Dead Sea Doom Scrolls

I have gotten into the nasty, addictive habit of going down the TikTok rabbit hole into the conspiracy theory underworld, an exercise that has been defined as “doom scrolling”. Studies are showing that doing this, even recreationally, can lead to a decline in physical and mental health. That too could be a conspiracy theory put forth to keep us away from the awful truths of the current state of the planet. Then again, fear and loathing is the default mindset these days.

And now, with the Israel-Hamas cage match in full evisceration, we find ourselves further unnerved by the sheer volume of anti-semitism in the social media world. I had started writing this post before the October 7 attack on Israel and the resulting counteroffensive. Prior to that I was kind of bemused by the posts from the Flat Earth People, enamored particularly by the space cadets who got on a commercial flight with their level rulers to prove that, if the earth is indeed round, the aircraft would always be following the curvature and be in a constant state of nose first descent causing their rulers to be off balance. Not really sure that’s how aircraft fly there Orville. There’s also the Satanic Pop Star Watch, the Shape Shifter Shills, The Moon Landing Deniers (they might have a case) etc. All in all, some camera work that’s too candid for Allen Funt. 

Weird revelations about the South Pole enter the conversation as to the recent discoveries of mummified ‘aliens’ in South America. Plumb further and you get into the world of the snake-tongued reptilian class – Elvis was part of it – ruling the world at the behest of Satan or some Vulcanized super race that came here a while back. What is hidden under the Denver Airport extends the perimeters and parameters of the discussion. Feeling a little woozy? That’s me most of the time. Doom scrolling is not compatible with ADHD. Nor with any kind of post-Covid anxiety about just how evil the vaccines are/were/will be.

The COVID-19 speculation ranges from ridiculous (the nano chips in the MRNA are set to explode in your bloodstream and kill you instantly when a strong EMF signal is sent out on the Emergency Alert System) to the existential (the continuing erosion of our privacy and rights that started with the Homeland Security act after 9/11) to the sensible (Dr. Fauci is a piece of shit).

The sum total of actual truth I have picked up on TikTok goes no further than some killer foolproof recipes for lemon pasta and short ribs. Plus I got sucked into buying the toxin-draining footpads – they suck the smell of barbeque sauce out of your body – and a couple of prostate solutions. And one mind blowing video of a shark actually rescuing a sea turtle. Please google it if you haven’t. Brought me to tears.

I don’t get fed much of that stuff anymore. I had drilled down into the ‘Fuck Trudeau” metaverse and although I didn’t learn too much, I realize that there a lot of pissed off people in Canada right now. There are also a lot of people who think Michelle Obama is a guy. The jury is still out on that one.

But it’s the current conflict in Gaza that has me worried. I am scrolling into some pretty antisemitic territory while simultaneously dialing into Israel supporters on Instagram like Noa Tishby (if you haven’t, read her memoir/history book Israel) and my comedian pal Elon Gold. By contrast Facebook has become one long rendition of “The Way We Were” and the constant diet of those marking the anniversaries of the death of a childhood pet parakeet is a tad tiresome. X, formerly Twitter, has become the ‘triggerverse’ and I am kind of shocked by my own angry responses and the avalanche of hate that follows. I have been trollee and the troller. Neither role has left me feeling better. If you are on Twitter other than to promote your OnlyFans page I would suggest you get a life. And fast.

In a recent New Yorker article Why The Internet Isn’t Fun Anymore, Eleanor Stern, a TikTok video essayist with nearly a hundred thousand followers, said that part of the problem is that social media is more hierarchical than it used to be. “There’s this divide that wasn’t there before, between audiences and creators,” Stern said. “The platforms that have the most traction with young users today—YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch—function like broadcast stations, with one creator posting a video for her millions of followers; what the followers have to say to one another doesn’t matter the way it did on the old Facebook or Twitter. Social media “used to be more of a place for conversation and reciprocity.” Now conversation isn’t strictly necessary, only watching and listening. We are witness to the decimation of our own attention spans.

