No Authority

I've just finished reading a new book, added to the bookroll: "Trust Me, I'm Lying" by Ryan Holiday. I found it a bit tough to get through. Or perhaps, more accurately, to choke down.

Ironically, it's about how blogging is used as a source by the media, plus how it can be manipulated for profitable and/or destructive purposes.

In our era of Fake News, these are the sources: blogs like this one, and facebook. Though to be more accurate, other blogs - this one will never become mainstream. Something that I'm glad of, it allows me to keep it as an outlet for the bullshit that I see in the world. The stuff that I'd rather not spout to my acquaintances - why fuck them off by shitting over all their illusions? Just asking for trouble.

Vegans, climate alarmists, pro-lifers, leftists/socialists, anti-/pro-gun, feminists, etc. It's their religion. Some members are more fanatical - even completely fruitcake - than others. Shit on their religion? How hard do you want to be slammed into the wall?

As Ryan Holiday states, referring to public crucifixions in the manipulated media: No wonder only morons and narcissists enter the public sphere. Unless you have the millions to 

That's a thought which has always been a little uncomfortable for myself. Narcissism and hubris, having a blog, thinking that it will of some value to someone else. Trying to avoid being too click-bait-y, wondering if it's just self-wanking horseshit at times.

Fuck it.

At any rate, we see it everywhere in the manosphere. Various of the well-known coming out with books and the like. Anything to monetize. Especially now that the value of advertising - and especially YouTube - has dropped like a stone. Snake oil salesmen. Amplifying the inner pain, selling a "sure-fire-guaranteed" anodyne.

Here, let me jab you in your most painful spots with a red-hot poker - call you a pussy when you walk away from me - hold you up as a shining example of a pussy for all the others to see when you don't rise to my bait - and sell my snake-oil anyway. Either way, you are gonna help feed me, motherfucker.

Wonderful mentality.

In a medium which is so ephemeral, it's easy to fake authority. Amusingly, that's what many self-help books are all about: fake it until you make it. Fake authority until you start bringing in some $$$ - a self-reinforcing feedback loop.

WikiPedia, touted as a free online encyclopedia. Started (possibly) with the best intentions in the world. Result: articles being fucked around with willy-nilly by whoever on the staff has an axe to grind today. More irony: you can still use it as a reference in college/university, which goes to show how low things have fallen.

Fuck Fake News - fake information. So one day the media decides to do (or someone fakes them into doing) a snow-job on Julian Assange of WikiLeaks and turn him from an information hero into a "creepy rapist" with the help of some very questionable sources. How soon do you think it will be until that potential disinformation gets into WikiPedia?

InfoGalactic? Are you absolutely certain that is not being subtly fucked with in some manner? Like climate alarmists: "I know that I was wrong the last 100 times, but you should trust me now!" Like the boy who cried wolf: "Help! Trust me! What do you mean I'm lying...oh shit..."

Sounds just like a false rape accusation, doesn't it? What happens when the boy has cried wolf one time too many?

Originally, the News made certain to get the truth. Sadly, the old days of Walter Cronkite and co are long, long gone.

Nothing becomes true any more. Nothing becomes trusted any more. There is no authority.

Let me describe what could be called the nightmare scenario, in this world where everything is electronic. All information. Nothing is physical any more. It all exists on computer chips and hard drives, both spinning-rust and solid-state.

What do we do when that information is scrambled?

It could be. Very easy to do. The cause can range from the prosaic, through to the semi-apocalyptic.

Data corruption. Spinning rust degrades. Solid state drives can crap out. Magnetic tape loses it. Optical disks degrade over time. It will happen with magnetic bubble, and holographic, and whatever. Something didn't get copied from old to new, and now you can't read the old. Shit just happens.

Virus. Ooops, there goes all your long-saved family photos and your insurance and suchlike, and goddamn what a pain in the ass it is to get it all together again. Do you remember your email passwords? Tough shit if you don't, and tough shit for the older emails too.

EMP pulse. Some terrorist or whack-job sets off something in a town or city. Everything electronic within a few blocks gets wiped. Including the government records of you owning X property and the bank records of you owning Y money.

Massive EMP pulse caused by a nuke in the stratosphere. Goodbye every piece of unshielded electronics in the hemisphere.

The Sun does a coronal mass ejection which just happens to hit the planet. Kiss it all goodbye. This happened back in the late 1800's, killing telegraph operators and causing massive currents in the earth. Goodbye every piece of unshielded electronics on the planet.

Go back to building our technology up from the 1920's once more. Assuming that we even know how. How much of that shit is kept electronically? Oops, catch-22 right there...

But we don't need to go that far.

Look at the modern viruses - WannaCry, for example, just this past weekend. Someone took CryptoLocker and fucked around with it and put out their own version. Though from what I heard, there are some...problems...if you do pay the ransom. In that, you still don't get your data returned to you. By design or fuckup? Who knows?

We have Stuxnet out there. Take some completely retarded anarchist. Marry things together, set it loose, leave it to spread itself for a couple of years. Then the payload goes off. All of a sudden, every bit of information is encrypted - or worse, just plain scrambled.

In the old days, the authority was physical. Physical encyclopedias were IT - every house had one. Libraries were IT - every town had one. These days? It's electrical, ephemeral, can be retconned or modified at will. Easily, like when someone manipulates the media to make a few million in the stock-market, or the media crucifies whoever it decides would make a good spectacle.

We take it so much for granted. A house built on sand? Fuck that, a world built on sugar. All it needs is a splash of water and it's all gone.

Without the electronics and records and suchlike - what then?

I've about talked myself out again, for a while. Time to go and do other things. Black Poison Soul, Crap-Colored Glasses™, signing out for a while.