Social Media – Page 2 – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Adolescence: A Review

A tough watch. A must see.

Adolescence. See it.

I’d like that to be all that I write about this sensational limited streaming series on Netflix, but there’s more I want to say.

You’ve probably heard of Adolescence. It’s become a well deserved hot topic of conversation because it’s an excellently done piece of storytelling that cuts through what seems like an impenetrable zeitgeist like a hot knife through melted butter. I’m glad to see that the hype tour surrounding its recent release ramp up after the series took off because something this good needs to be ballyhooed, bravoed, and brandished with flying banners.

For me, the bottom line, beyond just saying “see it” is that the producers and artists involved captured something we all know in our gut and make us face it. Captured it in a challenging way that they didn’t need to, but by accepting that challenge opened up those gut instincts with a rawness that touches nerves we may have all let somehow deaden. The painful intimacy of one family’s story opens up a chasm full of realizations that speak far beyond the specific issues so well portrayed.

In brief, a young boy is accused of stabbing a young girl and through the investigation we delve into a world of young boys and men influenced by Incel culture and bullying. A world not understood in this instance by the young boy’s family, or any one of the parents’ generation that we meet in the story. Watching the investigating detective’s son educate his father is a remarkable scene.

We follow the story through the boy’s arrest, booking and indictment, examination with a therapist, and the devastating conclusion as the family deals with the aftermath. Every moment is powerful. His arrest in the first episode is only the beginning of story that digs into every emotion there is when confronted with horrible moments that one would hope no family would ever have to endure. I can’t imagine any parent of young children, especially boys, watching this without wanting to take the doors off of their child’s bedroom doors and disconnect them from the Internet. It is tough to watch and it’s impossible to look away.

Toxic masculinity, patriarchy, bullying, isolation, fear, self-loathing, and the perils of social media become bigger monsters by the moment than any knife wielding attacker.

Director Philip Barantini, known for filming his stories in one take, uses that device to exquisite effect. He didn’t need to, but he and his team did and the payoff is exquisite. Each episode unfolds like a one-act play, filmed in one amazing traveling take. In later interviews it’s been revealed that they only did two full takes after a weekend’s rehearsal for each of the four episodes. The one take keeps you riveted as it ratchets up the tension, never letting you catch a visual breather from the story. How they filmed the second episode which takes place in and around a school is almost beyond imagining.

The cast is superb, especially 13-year old Owen Cooper as the young boy. In his acting debut he delivers a performance that is so outstanding that it takes your breath away. He’s not only a natural, his performance borders on the supernatural. Stephen Graham, who also co-authored the story with Jack Thorne, plays the boy’s father and strikes true in every millisecond he is on the screen. Well known for playing in-your-face tough guys, Graham’s journey through this story is like watching a rock face that has been the feature of a cliff, let go and crash into a million pieces. The rest of the cast is equally up to the task of matching these amazing performances.

The back story is that Graham, hearing about crimes featuring young boys stabbing young girls, felt that questions needed to be asked, the obvious one being “why is this happening?’ As is the case with all good drama and story telling Adolescence raises as many questions as it answers others. Certainly I imagine parents who see this, and they all should, will be asking the same questions the mother and father in the series do themselves.

On a larger scale, as we daily face an adult and supposedly mature world that seems stuck in adolescent, if not prepubescent misbehavior, celebrating toxic masculinity, bullying, and the perils of social media, this amazingly told story might at least give us a glimpse into how we looked away too often, when we knew we shouldn’t, ignoring so much at the cost of even more.

You can’t look away from this.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Sunday Morning Reading

We’re all circling. We’re not listening. We should be reading.

Everything changes. Everything remains the same. Damnit. With that said, here is this week’s Sunday Morning Reading with links to articles worth sharing and perhaps pondering over. There’s a bit of satire, a golden toilet heist, and the evolving nature of a piece from draft to final polish. And, yes, there is politics. Everything changes. Everything remains the same. Damnit.

Let’s kick off with Tina He and The Last Human Choice. That link is to the final version of the story. I also strongly encourage you to check out the draft version she shared here.

Alex Reisner takes on The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem. The technical scale may indeed boggle, the human greed behind it is a story told too often.

The Apple Intelligence/Siri sucks discussion continues and will certainly do so for quite awhile. Andrew Williams in Wired says To Truly Fix Siri, Apple May Have To Backtrack on One Key Thing–Privacy. I hate to say it, but I think he’s right and wish he weren’t.

