who should get the most credit for RECOGNIZING its popularity that I had nothing to do with.

This is not quite a conspiracy but rather a side-effect of a system that validates people for not really doing anything, and they are such sick twits that they don’t even care that they use death and dismemberment to do it. It looks like the person was actually in Egypt, and therefore less likely to have had an immediate emotional response than I did, but no more excusable for thinking “I bet I can score some points that mean nothing with this.” But then, the idiots who “like” the page are generally Americans from my earlier category who think it is their public duty to appear to support causes and make sure everyone knows that their hearts go out to the victims. Unless one of the victims actually needs a heart transplant… better change the slogan to “prayers!” I can pray or claim to have prayed without giving up anything. I can also pray without telling anybody, since I’m supposed to be asking God for help, after all, but then nobody could know how grand and humble I was for saying I prayed.

Even after I typed all this apparently the snobopes concluded from their end that no conspiracy had occurred, but again had nothing to say about what sort of a reprobate would make that page at all. And apparently there was more than one of them!

My hearts and thoughts go out to the souls of corporate executives and their fans who think they’re preserving theirs by saying their hearts go out every time something awful happens.
Maybe if your hearts would stay IN you wouldn’t be such scrumbags.

Well golly Jeno’s pizza rolls I take back everything I said about automated or reflexory, empty birthday messages making me feel worse than if nobody had said anything. Wells Fargo’s heart goes out to my birthday.

I understand that you have heritage and good old time values, wells fargo, and ideally won’t be laundering cartel money like the bank you took over, but your stage coach just makes me think of slow deliveries and susceptibility to desperadoes

Oh what was I talking about? Oh yes, using my criticism of people exploiting a tragedy for pointless internet gains to make myself a website entry.

I got this email Friday morning.
Yeah, sure. Like I hate terrorism. First of all NO I am NOT signed up for updates and second it just seems sarcastic.

Terrorism is NOT allowed at this treehouse.

Yeah that should do it. Maybe it IS sarcastic.

This looks like the logo for a dos game from 1994 or a WaR3z group from 1998, and they would be saying YES, because the only people who take a graphic like this seriously are people who support it because it doesn’t actually mean anything to them except crazy cartoon carnage.

Obviously this has been set up by the same dork who made the other page, who just invited everybody who commented on it. The question is if this is merely a creep looking for “likes” in the most dashin’ desperate places or a naive 13 year old who really thinks this is necessary.

It isn’t like the fearsome “drugs” of the early 1990s. Saying NO at it won’t solve anything. Saying NO didn’t even solve that!

I was GOING to terror but then I saw a graphic that told me I shouldn’t.
Personally avoiding its use won’t protect you from harm. Although this only wants me to say no to the emotion terror, and often, when terrified, people scream “NO!” anyway, and that doesn’t help anything. As that picture of Mr. Rogers with text superimposed over it that keeps being “share”ed at me says, I should focus on those who are helping.

no, not that one

I think it was another one

keep looking…

Oh well I’ll find it eventually.

My point isn’t to denigrate people for having an emotional response, just for imitating one and trying to turn it into a gimmick mass-consumable, or for consuming it. Everything has to be a commodity. You don’t even need to think “shock” or “sadness” for yourself; just press a button, as with everything else. Like Doritos it comes in a variety of flavors, each with a slightly different configuration of unholy photoshop ingredients that mean nothing on their own, so that it is difficult to disassemble and reveal to be lacking in personal investment cheese. I am not good with analogies. Analogies are also a commodity.

People expected machines to put them out of jobs, but not out of feelings, and so they had no defense from it. They don’t even know it happened. Those who endlessly pass along inspirational tripe don’t seem inspired to do anything else but that. When a disaster occurs in their country it doesn’t disrupt this passive button-clicking routine; the images show up on schedule and there is still just a button to press to keep them going. You could say it didn’t disrupt my routine of pessimistic criticism either, but this is my personal matter and it brings glory to no master memester, and certainly not to me. I do this because I am annoyed and I am aware that I do it. Sometimes I wish I wouldn’t, but the sooner I do it the sooner I’m done.

I must try not to abuse this power. Because then somebody might point out that by typing “fake quotes” into google I will see that people have already done this, and also with benjamin franklin. Can I help it if there is a lot of stuff he hasn’t said? I believe I already made it plain that I am not somebody who helps.

Oh jolly good.

I am not currently open for help trades.

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I do believe there are legitimate conspiracies out there but they aren’t going to be given away by typing anger at a facebook page.

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Soon things should get back to normal around here, which is truly worrisome since things have always been strange here.

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I tried to find the piece I wrote about dumb viagra advertisements with the search snake by typing “viagra” and that consistently caused an error. Is that something I told it to do at some point?