Is Eau De B.S. The New Patchouli?
There was a time when I found it quaint to see chemtrails posters festooning the cafés of our Rainbow Region, with their terrifying claims and dire grammar. I was tickled by the slavish devotion of my friends to the latest super-food served up by the lucrative healthy eating industry, and the way that a humble herb could be assigned with the power to solve every problem known to society.
We chose not to vaccinate our own kids in the 90s after being handed a dog-eared manila folder filled with horror stories from the immunisation front line. Not that I thought it doesn’t work for anybody, but it was just not for us. I was a connoisseur of conspiracy theories, shouted from soap-boxes in Sydney’s Domain, and was fascinated by how “free thinkers” could be duped by the most self-serving of gurus. It was endearing, harmless even.
The age of social media has changed all that.
Now that we are living through a true global crisis, I find my once comforting Facebook echo chamber reverberating with an ever more polarising din of fiercely held views gleaned almost entirely from YouTube propaganda and bleakly partisan memes.
The problem with the social media business model is that the only currency is clicks. There is no prize for integrity, accountability is pitifully absent, and sheer deception is rewarded even by those who recognise it. Many people even share the vile rhetoric spat from the mouths of their avowed foes just to demonstrate how delinquent these people are, seemingly unaware that every share is a reward, and every click is encouragement to continue along the same deranged path.
Fear and outrage are the drivers of the social media business model, and any hint of nuance is punished with a barrage of meaningless propaganda or accusations that the person questioning is, in fact, the gullible one. Like George Bush Jr diplomacy, you are either with us or against us.
Much of this so-called Truth is generated in Russian troll farms or fossil fuel funded think-tanks. In their crusade to discredit the science of climate change, conservatives have intentionally dismantled our trust in science and crippled our powers of critical thinking. Well-funded organisations identify and mercilessly exploit endemic, often justified fears within the progressive side of politics, thereby harnessing an army of social media warriors who spread their misinformation and exacerbate fault-lines on the political left. Divide and conquer. The Russian government, hell bent on dismantling society in the USA have the perfect tools in social media and a willing fool in the Whitehouse who is happy to encourage the notion that truth consists of a number of different alternatives. Every time we unwittingly share one of these memes, we undermine the very freedom of our own society.
It’s so tempting to just hit the share button when you see some post that jives with your personal world view, even if you don’t really know what the source is. I know I’ve done it.
Suddenly, the so-called mainstream media, which at least has accountability to their shareholders, their readership, the government in some cases, defamation law, etc, is considered to publish only fabrications, while anything that reeks of bullshit is TRUMPeted as Truth just because it appears on YouTube. Any attempt to withdraw a video from circulation, no matter how untruthful or deceptive it may be, is held by many to be proof that it is actually true, and that the dreaded “they” are too frightened to let it remain on view.
You don’t need to be a trained journalist or an expert to make a YouTube video, just a good performer. Many of these videos are highly produced to achieve maximum manipulation of our senses, making them difficult to disbelieve, even if they are sheer propaganda.
Back in February, when the COVID-19 news story became Godzilla, I predicted that the first person to link the incendiary topic of 5G with the epidemic would make their fortune. Better still, throw in vaccination for added clicks. This is not because of my psychic powers, but because I have made YouTube videos myself, and I know how the paradigm works.
Still, I was shocked when so many of my friends rabidly shared a video created not by a virologist or specialist in EMF, but a professional liar who has made his career publishing books about reptilian shape-shifting aliens who supposedly crossed the galaxy in order to work in a bank….wearing a tie!
That sure puts a commute from the western suburbs into perspective! I wonder what the exchange rate will be when they get back to their home planet with all those dollars?
The result of all this is that we now live in a post-truth society where a narcissistic sociopath who lies from the moment he opens his eyes until whenever he finally stops tweeting in the early hours can be elected to the most powerful position in the world – complete with control over enough nuclear weapons to turn the entire planet into a toxic wasteland at the touch of a button.
Is this the free-loving society that the Aquarius founders imagined?