“The way it figures out what video to show you from Israel is the incentive for what stimulates your nervous system”, said Tristan Harris, head of the Center For Human Technology, on a recent Real Time With Bill Maher. “One of our colleagues is a mom and TikTok figured out that from her history and sent her videos from Israel of dead babies.”

Harris calls it a race to “the bottom of the brain stem”.

The real time feeds from the various anti-semites are way louder than those supporting Israel. A newsfeed calculated that the number of #IstandwithPalestine tags outnumber those #IstandwithIsrael by multiples. Recent revelations – okay, an article on the Fox News feed – puts forth claims that while TikTok has been accused of not clamping down enough on the hate clips, insiders claim politically motivated employees are handling the moderating and accepting paid campaigns publicizing the suffering in Gaza while ads from the Hostages and Missing Persons Forum were, allegedly, refused for being “too political”. 

A lot of misinformation is being thrown around like the video on X of a Hamas fighter shooting down an Israeli chopper that was revealed to be footage from a video game!!! I am blown away – a poor choice of words at this juncture – because at one point in my life I was an actual journalist. It was a short period between my sports writing career and my tenure as a rock critic. I remember being sent out with a ragtag bunch of UFO enthusiasts way back in 1976 who were obsessed with crop circles and whatever information they could glean in the pre-internet universe from ham and CB radio operators. Area 51 was a vague concept back then. Few had video cameras and the quality was dreck. I had actually written that these guys displayed “varying degrees of sanity” which my editors were quick to excise. And rightfully so. 

See, the difference between the Paleolithic era of my youth and today is that whereas anything put in front of the public back then was vetted by the editing firewall, today there is no such thing and millions of people now are doing their own interpretation of Eric Sevareid. While driving to Tim Horton’s. With a phone. Sure, when we relied on what is now known as “legacy” media for truth and although our lives weren’t overwhelmed with noise we were hardly fed the full picture. Not going to get started on Vietnam, cyclamates, or the Kennedy assassination. 

Always remember that TikTok is a Chinese company and all that comes with it. They can do whatever the fuck they want and they do it with zero concern for anyone with less than a few million followers. 

We agree that the current state of web surfing is not productive, let alone fun. And we agree that it is a lot more manipulative than the “subliminal advertising” we experienced during commercial breaks while watching The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. back when we were kids. 

However, what are your kids going to do? More importantly, what about your grandchildren? I know a fabulous family with children still in single digits who are doing an amazing job trying to raise them right. However, what it takes is double and triple booking them into athletic and other extracurricular activities, engaged for little other purpose than to divert a child’s attention from their screens. Yes there is Lego but Dad will have to be very much involved because attention spans, not to be repetitive, have eroded to the point of no return. Some ideas: have your grandkids see you reading an actual book, get them curious about their brains, limit them to flip phones and maybe force them into a library one hour a week. 

Somebody I work with recently told me – I had no clue – that there are no more pens and paper in middle school, just Unthink pads on which kids do their math, type out notes etc. There is internet in the classrooms to feed the lessons to the kids in real time. There are no deadlines on assignments anymore so why not watch some Youtube videos during algebra? When we were kids and passed notes, at least we kept one eye on the teacher because you could get an eraser thrown at you. Fear of embarrassment is a great motivator. Of course now, a teacher throwing a blackboard eraser is looking at 5 to 10 in a federal facility. 

You see the progression here, TikTok is just part of an insidious plan to dumb down everyone so that all manner of critical thinking is lost – George Carlin ranted about this before he passed – and we succumb to the grave new world of AI avatars, slowly but surely taking future generations into a complete forfeiture of their decision-making process to the state. All entertainment these days, for the most part, is propaganda. Watch Barbie clean up at the Oscars. So this is a good time to revisit Ginsberg’s prophetic beat masterpiece, Howl, – “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness…

Finally, in the words of that noted anti-semite Roger Waters, “Welcome to the machine…”

I have to get off social media. But then again, how would I ‘promote’ this blog?