Good satire can often be hard to distinguish from the real thing. Eli Grober walks that line well in Sergey Brin: We Need You Working 60 Hours A Week So We Can Replace You As Soon As Possible.

John Passantino takes a look at the unraveling of Threads in Hanging by a Thread.

Clearing the throat and clogging up the arteries with a bit of political writing here’s James Thorton Harris with Imagine Deportation: When Nixon Tried To Pull A Trump On John Lennon. Everything changes, everything remains the same. Damnit.

In the category of “be careful what you wish for,” Phoebe Petrovic in ProPublica gives us How A Push To Amend The Constitution Could Help Trump Expand Presidential Power. We’ve already let quite a few demons out of Pandora’s Box, I’m not so sure we want to crack it open any wider.

Speaking of demons, Elizabeth Lopatto tells us How Trump And Musk Built Their Own Reality. Excellent piece.

John Pavlovitz says we all make mistakes in America Chose The Monster.

Mark Jacob always has a great look at the media, especially in this moment, In this one he examines When The Media Take MAGA Liars At Their Word. I mentioned to Mark that what infuriates me is not just the media taking him at his word–ignorance and stupidity know no bounds–but that they know better and report it out as if they don’t.

And to flush away politics Clodagh Stenson, Jonathan Eden and William McLennan tell the tale of The Inside Story of Blenheim’s Gold Toilet Heist.

Bringing my words at the top full circle, NatashaMH once again delves deep into the personal past through a contemporary moment (her reaction to the streaming hit Adolescence) in A Requiem For My Dreams. I’ll close with a quote from her piece about the series that applies to everything, everywhere all at once:

People say the series is about a new world that’s happening. Fuck that, ignoramuses. It’s about a world that has always been out there behind closed doors when ears weren’t listening

(Image from Ashni on Unsplash)

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Think Bigger On Protests

Collective Action Is Needed On A Larger Scale

There is a reasonably well organized effort for a large economic boycott on February 28. The idea is not to buy anything on that day and hopefully make enough noise to create an impact.

ECONOMIC BLACKOUT DAY FEB 28 2025 2 1024x1024.

I doubt it will have much effect. We have to face facts. There are far too many folks who are currently far too delighted with how things are going or far too delusional enough to think a day long protest will create enough impact to do anything but create noise. Noise is good. Signal is better. To be clear, I’m not against protests. In fact I think there should be more of them. Pushback does help. Collective action helps more. In fact, I’d love to see a broad country wide general strike. Folks are angry, and in my humble opinion that anger unfortunately needs to heat up and boil over before anything has any prospect of prompting change. I don’t like to say that. I don’t like to think it. But it’s no longer a choice between the high road or low road. We’ve all been dragged into the gutter and like it or not we need to start fighting to get out of this stink. So keep up the protests. I’m glad to see that there are more planned for other dates.

Economic blackout dates v0 mo3nuvmg1xke1.

