Every day that passes by there are stories of violence, because violence is news. And we’re talking about the relatively minor stuff for the moment and tie into the major stuff after a ramble. Road rage where somebody flips out and decides to bump someone with their car. The “Karen” that aggressively verbally assaults another customer at the hair salon, complete with racial slurs. Kicking the neighbors dog just because it seemed fun and you don’t like the color they painted their house.
Societies have a tough time separating those who genuinely just had a bad day and after being pointed in the right direction can get their shit together from long term repeat offenders with all the signs that the behavioral patterns aren’t going to change. Innocent until proven guilty. That’s still a good thing
Social media is loaded with the same problems. Is Kanye genuinely remorseful about his bigoted comments, or just sorry he lost money and got called out? As I often do, I turn to the world of film for an analogy and that’s the crossover episode.
Popular series to add a bit of spice will have a major character from another series pop in to add flavor to an episode, combining the star power of two big names. The tie in for some is obvious, like the Buffy spin off Angel switching characters between the shows. Shows that have the same basic formula. Others are a bit odder, like Matlock showing up on Diagnosis Murder. Although the main characters have an interest in murder in common, their approach is quite different. Putting them together increases the chances that new viewers who didn’t watch the one show will give it a try, and maybe get hooked. More viewers, more advertisements, more money. This is roughly the way YouTube algorithms can operate.
Now compared to ten years ago, the gematria (sports especially) content is much tamer, directly. There isn’t as much angry ranting about killing your enemies as their used to be. That was a byproduct of the popularity of Alex Jones and unimaginatively copying what was working for him. The solution to not putting up content with a better chance of getting flagged, stricken and removed? The crossover episode. Perform a livestream with a gung ho gun rights fanatic. Give the viewers who incorrectly think they can successfully predict NFL games a taste of something a bit different. The spiritual/evangelical crowd might have been lured in by feelings of love and compassion, and then get a new message about how Biden is Satan. With the standard Internet caveat of psychological projection that by default if Biden is bad, Trump is good.
Another movie theme is the nerdy kid at school who is left alone by the notorious bully because his muscular jock friend intimidates the bully into leaving the nerd alone. Or even better is training the nerd to fight the bully on his own. Or even upgrade the jock to Mr. Miyagi, he was training Daniel-San, but on occasion stepped in to actively take care of business when the still green karate kid was not fully prepared to fight his own battles.
For good or for evil, intimidation tactics work and their not going away. One need not directly post violent content, but the threat of violence is sufficient to present the (often arbitrarily chosen) target with a no win situation. Live with it and walk away the “better person”, or stand up and maybe find out that your bully isn’t going to back down and you get the living shit calculated. A small scale of, “I’m a crazy dictator who has nuclear weapons that I will use!” Do you have the time and resources to affect that global issue? Do you even have the time and resources for karate training on a personal level? The easier way is to walk away the better person and convince yourself that somebody else will take care of the problem.
It’s simultaneously somewhat amusing and completely terrifying to see how gematria sports decoders pop into the comments of somebody regularly posting more hateful and destructive content. Or the spiritual crowd talking about eclipses one day showing up to listen to a bitcoin ramble that has identified Obama as the Antichrist. And seeing the opposite play out where the fire and brimstone preacher talks about the team colors and gematria values of Monday Night Football. Crank/grift magnetism in all its glory.
Part of our film school nerd’s dilemma is the incompetence of those in authority. The principal and teachers don’t help through some clever plot device, unless that plot includes the teacher being the one who knows karate. The same plays out in the workplace when the toxic narcissist gets away with sabotaging computer files because management doesn’t lift a finger. The CEO likes the bully, they can do whatever they want. In the Internet world, social media is the incompetent management in a bad movie that has them so enamored of $ that there’s little choice but to walk away “the better person.” The constant philosophy of saying, “Stop, or I’ll say stop again!” only goads those who are even only using intimidation by association to continue to do so. The reporting system is some kind of awful joke that if it ever works it’s way too late. Not everybody is like Russell Brand who elevated himself to problem status so publically and quickly.
As always, the solution is to not be involved in the first place. It’s up to those who know and care about what’s going on to step up and educate. In the absence of competent movie management/school staff you can at least sift through the friends and followers and look for the red flags that shout out there is a problem. There is a lot of literature and social media commentary now about the conspiracy grifting culture. And like social media content reporting, this comes way too long after problems were identified. For more of this, please review the links I posted a few days ago.
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