If anyone was wondering, I
am still getting wound up by the petty (and larger) madnesses of the world but
they all seem so widespread and obvious that I don't think you need me to point
them out. I'm tending to put my blistering and eloquent ripostes to nonsense
on Facebook replying to posts mostly on the following subjects:
1. Conspiracy loons. Especially re the moon landings.
2. Related to this are the 'here's a picture of
a UFO, re-write history, ancient aliens, this is obvious proof of [insert
nut-job theory here]' people. They
freely use the term UFO without realising that the U means ‘unidentified’ as
they’ve always identified them (as spaceships piloted by ‘aliens’ of a particular
narrow type they assume exists). The ‘UFOs’
can be ‘thousands of miles across’ and yet they’re the only people who have
spotted them – just before ‘NASA cut the feed’… This soon bleeds into the
religious nutcases. I actually usually
manage to not engage with them.
2. Anti-sciencers and anti-vaxxers - though they seem a bit quieter at
the moment in my 'recommended for you' feed.
3. Related to 2 are the people being oppressed / having their civil
liberties being taken away from them by being politely asked if they'd wear a
mask in the shop please. You'd have thought the whinging crybabies were
being shot at or something. They’re all heroes to themselves too. Oh yes and they were all about to be carted
off to 're-education centres' they couldn't locate or identify in any way too. Also they have no idea that George Orwell was
a Socialist..
4. Strangely there were also HS2 people - and I'm not even particularly
against HS2. But it was the people who couldn't believe that anyone
had any points against it people that pissed me off. And the fact that
they wouldn't actually admit that the Leeds bit of the route had been cancelled.
In fact they were so obtuse that I suspected that they were either bots or
Putin's IT monkeys monkeying about.
5. Oh and there are the 'right meets left and you can't tell the
difference' people - generally the Jewish / capitalist conspiracy and 'all
Israeli's are evil militaristic racists because of the Palestinians' people. And the paedophile elite people too. I'm
talking about the ‘millions of children being murdered by Hillary Clinton’
types.
6. The people who post pictures of diesel trucks rescuing electric cars
as if this shows that electricity is an inherently rubbish power source while
diesel (and coal of course) are great.
7. Finally, (this is mainly on YouTube from what I've seen) - the 'Paul
is dead and was replaced' people. Despite
it being so obviously and blindingly clear that you can't just replace someone
like that, believe it or not there are still people claiming that the Paul
we know and love today is 'Faul' (Fake Paul y'see). They appear to be genuine in their beliefs -
all that 'his ear looks a bit weird in that picture and the obvious implication
is that it's not him at all but the winner of a (unspecified) look-alike
competition’ or something. This is the one that's so mad that you'd think
anyone could resist commenting. But not me. I'm trying not
to.
8. Almost forgot the ‘make up your own reality /
I just took some pictures of inter-dimensional beings that I decided I’d
believe in because I like the idea’ people’.
One showed me some pictures of ‘orbs’ (that look just like dust lit up
by a flash’) as proof.
10. Oh yes – then there’s the seemingly clever
memes that don’t mean anything or that appear to show that something that’s
demonstrably not true is true.
So…my conclusions are:
1. Facebook feeds you stuff that it thinks
will annoy you so you’ll engage
2. It seems likely that a lot of the posters
aren’t really real (have a look at their profiles and notice the lack of
friends / posts on other subjects and the like
3. A lot of this stuff is just clickbait and
not an actual person with an actual opinion.
I’m an idiot for taking the bait
and arguing with bots and idiots and idiot bots…
