Idiocracy.
Someone recently said… “Our country isn’t getting stupider…just louder…”
It sure feels like both are true.
Time to go flash my landing lights across the United States to fuel the fire.
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The reporter on this piece is a friend of mine. He’s just doing his job. But giving the cop who’s seen something he can’t explain (with NAV LIGHTS no less!) is doing the very damage that the story could otherwise dispel. That cop has zero knowledge to bring to the “phenomenon” he’s observed. He is just a dude in a uniform. The ladies on the boardwalk are frankly nothing more than credulous dupes. These people shouldn’t be given air-time. We need to stop embracing the common sense of the common man. Amplifying the notions of everyday idiots is a race down a bottomless pit. At least we have MTG and her fellow Red Blooded Americans to guard our fall.
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I’ve been deliberately ignoring all of this nonsense with extreme prejudice.
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What’s bringing out the cynic in me is seeing news sources that before now, I gave credit for balanced, unbiased reporting, still referring to the sightings as a “mystery”, further fueling hysteria. Might as well watch more of The Simpsons for accurate reporting.
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Much like elected politicians having no incentive to solve the issues they run on, because then next cycle they have to try to find something new that hits big so it’s easier to kick the can down the road, the media has no incentive to wrap up a story with a definitive end vs trying to get people to keep coming back for updates in this “fast breaking story!”
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That wall, to me, started crumbling at least a decade ago (you could argue, after too much thought it started in the early 90’s). May just be an age thing; after so many miles you start to notice things about the car you didn’t have time for previously…
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Been seeing this with ‘influencers’ online more and more. ‘audience capture’ reinforces the bubble so it can’t easily be broken.
" ‘bubbles’ are the problem" - me
IMHO it has, for years now, taken work on the individual’s part to separate the wheat from the chaff. When you’re working full time this is next to impossible.
What are the incentives?
“If you don’t read the news you are uninformed, if you do read the news, you are misinformed” - Twain (I belive). Human nature.
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One advantage of my previous job was the ability to get the unvarnished truth when it came to political, military or economic issues… Even if I couldn’t tell anyone else.
These days I try to read & watch as great a variety of sources as I can and see where the Venn diagrams overlap. e.g. As a minimum I scan the Murdoch press (accused by the left as being right wing fascists) and the ABC (our national broadcaster, accused by the right as a hotbed of woke lefties). I ignore social media, influencers and politicians.
There are also a number of credible media bias and fact checking sites that I use to gauge the reliability/credibility of a particular media source.
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Part of it of course is made at the high editorial level by choosing what is worthy of reporting on and what isn’t. Anything that doesn’t sit right in that side’s “narrative” is played down or ignored, while if it feeds it they make it sound like the Biggest Story Ever.
It’s so pointless to have those polls that ask voters “what are your top concerns” because you can just watch the respective media and see their top stories exactly reflect it.
If the news you frequent is always talking about illegal immigration, even if you live somewhere where it’s a non-issue, amazingly it’s a top concern!
Gee, I wonder why? Repetition is well known in everything from learning the alphabet to basic training as a way to imprint on the human brain. So the 24 hr news now exploits that to program their loyal audiences.
This is why newspapers are more important than ever. (Says a 56 yo white dude). Digital media, a pile on which I dump TV, SM and podcasts, is an impossible intersection of clicks and opinion. By “impossible” I mean it forces the two things to spiral as they feed off each other.
Modern papers have the same dynamic of course, and are now mostly digital products in their own right. That said, “papers” have an editorial board that forces some discipline on the reporting. The OPED division is separate from the news division. In other media, especially TV, that division doesn’t exist. Anyway, I’ve come to view voracious news watchers as, generally, a stupid and dangerous lot. They plug into the outrage and force the rest of us to ride along.
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I read a long article from The Atlantic last month…something to do with the mechanics of the election or something. What struck me was how well written it was. How well researched it was. How thoroughly the sources were cited. It was a long article…and it was like eating the most delicious steak slowly.
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You do realize most people don’t read nowadays, right? I’m actually the only person I know who reads novels etc with any sort of regularity and solely for pleasure instead of, for instance, being forced to by a job requirement.
People read text messages, food labels, road signs and bills, and that’s about it
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I read MUDSPIKE! 
It’s a time issue for me. I read probably 4 or 5 books a year, both the paper kind and Kindle. But I listen to between 25 and 30 books a year via Audible, of which the Library contains 308 books.
Next up, Targeted: Beruit and Alexander Hamilton.
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If I had a dollar for every time I’ve thought that [in the last decade or so]. I’m currently fighting with this very thing.
To write something requires, or it used to, a person to think (even something as pedestrian as this post)
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To me reading a book [digital or paper] and listening to it are similar; audio books I find to be more convenient, perhaps more efficient?
I’m going to be doing some ‘honey-do’s’ outside shortly, and all day tomorrow - audible makes those chores easier. Dare I say enjoyable? Kill two birds with one stone kind of thing.
Have you noticed that audible books are getting more expensive? I have, at least for the ones I read; they drew me in - seems I paid next to nothing, and often nothing, for them for a long time. Lately the audible versions are MORE expensive than the digital/hard-cover version. Like a good ‘dealer’ they have me ‘hooked’.
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I is a freak of nature!
For many years I averaged about a book a day, as I could go through a good sized one in about two hours, and eventually started deliberately looking for thicker books to make them last a bit longer.
In my current more sedentary days, I go through about one a week, but I do find I don’t retain the plots with the laser clarity I once did. If I reread a novel later, I find that similar narratives have sort of run together, and I may not recognize parts of them except with some prodding, even though I may have read them in the last year.
Yet books I read in childhood are still crystal clear…
Bleah.
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Actually, it’s been the opposite. Audible seems to have added a number of titles to the membership that are not requiring a credit. Some of them are excellent.
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Yeah, I saw the same for some time. Not sure I paid a thing for a lot of them. Lately though…the conspirator in me wonders if they’ve ‘patterned me’ 
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Of course they have. Flight sim enthusiast and developer. Loves old trucks and computers.
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