Nice essay on the merde-ification of public information and discourse. My predicament has been deciding which Beast to starve. My concern is less for my entertainment and more for my freedom, and I'm definitely not having fun. Is truth indeed nowhere (to be found)? A Welsh proverb holds that "truth shines in the dark". A Portuguese proverb says "truth is the most horrible joke of all." Ambrose Bierce called it "an ingenious compound of desirability and appearance." The Old Testament proverb (XXIII) advises: "Buy the truth, and sell it not." Even earlier, Confucius opined, "The aim of the superior man is truth." Do we have a choice? Keep it real, keep on truckin'.
It's like you've climbed inside my head and pulled out every thought I've been thinking lately. Following the madness on the Massie ousting last night, I'm so over culture and politics right now. It all feels so nihilistic right now.
This is another fantastic piece, Bridget! This is absolutely right, something that has troubled me for some time, and it only seems to be getting worse. Thank you for calling it out so clearly.
What would happen if the Internet and its algorithms went down, worldwide, for good?Would we start getting along with each other? Or would we still destroy each other anyway? Is this rot about something more? Is our brokenness only Western? If Trump never existed, would we have invented another version? How have other civilizations deteriorated and have they been able to stop or change course? Why do we feed the beast of attention and how do we stop?
Your not just hilarious, Bridget. Your also an absolutely brilliant thinker! Yes, we are all Alex Jones now and it has been to the major detriment of this country. It is understandable how we got here. All of our institutions our broken, corrupted and partisan. It is also the case that things that were thought to be conspiracy theories turned out to be true. When the government and other major institutions in American life lie to people and aren’t transparent, cranks, conspiracy theories, pseudo-science, and paranoia will fill that void. The 2010s and 2020s are the Golden Age of Conspiracy Theories. When historians 100 years from now, they’ll remember these two decades as the time in history when everyone went insane and everybody was at war with everybody. Societal trust is at 0% now. Everybody these days embraces conspiracy theories and traffics in them. Whether it be President Trump, the two major parties, celebrities, podcasters, YouTubers, activists, influencers, you name it, everybody wears the tin foil hat these days.
What Donald Trump has done is to lift up the curtain and show us the worst versions of ourselves and expose how the veneer of civilization quickly fades and we revert to the jungle with the right incentives. Donald Trump in a way is sort of like the Joker in the Dark Knight, as he has shown us that the Joker’s famous quote in the movie is absolutely true. Allow me to quote him now, “"You see, their morals, their code, it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show you. When the chips are down, these... these civilized people, they'll eat each other. See, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve."
YouTubers and Podcasters like Joe Rogan, Hasan Piker, Theo Von, David Pakman, Jimmy Dore, Kyle Kulinski, Tim Pool, Politics Girl, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Dave Rubin, Megyn Kelly, Ben Shapiro, Medias Touch, Pod Save America, and Ezra Klein and political YouTube channels and communities like BreadTube and PragerU play on our worst impulses and warp people’s mind and turn them against their family, friends and fellow Americans for clicks and Patreon donations. Politicians and political parties do it for votes. Comedians whether they be on the left like Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, James Corden, Conan O’Brien, Trevor Noah, Seth Meyers, and the cast of SNL or they be on the right like Tony Hinchcliffe, Shane Gillis, Andrew Schultz, Greg Gutfeld, Adam Carolla, Rob Schneider, Nick DiPaolo, and Dave Landau do it for laughs.
The mainstream media does it for ratings and profits. The elites do it to divide us so we can’t unite to fight them and keep going about their dirty business as usual. Returning to the podcasters Bridget was speaking of, yes, they change their positions based on what their audiences want to hear. No one has any principles anymore. Everyone has turned into Fox News circa 2011. People will believe anything and everything their told these days. They’ll believe Joe Biden stole an election, Bill Clinton is a sexual predator, Donald Trump is protecting pedophiles and is a Russian asset, the elites eat children, Zionists run the United States and are responsible for all the problems in the world, the Democrats are socialists, the Republicans are Nazis, Elon Musk is a Nazi, take your pick. The press has lied to us about so much: Russiagate, Ukrainegate, Charlottesville, COVID-19, Very Fine People on Both Sides, January 6th, Nick Sandmann, Kyle Rittenhouse, Saddam having WMDs, numerous wars, the torture program during the War on Terror, Julian Assange, the “mostly peaceful protests” during the Summer of 2020, and so much more.
So how is anyone supposed to be confident in what the truth is or what reality is? What happens when nobody can agree on basic facts or definitions of words? The fabric of society comes apart. We start to turn on each other and fight each other. Families are destroyed, marriages broken, friendships ended in an instant, and relationships torn asunder. What we can we do about all this? We need to starve the attention economy and stop giving it the time of day. We can be unifiers instead of dividers. We can keep an open mind about politics and listen to voices across the spectrum. We can read news sources that are dedicated to being unbiased like C-Span, Tangle News, The Free Press, Straight Arrow News, 1440, Ground News, The Flip Side, and Both Sides News. Support amazing grassroots organizations like Braver Angels, Unify America, BridgeUSA, The Listen First Project, Builders, Beyond Barriers USA, FAIR, One America Movement, Living Room Conversations, the National Institute for Civil Discourse, The Village Square, Interfaith America, the Greater Good Science Center, More in Common, and Weave: the Social Fabric Project.
You continue to kill it with your writing, your podcasts too, but your writing is magic.
Bridget, you nailed it! That’s the world we live in today.
Spot on. The algorithms have us all in sychophantic cults as small as one person. And because the algorithm says so, we're right! It's exhausting.
Love you Bridge! You’re the best part of Substack. Keep calling ‘em as you see ‘em!