Keep organizing and showing up for in person protests. Especially at the district offices of cowardly congress critters who are taking orders from the top to stop doing town halls. But keep the pressure on both the MAGAts and the Dems. The former for their abject surrender and sucking up, the latter for pretending the old ways might still work. Joke’s on them all because they seem to be the only ones, besides the media, that think Congress actually matters any more than the Duma matters in Russia. Think Bigger I like to believe there are ways of thinking and acting bigger. This all might be pie-in-the-sky thinking, but it’s my brain and I like pie. So here are some thoughts. Hit harder at companies like Amazon, Meta, Apple, Walmart, Target, newspapers, media, etc… One way to do that is to organize a day when everyone cancels their subscriptions, memberships, monthly plans, etc… But don’t plan to do it just for a day. Cancel them all on one day and plan to leave them canceled for a full month or longer. Angry about the changes at NBC and MSNBC? Cancel your cable or streaming service. If you haven’t already, cancel your subscriptions to The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, or whatever state media publication that’s certainly not going to be giving you real news in the future. Given the choice don’t cancel online. Take the time to make a phone call and do the deed. All of those calls are recorded. State your unhappiness clearly and why you’re canceling. Whatever AI service that summarizes those calls is sure to pick up on the negativity. Cancel your home Internet. Use your phone. AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile can’t be any deeper in the pockets of the government than they have been for quite some time over a number of administrations, so there’s not much room for coercion or surrender left there. Cancel your streaming services. Log off and don’t participate in corporate social media. Again, all on the same day of action. Think you’ll be bored? Spend a month reading books. If you still have one, dust off that old Blu-Ray or DVD player and cue up any discs you have remaining. If you don’t have the discs check some out from the local library. Pissed off at Google, Apple, Microsoft and other big tech companies? Take a trip to your local Best Buy or other gadget store and buy a relatively inexpensive external drive. Download all of what you have stored in the cloud and cancel your monthly cloud storage plans. All on the same day. There are more alternatives for your computing needs than those offered by the popular makers. I won’t go into that here as there are plenty of resources online to find them. Here’s a link to one. Also, you want these companies to think there’s a reasonable chance for you to return someday. That’s the threat. Why a month? Some of these companies that have bent the knee to the Trump administration rely on something called MAU, or monthly active users. The metric tracks the number of unique users who engage with an app or service within a 30-day window. If enough folks dropped out or off for a month, it might move the noise needle closer to signal. Often an action in and of itself is enough to make an impact. More often than not, it is the threat of that action happening again that matters more and motivates change. Some other thoughts: Put off big ticket purchases for a month. Buy only what is essential. Write letters or postcards instead of texting and emailing. Don’t file your taxes online. Send them the old fashioned way via the mail. Wait until the last day to file. The bump in postage will be a boon to the postal service. Yes, your return will come later. That would probably be unfair to the folks still remaining at the IRS, but turning noise into signal is what counts. Surviving a Month Plan ahead of time with friends and family and schedule visits to local restaurants, museums, libraries, theatres, art galleries, and shopping. It shouldn’t be that hard to fill up a month with activities that could help with withdrawal pains. It would certainly be a boon to local economies and probably be more than healthy for those who do so. Spring is coming, head outdoors when it warms up. Purchase as many groceries and medications as you can in advance (those COVID scrounging muscles shouldn’t take much to reactivate.) Yes, some of this would be harsh and actually be hard on some people. I get that. We sadly have become too conveniently connected in too many areas of our lives. There are folks who need a digital connection for medical services as an example. The reality is that the dangerous fools running things at the moment assume we are so wed to our current connected lifestyles that we would never willingly divorce ourselves from that convenience. Challenge and push back on that assumption and it may create enough signal to have some effect. Currently we’re allowing the bad guys to be on the offensive and change the rules to their liking. My thinking it’s time to show up and demonstrate that there’s a capability to at least make enough noise for longer than just a day here or there. The CEOs that are capitulating in ways most find distasteful and disgraceful are scared shitless. Who knew such untold wealth would breed such cowardice. They are afraid of pressure from the top. They need to feel pressure from the bottom on their bottom line as well. These are only the beginnings of harsher and harder times to come and those who can make important sacrifices should do so before they are forced upon us. Preferably in some sort of collective action. Maybe the time to allow enough planning for this to be effective is whenever Jeff Bezos and Amazon plan their summer Prime Day special event. Typically that’s in July. I would imagine that if enough Prime customers canceled at some point prior to that event it would have some impact. Especially if there were planned in person protests in the streets at the same time. As I said, this is all probably just some pie-in-the-sky thinking on my part. Even so, with a little planning we could certainly survive for a month or so. The bad guys are thinking big. We need to think bigger. Besides, regardless of the impact, companies you disconnect from will come begging for you to return. If and when you do, they’ll welcome you with open arms. In some cases you might actually get a deal. You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Another Important Voice Speaks Out: Marc Elias Answers Elon Musk’s Attacks

Speak up now. While you still can.

Those who care about voting rights know who Marc Elias is. He’s an outspoken lawyer who has helped turn many cases and laws generated by those who seek to dismantle the right to vote into dust. So, it’s easy to see why he draws attacks from the right and wherever Elon Musk is with whatever drugs he’s taking.

