Human behavior in the modern world is not governed by what people believe. It has little to do with what anyone might be most inclined to believe, or prefer to believe, certainly least of all what might make the most sense for them to believe. Even the most fanatical in the expression of their claimed beliefs are responding and adapting continually to that most elusive and least explicable phenomenon, of what it might be most advantageous to be perceived as believing.
The very architecture of social media interactive capabilities is built upon this bizarre principle, that a thing may or may not be regarded as worth repeating, but no one ever quite knows what actually determines this. For the entire history of this unfortunate 'social media' age, addicts to this most addictive of all consumer products have striven to make what they have to present to an invisible audience take on life of its own, in a wave of self-regenerating approval, or 'to go viral' as the expression goes....
But no one ever quite figured out what makes a thing go viral, or not. Either a ridiculous and boring video about honey badgers, for instance, dies a quick unnoticed death after a few dozen 'shares' and 'retweets', or maybe out of the blue nearly everyone on earth at least knows someone who has watched it, and then sent it on further into the expanding universe of viraldom,, for reasons they may not even be able to articulate. Something in the silly narrator's voice suggests an all-knowing irony, perhaps, maybe indicates that honey badgers are a symbol of something human, and the narrator is in the loop about that something, whatever it is, and that it is at least politic in the course of daily life to be perceived as also being in that loop, about something, whatever that is. 'Must watch!'; never mind why. It went viral. It must be a thing.
History was just waiting for its opening to have a thing 'go viral' on the basis of claims that some actual virus has been set loose upon the land and that now no one is safe. Anyone old enough now to have witnessed the dawn of the AIDS/HIV panic could well imagine how those early spasms of rumor and disinformation might have 'gone viral' given such capabilities to promote one's lack of impulse control that everyone carries around in their hands today. The very act of copulation, for that brief moment in history, seemed to have become the imminent means of our own self-extinction, and don't even try to deny at least contemplating during those days the idea that it may well now be too dangerous to fuck any more......
Of course this happened. And of course the content of both mainstream and social media about 'covid' has never made a shred of adult sense, nor shown anyone anywhere as a reliable and trustworthy source of accurate information. Of course everyone is either lying about it, or going along with the lies knowingly, because it would be too disadvantageous not to.
And of course nobody really believes any of it. But the real threat was never about getting seriously ill or maybe dying of this thing gone viral, but rather of what might happen to one's own personal situation if caught not appearing to believe the correct things about it, which of course change every day and no one knows from one moment to the next what the correct beliefs are, nor how long they will remain correct.
But one must at least try to keep up, and not be caught saying the wrong thing. Getting sick was always the least of anyone's worries, but getting caught saying the wrong thing is now becoming more dangerous than ever.
Good thing all these rubes laid down a cool grand each for these 'smart phones' to help them stay in the loop. Never mind that not a bit of what's in that loop can be taken at face value.
The honey badger doesn't care. The honey badger knows what's good for the honey badger, which is to do what honey badgers do, whatever that is at the moment. Believing has scant little to do with it.
Human behavior in the modern world is not governed by what people believe. It has little to do with what anyone might be most inclined to believe, or prefer to believe, certainly least of all what might make the most sense for them to believe. Even the most fanatical in the expression of their claimed beliefs are responding and adapting continually to that most elusive and least explicable phenomenon, of what it might be most advantageous to be perceived as believing.
The very architecture of social media interactive capabilities is built upon this bizarre principle, that a thing may or may not be regarded as worth repeating, but no one ever quite knows what actually determines this. For the entire history of this unfortunate 'social media' age, addicts to this most addictive of all consumer products have striven to make what they have to present to an invisible audience take on life of its own, in a wave of self-regenerating approval, or 'to go viral' as the expression goes....
But no one ever quite figured out what makes a thing go viral, or not. Either a ridiculous and boring video about honey badgers, for instance, dies a quick unnoticed death after a few dozen 'shares' and 'retweets', or maybe out of the blue nearly everyone on earth at least knows someone who has watched it, and then sent it on further into the expanding universe of viraldom,, for reasons they may not even be able to articulate. Something in the silly narrator's voice suggests an all-knowing irony, perhaps, maybe indicates that honey badgers are a symbol of something human, and the narrator is in the loop about that something, whatever it is, and that it is at least politic in the course of daily life to be perceived as also being in that loop, about something, whatever that is. 'Must watch!'; never mind why. It went viral. It must be a thing.
History was just waiting for its opening to have a thing 'go viral' on the basis of claims that some actual virus has been set loose upon the land and that now no one is safe. Anyone old enough now to have witnessed the dawn of the AIDS/HIV panic could well imagine how those early spasms of rumor and disinformation might have 'gone viral' given such capabilities to promote one's lack of impulse control that everyone carries around in their hands today. The very act of copulation, for that brief moment in history, seemed to have become the imminent means of our own self-extinction, and don't even try to deny at least contemplating during those days the idea that it may well now be too dangerous to fuck any more......
Of course this happened. And of course the content of both mainstream and social media about 'covid' has never made a shred of adult sense, nor shown anyone anywhere as a reliable and trustworthy source of accurate information. Of course everyone is either lying about it, or going along with the lies knowingly, because it would be too disadvantageous not to.
And of course nobody really believes any of it. But the real threat was never about getting seriously ill or maybe dying of this thing gone viral, but rather of what might happen to one's own personal situation if caught not appearing to believe the correct things about it, which of course change every day and no one knows from one moment to the next what the correct beliefs are, nor how long they will remain correct.
But one must at least try to keep up, and not be caught saying the wrong thing. Getting sick was always the least of anyone's worries, but getting caught saying the wrong thing is now becoming more dangerous than ever.
Good thing all these rubes laid down a cool grand each for these 'smart phones' to help them stay in the loop. Never mind that not a bit of what's in that loop can be taken at face value.
The honey badger doesn't care. The honey badger knows what's good for the honey badger, which is to do what honey badgers do, whatever that is at the moment. Believing has scant little to do with it.