So, I made the mistake of reading the comments on a Mark McGowan announcement on Facebook (For the overseas peeps: Mark McGowan is the Premier of Western Australia, who does announcements on COVID-19.).
And, for what seems like the hundredth time in what feels like a long decade of unrelenting crap since February 2020, I am, once again, going to just shake my head and say:
- I am aware that people are reading and watching and being sold a lot of bullshit.
- I am acutely aware that people’s political and scientific literacy is generally low.
- I am pretty critical of our education system, that caters to the average, and fails so many of us, leaving many with poor media literacy and critical thinking skills.
- I believe the QAnon brush is used to silence all dissent about authoritarian overreach – which is mostly just the same old United States fuckery. The Military-Industrial complex doing the same old nonsense they’ve always done in the form of MK Ultra:Internet Version. That’s obvious.
- I’m of the view that this ‘authoritarianism’ problem is largely not an issue in Western Australia, that our government has given us very few reasons not to trust them, but because we live in a global media ecosystem where people receive targeted and personalised bullshit that nudges them in directions we cannot fully contain, and that because the digital industry is full of people with absolutely no scruples nor ethics who will happily take anyone’s money… that it is inevitable that there will be a segment of the population that is vulnerable to radicalisation.
- I’m also across the literature, and know that this largely affects those who are already psychologically, economically or socially vulnerable – due to the psychological, economic and social incentives and punishments that spreading this bullshit gives them, and the psychological, economic and social punishments that have been built-in to the US Corporate weapon of mass distraction.
- I despise what US Corporate midwits and their Banality of Evil have done to the economy, politics, the environment, and the constant human suffering they cause, with seemingly no accountability, and it would be right to assume there is no bottom to the depths of evil they will stoop, and to not trust a word they say, is a good policy all-round.
- I know that people tend to retreat more into certainty, and black and white thinking, and lash out at those who are trying to help them, in times of fear and trauma. Which is what this is.
- I truly understand all of this stuff. I defend people when they are mocked, or called stupid, or whatever. I get annoyed when I see comedians making lazy jokes about COVID anti-vaxxers and QAnon folks from positions of power.
- I generally stay out of the arguments in the comments, unless I feel I can poke someone’s dissonance and I am concerned they’re headed down… that path. That is real. That is lost. That has actual victims and people who are really hurting and really vulnerable and need our care and attention, not our judgement.
- I (mostly) see people who say dumb shit on social media as victims of an existential threat that is so massive in scale and so complex that no single solution and no one person will ever fix it, and the solutions may have even more unintended consequences that are worse than the original problem.
With all of this in mind, and all of this compassion and understanding, I will STILL say:
Holy ever mother-loving shitball fuck are people dumb as a box of hammers, somehow managing to take a sharp 45 degree turn into even more stupid than that, and pour on some crazy to boot.
Good Lord.