Sunday Thoughts November 05, 2023

A thing to watch as we hurdle toward the 2024 election is how people respond to the mass media and the army of people online who exist to respond to the mass media. Lots of people turned online media criticism into a career during the 2016 election and now they are sort of a weird counter-establishment that is as entrenched as the people they critique. That is something I noticed with the fake Ukraine story that is the heart of the show this week. The critics accepted the fakery without question.

The dynamic between critic and his object of criticism is something like an old couple that quarrels all the time in that the two sides have come to be defined by their quarreling. All those people who got rich in internet money chanting about fake news in the Trump years found out they needed the fake news to keep their act going, so they now treat the regime media with much more respect. They will still do their fake news act, but it is much more selective.

This popped off the screen with the Israel – Gaza stuff. Many of the fake news warriors happily trumpeted the claims from the media, as if the people who have lied about everything to this point were suddenly telling the truth. Breitbart quickly became unreadable due to the total lack of skepticism about the claims coming from the Zionists. No one should be shocked or offended that the Zionists are screaming for blood, but no one should take their claims at face value.

Then there is the fact that people are tired of repeats. The war in the Levant is a reboot of the Bush franchise and no one wants any part of it. Rebooting the Trump franchise, along with the MAGA stuff, the fake news stuff, the on-line media criticism, may meet a similar fate. It is not just that people are not interested in a Biden - Trump reboot, it is that they may not be interested in all of the stuff that comes with it, including the platforms like Twitter.

It all feels like we are at the end of the road in some way. The reboot of the meme war that is coming will not be all that interesting. The reboot of the MAGA rallies will not be fun. The tsunami of lies from the lie machine will not be worth fighting. None of this stuff feels like it is worth the effort, even if you want to be outraged. As the kids used to say, it is all fake a gay. If the mass of people come to that conclusion, things could get very weird in 2024.

Topics

* Fakes News (Link) (Link)

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