adolescent girls to the White House and Camp David!
Hillary Rodham Clinton seduced Tom Cruise at her
private chalet in Russian River, California! Bill Clinton
is never invited there!
President Obama has moved over $4 billion of your
taxpayer dollars to Switzerland where he has a secret
bank account!
Hot “news” like this can be found any hour of the day
online… as one “insider” story after another, each more
scintillating, titillating, and scurrilous than the last
catches fire online and captures your attention.
Problem is, every single one of these “hot insider facts” is
not only wrong, but is deliberately invented (like the ones above)
to suit the purposefully invidious and always selfish and self-serving
purposes of the poster.
The question is: why are so many people all over the
world perverting the Internet by posting deliberately
erroneous, always hurtful, and completely false “information”?
Let’s take a look…
Maladjusted kids with too much time and Internet savvy
Did you ever make a prank telephone call when you were
in grammar school? I did… and I suspect most of you did too.
Now, however, the pranks are not directed at one person,
but at millions. And the Internet is so configured that one
maladjusted kid sitting in his basement in Kalamazoo can
(within minutes) prank the whole world. To pimple-faced
Johnny who’s a wash-out with the chicks, this is a thrill that
just won’t quit. Unfortunately, the viruses he invents and
disseminates, the misinformation he circulates are very
real and cause, as he wanted, maximum dislocation and
harm. He’s the man!
With malice towards all and charity towards none (pace
Abe Lincoln)
We live in the era of the empowered haters where daily
people as psychotic as Hitler and as malevolent as Stalin take
center stage. These people are hooligans on speed.
Shunned themselves, they are determined that the
successful of the world shall answer to them….or else.
In the “real” world, such creatures have limited influence
even if they turn into uni bombers, stalkers, and those who
(with cunning and skill) reduce their own pain by inflicting it
on the great of the land… or merely on an unfortunate soul who
happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now the
socially inept and clinically dangerous have scope for their
inadequacies.
For such people the Internet is a dream come true….
because now, without leaving their homes, they can
hurt, really hurt, brutally hurt people who have neither
heard of them… nor offered so much as an offending
word. The empowered hooligan doesn’t care… to hurt
is his objective and if he determines to hurt… he has no
need whatsoever to justify the heinous act. He hurts, therefore
he is.
Misinformation as pay back
Got into an argument with your brother-in-law lately? Got
cut off on the turn pike and wrote down the license plate
number? Chastised by your boss in front of your colleagues
(never mind that he was right). Got blown off by the waitress
you made a pass at? You want pay-back, and you want it
NOW!
Voila! The Internet’s at hand. Post! Publish! Hurt them…
feel vindicated, powerful, happy. Such commentary, posted
by the vengeful daily, floods the Internet. These comments are
invariably abusive, misspelled…and anonymous. You want
to hurt the boss all right… you want to show that girl to be
sure… but hold the name with the mayo. Cut them down to
size… but never,ever tell them who you actually are. Hurt and
hide, the coward’s formula through history.
“Expose” your competitors by riding in on your white
horse
This is a biggie. In business? Got successful competitors?
In a hurry for success? Then use the Internet to besmirch
your competitors. Make up “confidential” information about
them. Pose as the readers’ friend… let them in on the “secret”
about your competition. What matter that every word you
post is made up…. when YOU can benefit from the lie. Paint with
broad strokes: use innuendo, suggestion, go for the big lie.
Poor as you are, hiding behind email and anonymity, you
have license to prevaricate.
This format is used regularly by people in a hurry, by
the corner cutters, the self-appointed “truth tellers”,
and by people with an axe to grind. They know that
online they can not only appear to be virtuous but
ride to the top of the search engines on the coat tails
of their well-known competitors. Such messages are a magnet
for the gullible and the credulous, for people whose “business” is to
manipulate the lazy and uniformed from whom they conjure money
without compunction — and then disappear, the privilege of
the harlot throughout the ages.
Bait and switch
Back in the good old days of mail order there was a famous
ad that ran
SEX
Now that I’ve got your attention, let me tell you
about our terrific air conditioners.
A variety of this ad is launched daily on the net
which is why ads like the one with Hillary Clinton above
are created. Sex, as every marketer knows, sells. And
the more licentious and lubricious the better, no matter
than the message is false from start to end.
Reader Beware!
Today you will be the recipient of online lies, smut, and
vulgarity. That is why today you must be chary and cautious
about what you choose to believe and the judgements you
make.
* Ask yourself whether what you are reading is likely.
If the claim is outrageous and exaggerated, it is unlikely
to be true.
* Is the claim signed? Is someone willing to take
responsibility? If not, it is hearsay and rumor in which
case who is benefiting from it?
* Has the person attacked been given the chance to
respond… or is the claim advanced by one person who
attacks… but will not let his victim respond? Fairness is
never in the repertoire of the irresponsible.
* Is there a clear beneficiary for what is being written?
Is this person assailing because they will benefit thereby?
Below the surface of seeming honesty, there is always
avarice.
* If the claim is attributed, does that person have anything
to lose? Established persons and institutions are responsible
at least in part because they have much to lose by being
irresponsible. Those with nothing to lose can make
the most irresponsible claims with impunity… and so they do.
That they do is a sure sign of their insignificance and
unaccountability.
Consider the source
When I was growing up in Illinois in the ‘forties, my
father had an expression: “Consider the source.” When
some comment or rumor reached us, he’d say these
words. I now think of them often as I, like you, receive
the filth and lies deliberately disseminated by those who
may be Internet savvy but are bankrupt in all other ways.
My advice to you is to ignore, beware, and in all cases
consider who is benefiting from the lies, misrepresentations,
and fabrications before us. When they cannot touch us,
the perpetrators y shrivel and die, fulminating still but powerless
and pathetic.
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