Nice essay on the merde-ification of public information and discourse. My predicament has been deciding which Beast to starve. My concern is less for my entertainment and more for my freedom, and I'm definitely not having fun. Is truth indeed nowhere (to be found)? A Welsh proverb holds that "truth shines in the dark". A Portuguese proverb says "truth is the most horrible joke of all." Ambrose Bierce called it "an ingenious compound of desirability and appearance." The Old Testament proverb (XXIII) advises: "Buy the truth, and sell it not." Even earlier, Confucius opined, "The aim of the superior man is truth." Do we have a choice? Keep it real, keep on truckin'.
a take about takes
It's like you've climbed inside my head and pulled out every thought I've been thinking lately. Following the madness on the Massie ousting last night, I'm so over culture and politics right now. It all feels so nihilistic right now.
A hundred years ago Yeats wrote it
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” - W.B. Yeats
and the start is even better
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
https://poets.org/poem/second-coming
I love this piece you wrote bridget. You've being the real jester who points out the truth
This is another fantastic piece, Bridget! This is absolutely right, something that has troubled me for some time, and it only seems to be getting worse. Thank you for calling it out so clearly.
I don’t have answers, just questions.
What would happen if the Internet and its algorithms went down, worldwide, for good?Would we start getting along with each other? Or would we still destroy each other anyway? Is this rot about something more? Is our brokenness only Western? If Trump never existed, would we have invented another version? How have other civilizations deteriorated and have they been able to stop or change course? Why do we feed the beast of attention and how do we stop?
Was there ever a golden age?
Your not just hilarious, Bridget. Your also an absolutely brilliant thinker! Yes, we are all Alex Jones now and it has been to the major detriment of this country. It is understandable how we got here. All of our institutions our broken, corrupted and partisan. It is also the case that things that were thought to be conspiracy theories turned out to be true. When the government and other major institutions in American life lie to people and aren’t transparent, cranks, conspiracy theories, pseudo-science, and paranoia will fill that void. The 2010s and 2020s are the Golden Age of Conspiracy Theories. When historians 100 years from now, they’ll remember these two decades as the time in history when everyone went insane and everybody was at war with everybody. Societal trust is at 0% now. Everybody these days embraces conspiracy theories and traffics in them. Whether it be President Trump, the two major parties, celebrities, podcasters, YouTubers, activists, influencers, you name it, everybody wears the tin foil hat these days.
What Donald Trump has done is to lift up the curtain and show us the worst versions of ourselves and expose how the veneer of civilization quickly fades and we revert to the jungle with the right incentives. Donald Trump in a way is sort of like the Joker in the Dark Knight, as he has shown us that the Joker’s famous quote in the movie is absolutely true. Allow me to quote him now, “"You see, their morals, their code, it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show you. When the chips are down, these... these civilized people, they'll eat each other. See, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve."
YouTubers and Podcasters like Joe Rogan, Hasan Piker, Theo Von, David Pakman, Jimmy Dore, Kyle Kulinski, Tim Pool, Politics Girl, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Dave Rubin, Megyn Kelly, Ben Shapiro, Medias Touch, Pod Save America, and Ezra Klein and political YouTube channels and communities like BreadTube and PragerU play on our worst impulses and warp people’s mind and turn them against their family, friends and fellow Americans for clicks and Patreon donations. Politicians and political parties do it for votes. Comedians whether they be on the left like Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, James Corden, Conan O’Brien, Trevor Noah, Seth Meyers, and the cast of SNL or they be on the right like Tony Hinchcliffe, Shane Gillis, Andrew Schultz, Greg Gutfeld, Adam Carolla, Rob Schneider, Nick DiPaolo, and Dave Landau do it for laughs.
The mainstream media does it for ratings and profits. The elites do it to divide us so we can’t unite to fight them and keep going about their dirty business as usual. Returning to the podcasters Bridget was speaking of, yes, they change their positions based on what their audiences want to hear. No one has any principles anymore. Everyone has turned into Fox News circa 2011. People will believe anything and everything their told these days. They’ll believe Joe Biden stole an election, Bill Clinton is a sexual predator, Donald Trump is protecting pedophiles and is a Russian asset, the elites eat children, Zionists run the United States and are responsible for all the problems in the world, the Democrats are socialists, the Republicans are Nazis, Elon Musk is a Nazi, take your pick. The press has lied to us about so much: Russiagate, Ukrainegate, Charlottesville, COVID-19, Very Fine People on Both Sides, January 6th, Nick Sandmann, Kyle Rittenhouse, Saddam having WMDs, numerous wars, the torture program during the War on Terror, Julian Assange, the “mostly peaceful protests” during the Summer of 2020, and so much more.
So how is anyone supposed to be confident in what the truth is or what reality is? What happens when nobody can agree on basic facts or definitions of words? The fabric of society comes apart. We start to turn on each other and fight each other. Families are destroyed, marriages broken, friendships ended in an instant, and relationships torn asunder. What we can we do about all this? We need to starve the attention economy and stop giving it the time of day. We can be unifiers instead of dividers. We can keep an open mind about politics and listen to voices across the spectrum. We can read news sources that are dedicated to being unbiased like C-Span, Tangle News, The Free Press, Straight Arrow News, 1440, Ground News, The Flip Side, and Both Sides News. Support amazing grassroots organizations like Braver Angels, Unify America, BridgeUSA, The Listen First Project, Builders, Beyond Barriers USA, FAIR, One America Movement, Living Room Conversations, the National Institute for Civil Discourse, The Village Square, Interfaith America, the Greater Good Science Center, More in Common, and Weave: the Social Fabric Project.