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The Amazing Race to the Bottom – Desperation of The Internet

April 8, 2014 by

By Chayse Love

Do you remember all the hot topics of this week? How about last week? How about last month? If you don’t , thats ok. You’re not alone. Thanks to smart phones, Rss feeds and an overflow of so-called ‘information’, most human beings have become little more than informational coffee filters. Straining news feeds and videos through their brains at a rate that makes it next to impossible for any of it to be absorbed. Unless it’s such a hot button issue that it’s on repeat and the hashtag on twitter is top trending for longer than 6 hours. The internet , once a shining point at the top of the mountain of human evolution, a place where all things merged and the ability to expand the human experience was presented, has now been reduced to a corporately run cesspit of useless information, disinformation and desperation.

I can speak on this mainly from the inside out. I have watched the web change over the years. From its glory days in the early 2000’s. To what it has become now. When social media first reared its head with sites such as Reddit and Myspace it truly was a place for swapping ideas and discovering new talent. To its current status of over exposed celebrities, picture competitions and reducing actual events to nothing more than a hashtag. If you have been witnessing this as I have, I feel your pain. Nothing is more cringe worthy than watching credible news organizations lower themselves to the standards of actually showing Twitter and Facebook comments of random people on their programs, just to look hip.

“@Iwashmycatdaily: I think fracking is good for the economy. Libs don’t think straight,” says a once respected reporter. Why do I care what some faceless stranger thinks about hydro-fracking?

To make matters worse now our reporters and celebrities (who at one time had a veil of mystery around them that made them seem chic) are now sharing pics of themselves to also seem cool. Pics I have no interest in seeing. Like what they ate for lunch, their kids first painting or worse them posing for selfies in the shower. The fact that an icon like Madonna would waste even a second posing for selfies for her Instagram makes my stomach turn. Never mind that she is so desperate for attention she actually glued fake under arm hair to herself to go viral. And viral it went.

Which brings us to the next rung down the ladder of internet desperation which is , “social media updates” becoming news. Now when Chris Brown tells Julie Brown to “F- Off” on Twitter, our news and blog outlets run with that as a story. They even post the Tweet post deletion as though there is any merit to it being news. How is this news? How is Madonna’s hairy under arm news? It’s not. As you continue to climb down this ladder you will encounter internet celebrities of days past. In my past I interviewed and featured online talent that was flourishing pre Google’s massive online take over. Cut to 4 years later and those same names and faces that used to garner thousands if not millions of views per video are struggling to stay relevant. The RSS Feed keeps flowing and only those willing to humiliate, scandalize, Sell Out or Troll their way to the top can survive. Otherwise you have only joined a race to the bottom. If everyone has a YouTube channel, who is watching? If everyone has a Twitter account, are we all just following each other to boost our own numbers?

If everyone has a podcast, who is listening?

In 2004 the internet was a place for people looking for exposure to find people looking for someone in their field. In 2014 the internet is so over saturated with inflated egos and minimal talent. That you would be hard press not to find an aspiring model, singer, photographer, or actor at every turn. Anyone with a smartphone can make an account, fake a following with $20.00 and debit card, and Photoshop their way to infamy. Some blogger will call it news and some so-called reporter will pick it up. All they have to do is jump on a viral trend, Snapchat a sext image, or seduce a celebrity into an online flirtation & screen cap it for their Facebook friends. Yes, I’m talking to you James Franco!

So where is this leading us all? I’m not sure.

Probably nowhere good. But what’s done is done. The Levees have been broken and now we must let nature take its course. However there is one way to avoid all of this insane racing to the bottom.

It’s called unplugging and I do it all the time.

Chayse Love : Facebook/Chasemebaby

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Colorado + Internet = Lies & Fear

July 22, 2012 by

I like to start these blogs with a personal observation or two. Most of the time they are funny. And meant to be so. Not so many yucks today. I have seen a person die from a gunshot wound. I was bravely lying under a garbage dumspter trying to stay alive at the time. I owned a gun. It was a nice one. It was also in my car. And, even if it had been on my hip, I’m not sure what good it would have done. The guy I’d just met was the target and he was very dead with no hope for a cure. I could tell that since his brain was outside his head. Maybe that’s why many of the comments I have read on the Internet and seen on TV concerning the shootings in Colorado pissed me off so much. They are completely disconnected from reality.

