Edmonton WestStar interrupts it’s hilariously inconsistent satire posting schedule for a moment to ‘get real’ if it could.

Nov 10th 2016

So it has come to light that the state of North American anxiety is at an all time high. Regardless if it is the economy, the current rise of political fascism, or just that plain wacky weather that just will not accept that it is actually November right now, it seems that whatever da fuck has been simmering below the surface since the Great Recession has now sprouted wings.

Now, I’m not going to lie to you, I’m a pretty resentful person at the best if times. But what seems to be happening right now between folks is just down right kooky. Dawn of a new era kooky? Perhaps. Mr.  Jesus’s throwing a spanner in the works from somewhere on high kooky? Darn right.

Or not Mr.  Jesus, perhaps another analogy for the coming together of various power forces and self fulfilling contingency projections, ironies that just mesh together in the worst way possible?

I mean sometimes using ironies is funny, but right now with everybody just hating each other over things that really aren’t controllable, at least whole they’re yelling at each other, I mean my God. My God.

You know what’s behind it though right?That’s right. Social media.

Sighhh if only it was that easy to just blame those goddamn companies who refuse to acknowledge the fact that they have created a publishing device,  and with that comes the responsibility that has evolved to serve mankind since mass information was invented.  But alas, they probably wouldn’t read my strongly worded, neatly typewriter letter even if I sent it.

They might just turn around and say, well were not the ones writing this stuff. We just provided the service for hundreds and thousands of people to come together and literally, literally, I shit you not, write the literally worst tabloid newspaper that not only features themselves and their opinions? But literally surrounds themselves with their opinions.

And who can blame them? Who wouldn’t want to customize their daily sources of outside information like this? Even right now, I am literally just writing shit that is coming out of the top of my head and it’s going to appear in something that very much looks like what we know as print. Literally! Isn’t that just fucked? Like,  just think about it.

I dunno, maybe folks out there have. Freedom of information and all that. And that’s true too! We need this freedom! We can’t start getting rid of it now because that means censorship! And censorship means an element if control by somebody, purportedly of higher consciousness who is there to save us from ourselves.

We all know how that goes. That’s right. Propaganda. Nobody is that great. We’re all terrible. Come on now, we know this. I’m not even being cynical here! We have flaws! It’s just the scientific way that it is! 2016 man!

Anyhow the state of our information systems is in flux. Newspapers both struggling to survive while probably very aware that their narcissistic, misguided and frankly unequal tendencies of the past has deeply contributed to this. But isn’t that just the nature of truth the end of it all.

Truth. Think about it. Like what even is it? Is it the actually definition of what is, empirically true to be? Or is it more of how it is used nowadays, you know, a socially created construct that is utilized by people to sort of,  uh,  sort the world around them according to their most cherished and hidden beliefs and fears. Their ‘needs as they know them to be,’ as it were.

Did the internet break the meaning of truth? Did we do that?!

Oh God, I hope we didn’t do that. Like is this truth even now? I don’t even know! I don’t even know!

I guess what I am trying to say is I am wondering about the responsibility for the current state of affairs of what, oohhh I dunno, maybe, potentially the breakdown of the political map as we know it? Except with high-speed internet and truthbots all over the goddamn place now,  being absorbed by those of us who never really learned to question the written word in the way it needs to be questioned now? Because before there were editors and checks and balances, and if you didn’t have those you at least needed to cut down enough trees and know somebody who knew how to use one of those kooky presses that used to exist with all the letters and wacky sounds and stuff? And even if you could cut down enough trees you still needed to get it out fast enough to people on the day it was relevant because later it wouldn’t have had the same impact, and even if those people could read your typefaces?

You know what, now that I’m thinking about it, the last two world wars utilized the mass communication devices that had just been introduced in a way that both perpetuated and helped create those wars. Radio. Then later, more radio. And now we have an even newer mass communication device that is even more effective… Hmmm.

I guess the only solution I could think of is how does a person sense of truth help us with all of this. Like, for example, let us just say there was you know, a guy, who, like ran for president, or you know whatever, and he understood how people talked. Or girl. It could be a girl too. And he also understood how people thought. And he understood, that if he could understand how they talked too, and used their weaknesses for his own purposes, like not to be mean or anything, but as like an available opportunity, you know? He could, theoretically have a lot of people talking either for or about him, which essentially could do way more campaigning then he could afford alone.

And that campaigning would not be coming out of his mouth so it would like sorta add a bit of, sort of extra, familiar emotion to it, you know?

And all these people who really just woke up wanting to be happy, like every single person on this planet wants to.  In some way. No matter how different they are from each other. Would see this horse shit in their lives, in a very real sense, and then they would add their own angry horseshit too!

And then, not only would they be arguing with each other, using his, or her name, which would be technically repeating these names, over and over again, until they became like, like an iconic fixture that has always been in these people’s life, kind of like a breakfast cereal that just shows up?! With like, heritage branding all over it?! Mmmmm good! Every morning for me! Or Ew! How the hell do you eat that stuff! It’s not even real food!Gross! Even though we have both been eating oatmeal for way longer. And it hasn’t been an issue.

Not only that! Not only that! All this bickering using their arguments against each other would not only fuel their presence in our lives, it would keep us distracted.  Just long enough that we get into the stickiest situation that we’ve been in for a while.

Or maybe the situation is literally just that corrupt and now we can actually see it better.  Still, wondering what it is about ourselves that lets people like this use us in this way.

Don’t trust social media for vital information, there are robots. Or at least I have heard of said robots. Cross reference everything. Multiple times! All the time! Even if that means you have to end every sentence in a question mark like this?  It is still better then being confident about something that was a lie or a misappropriation  to begin with?  Then we’ll see whose internet is boss.

Anyhow! Back to whatever the hell I was doing with this thing before. Thanks for reading.