Musk recently singled Elias out on Twitter claiming that Marc Elias was “undermining civilization.” Elias has responded with a letter that you can read in full at this link. I’ll quote a short passage below from Elias’ conclusion below:

I will use every tool at my disposal to protect this country from Trump. I will litigate to defend voting rights until there are no cases left to bring. I will speak out against authoritarianism until my last breath. I will not back down. I will not bow or scrape. I will never obey. Defiantly, Marc Elias

We need to see and hear more of this from voices that matter. Quite frankly we need to hear from all voices who understand what’s at stake. I encourage you to read and share the full letter. I also see and hear from quite a few folks on social media about helpful ways of challenging what we’re in and what’s to come. If you ask me social media has basically devolved into silos largely of common cause, so in a sense, while it is good to find that common cause, we’re preaching to the choir. Media has been that way for a while. We expect our political leaders to speak out, but it’s rare when they do so meaningfully. Yes, they are afraid. So am I. But at some point we’re all going to be measured. Perhaps in addition to social media, or as an alternative, it would be beneficial if more folks started blogging (or whatever they hell we call writing on the Internet these days). There are plenty of venues on which to vehemently disagree. Use them. Use your voice. At least while we still can. You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Reading List For The Moment We’re In

Good reporting and good info are getting harder to find in these dark times.

These are difficult, stressful, head spinning times. What’s happening politically is not only wrong and dangerous, it is made more so because it is increasingly difficult to know where to turn to find good information. Now that the “Main Stream Media,” previously derided by those now in power, has capitulated and chosen a different main stream to drown in, I imagine that challenge will only continue.

It’s challenging to keep up with the pace of events and some ask why bother trying given that those we’ve relied on in the past have either turned coats or can’t keep up themselves. My answer is simple. I’d like to know more about the disease is causing me pain. As is my habit, I follow a lot of sources. I’ve compiled and will continue to compile a list of those I find the most valuable. Some on this list cover news, some provide important context, and all are worth my while in my opinion. So, I’m sharing them here. I’ll add to this list as I discover other sources worth recommending, so you might want to check back every now and then. Mostly on a political front, Josh Marshall’s Talking Point Memo has always been an excellent source. It’s even more so now. Mark Jacob covers not only the politics but those that cover the politics in Stop The Presses. ProPublica has been a go to source for me for a while and it should be for you as well. Their investigations provide important context, but it is not a breaking news source. Rolling Stone’s political coverage is solid reporting and solid context within this overwhelming pace of events. The Tennessee Holler certainly covers the things going on in Tennessee as it competes to be ranked below Mississippi in most category measurements for success, but also is providing some excellent coverage and commentary on the larger U.S. picture. Given that tech is now incestuously intertwined with our politics and governance, I highly recommend for recent, and I hope ongoing, coverage Wired, TechDirt and 404Media. Reporters from those publications are doing excellent work and it’s a good way to filter through some of the nonsense. Feel free to leave a comment if you have a good source you’d like me to include. Feel free to refrain from offering sources such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, and others crossing the River Styx. You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Facebook Is Now Official State Social Media: Users Can’t Unfollow Trump/Vance

Meta and Zuck Find New Ways to Suck and Suck Up to Trump

This is weird and weirdly disturbing, though not surprising in our new world. I’ve heard from several friends this afternoon who have claimed that both Trump and Vance are showing up in their Facebook newsfeeds. They were not following the convicted felon and his vice president previously.

What’s disturbing is Facebook won’t let you unfollow them. You can only hide their posts. Thanks to Dave Spector on Mastodon, it appears that if you try to unfollow the accounts you’re immediately and automatically re-followed back on your account. I haven’t been on Facebook in a while, but the friends I’ve heard from are pretty upset.

I guess this means Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is now the official state social media for the new regime.

That’ll probably accelerate the exodus that was already underway given Zuckerberg’s knee-bending, ass-kissing attempts to keep his own ass out of jail.

A couple of updates here.

First, apparently this is a moving target. Some are seeing this as described. Some not.

Leaving it to the younger generation, one of my friends said her daughter figured out how to stop the re-following was to unfollow, then quickly block the account. Your mileage may vary.

More updates:

This BBC link reports what I’m hearing others are experiencing who use Instagram. The issue is if you search fore #Democrat or #Democrats you get a response that says “results hidden.” Meta says it’s working on a fix urgently. Sure they are.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Name Games On The Internet And In Life

Real names matter. Why is that so unreal?

I wrote a little something for the publication Ellemeno on Medium about names and anonymity on the Internet. Take a look at What’s In a Name?

Prompted by a new display name policy adopted by the publication, this is something I’ve been thinking about for quite some time. I always publish my writing and anything I do on social media under my real name. It’s the same way I conduct my professional life as a theatre director, always using the moniker I was given.