There are those who see the shooting in Colorado as proof of a government, or other powerful group, working behind the scenes. How did an unemployed college student come up with $20,000 to buy all that armor and ammo and so on? He must have been funded. Or so they claim. Well, just for giggles, I trolled eBay and Craig’s list yesterday. I could have gotten everything that’s been listed in the news for around $5,000. A medical student from a solid family could get a line of credit that large in a heartbeat. Earlier reports that the apartment was wired with C4, a deadly explosive, appear to have been inaccurate. So, no need to for military intervention to explain that. Although, to be blunt, I could get my hands on C4 in two phone calls if need be, as long as I had the money. It’s not that difficult.

There are those who assigned political motives to the shooting. ABC Television breathlessly announced that the shooter was a member of …. wait for it …. THE TEA PARTY!!! Which was wrong on so many levels as to be frightening. Even if it were true, which it wasn’t, what the hell difference would it have made? Are they seriously implying that anyone who votes for Mitt Romney is capable of being a spree killer? Even for a died in the wool lefty like me that seems a touch extreme.

And stupid.

Then there are those who seem to be claiming, all while stating that this is not what they’re claiming – because that would be tacky, that the audience was somehow cowardly. The fact that they did not rush the gunman and subdue him makes them weak. The fact that some of the dead died lying on top of the people they’d sworn to protect is lost on them. The fact that the adults did all they could to remove their charges from harm’s way is meaningless to them. The fact that people tried to do the right thing, protect their loved ones and get everyone to safety makes them feeble according to these morons. Those making these claims cite Flight 93 where the passengers attacked the hijackers. They leave out the fact that those passengers knew they about the towers, knew they were about to die and had no choice. They also leave out the fact that the passengers had time to plan and act. None of those circumstances were in play in Colorado.

I know, facts are irritating.

Of course there are also those who claim that the outcome would have been very different if the audience had been armed. For the record, I am an excellent shot. With a pistol I can get 4 out of 5 head shots at 50 yards on a range. In a dark theater, filled with smoke and flying bullets with less than a minute from the start of the killing to the end, the odds are much greater that I would have killed an innocent bystander or six long before I got a round in the gunman. A room full of panicked people firing in the general direction of a shadowy figure in body armor? With a hundred or so people in the way? The carnage would have been insane. Just because someone took a basic gun safety course and had enough money to purchase ammo does not make them a Marine quality sniper.

I don’t care how many episodes of NCIS they’ve seen.

The sad underlying theme to all of these critiques is “I could have done better” as though there is a grade for situations like this.

“Oh look honey, Bobby got a ‘B+’ in his ‘Attacked by a Deranged Gunman’ class. I smell a trip to Dairy Queen!”

I know that facts suck the fun out of everything but they need to be heeded here. This was a room full of suburban moms & dads & uncles & aunts who were leading families or scout and/or church groups for an evening of fun. Their first thought, and their only thought, was the safety of those who trusted them.

The fact that they did not live up to whatever adrenaline fueled fantasies others may have says nothing bad about them. But it does say something very disturbing about the people making the criticisms.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.

Ad Nauseam

May 25, 2022 by Bill McCormick

This is a bit of a read but, and this should help you make it through, it is laden with facts and real world solutions. Yes, I’m talking about guns. No, I’m not asking the gun fairy to make them disappear. This is broken out into three parts. The first section is my opinion with clear reasons stated for having same. The second section involves me leaving my safety zone and joining a group of dedicated NRA members to discuss gun control. You may scoff, but I was glad I did it then and am still glad to this day. Simply put, I learned to separate the corporate megalith that hands out money to anyone who helps them sell guns from the people who are just trying to protect what they have. So we’re clear, none of the people I spoke with carry AR-15s to Taco Bell. But some do own pretty impressive arsenals which they keep under lock and key at home. And then there was me. Back on January 12, 2013, I summed up that day. Before I revisit that conversation, and its results, I’d like to make a couple of things clear. [Read more…] about Ad Nauseam

Curing Triskaidekaphobia

May 13, 2022 by Bill McCormick

I think we've covered them all. — I think we’ve covered them all.

Way, way, back in November of 2015 I took another shot at tackling the whole superstition thing which seems to gain traction every few decades. We live in a society of miracles and wonders and people keep trying to devolve them to the lowest common denominator. A dog scratches when it has fleas. I scratch my head when I think. That does not mean that thinking causes fleas. Yet, here we are. Thousands of years of progress and you can still buy talismans and magic candles at your local bodega. Just because you avoided learning how something works doesn’t mean you get to make up your own explanation. It means you should freaking learn how stuff works. There are no such things as chem-trails (it’s just heated moisture), rocket exhaust is H20 – not poison gases, and no government is controlling your thoughts through dental fillings. There are other, more effective, methods.

Also, washing your butt will not make you gay and start blowing truckers on the interstate. If that’s all that’s keeping you from cleaning your crack, that ship has sailed. And it was loaded with sea men singing a weeping song.

Okay, let’s try, once again, to kill some myths, restore some sanity, and help reality gain a toe hold in society.

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Superstitions are silly things. Some are mere mnemonic devices that have taken on a life of their own. Don’t walk under a ladder is a good example. From a purely practical standpoint someone might drop something on your head. The same applies to opening an umbrella indoors. If you do that you suddenly have lots of sharp objects, the ribs and the tip, in an enclosed space where you could, literally, put someone’s eye out. 666 is supposed to be the number of the beast in Revelations. People believe this even though it’s been proven wrong on a few occasions. You see, some idiot monk, who lacked basic arithmetic and translation skills, wrote it wrong. The actual number is 616. Dr. Ellen Aitken, from McGill University, sums it up best. ““It’s a number puzzle — the majority opinion seems to be that it refers to [the Roman emperor] Nero. Revelation was actually a thinly disguised political tract, with the names of those being criticized changed to numbers to protect the authors and early Christians from reprisals. It’s a very political document. It’s a critique of the politics and society of the Roman empire, but it’s written in coded language and riddles.” In other words, it no more foretells the future than your weird Aunt Emma.

Cracked mirrors are another one. Some folks believe that mirrors don’t just reflect your awesome visage, they keep part of your soul. In backwards countries and in the American South people still cover mirrors when someone dies to prevent their souls from being trapped inside of them. The fear of black cats dates from the days of the plague and belief in witches. They were supposed to be familiars who served demonic masters and so on. It’s a mess. Look, I’ve owned several black cats and only one was even a little demonic and that was only when he was hungry.

I could go on and on and on and on and … you get the idea, but I won’t. Superstitions are the veils that tiny minds use to hide the light of reality.

A little over two years ago I wrote a nice history of Friday the 13th. It was, and is, festooned with those fact things you never find on the Internet any more. So, in honor of our current dose of Triskaidekaphobia, I give you Friday the 13th, UNFILTERED!!!

MU HU HA HA HA

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Caveant scriptores!

April 22, 2022 by Bill McCormick

First and foremost, now seems to be a good time to point out that the Big Wakeup Call has a new internet home. No longer satisfied with being the king of Aurora radio, it has moved on to be an international podcast. This makes it easier for our global fans to listen in as well as for curious newcomers to get sucked into Ryan’s wonderful web of wackiness. For today’s madcap episode, feel free to listen first and then come back, we decided to take a look at the progress artificial intelligence (AI) has made in the world of literature. Back in 2017 a programmer named Zak Thoutt programmed an AI (that’s what programmers do) to write Game of Thrones. This is why programmers never get invited to parties. Well, that, and no one really cares about how to manipulate Boolean strings. Not even the pretty girl who forgot her bra and desperately needs a drink can be coerced into caring.
[Read more…] about Caveant scriptores!