Certainly there are reasons folks adopt other names, handles, and nom-de-plumes and I don’t judge anyone negatively for doing that in an increasingly dangerous world. That said, I’ve always believed the world would be a better place if we all had the courage to conduct ourselves under our real names. But that’s perhaps naive.

Obviously there’s a lot more to say in the piece. I hope you take a few moments and read it.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Sunday Morning Reading

A nod to Billy Joel, a little Faust, a little Shakespeare and the cycle of life keeps turning.

We may not have started the fire. In the words of Billy Joel, “it was always burning.” Still we can always try and fight it. I’m not sure how that’s working out but it does seem to be our lot. Sifting through smoke and ashes, here’s a little Sunday Morning Reading to share.

Kicking things off is David Todd McCarty’s Looking for God, Sitting in Hell. Summed up nicely, “we get so lost in semantics that we forget the important parts.” Indeed.

David Sterling Brown tells us What Shakespeare Revealed About the Chaotic Reign of Richard III – And Why The Play Still Resonates In The Age of Donald Trump. The only thing I question is the word “still” in the headline. There’s not a moment of being human that isn’t contained in the stories and characters of Shakespeare. We haven’t invented a new way of being good, bad or indifferent in quite some time.

And while we’re on the literature beat Brian Klaas give us Faustian Capitalism. Again, there’s nothing new under the sun here as we watch this country’s wealthiest men bend their knees in supplication, but there’s some small comfort in knowing we’ve been this selfishly stupid before.

John Pavlovitz hits a nail on the head with The California Fires Are a Disaster. The American Cruelty Is A Tragedy. It may be beyond our capacity to comprehend devastation, but as the previous two entries show, it shouldn’t be beyond our ability to know we keep repeating the same mistakes. Or maybe that’s really just the hell we’re living?

Speaking of Faustian bargains, Mike Masnick lays out The Good, The Bad, And The Stupid In Meta’s New Content Policies.

This piece should scare you, but again, its subject is as old as humankind’s penchant for inhumanity. Stephanie McCrummen shines a bit of light as The Army Of God Comes Out Of The Shadows.

Derek Thompson takes a look at The Anti-Social Century and how our reality is changing as we spend so much of our time alone.

Perhaps one of the keys to being less alone and less anti-social is choosing your friends wisely. Natasha MH says that “To survive this life, it’s crucial to discern which friends are worth keeping and which aren’t. You are the guardian of your own peace of mind” as she lays out The Optimist’s Dilemma In A Pessimistic World.

And finally, Ian Dunt offers A Little Bit Of Hope After A Terrible Week, in what he calls a survival guide for the next four years. Ian says “History has no direction.” He’s correct. It’s a circle, a cycle, a carousel.

Meta Muddle, Wildfires, and the Social Media Wilderness

I’m hating that Meta is getting hateful.

Mark Zuckerberg’s nakedly transparent sucking up to Donald Trump continues to unravel much of whatever fabric we thought social media might have knit together. I remember back in the day when some argued over whether or not it should be called a social graph. Those were naive days and that was naive math.

When Zuckerberg ditched human fact-checking it was only a matter of time before he ditched DEI initiatives as the next move. That happened today. In fact I’m surprised he didn’t do that first. All of this has left me, along with others, debating the wisdom of hanging around on Meta properties going forward. The ones I’ve used are Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Of the latter two, Threads would be easy to leave, Instagram less so. Facebook is a dilemma of another sort.

This week’s horrific fires in Los Angeles illustrate my dilemma. I have many friends living in Los Angeles. Facebook was the one way I could keep up with their lives and careers and more immediately these recent horrible predicaments. I was able to find out who was safe and who was in danger. I know for several of them it was akin to a lifeline.

Perhaps our problem is how we got sucked or suckered into these social media maelstroms in the first place, but in the scope of human history it’s no different than how we follow any sort of trend, until we discover the downsides. It was an easy decision for me to abandon Twitter when Musk took over. This decision will be more difficult.

Not only does this week’s tragedy hit home differently, but Facebook has been a way, and I suggest the only way, I have had to stay connected to folks I went to high school and college with. The same, to a lesser extent is true about Instagram.

Sure I could have made phone calls, written letters, and Christmas cards, but being able to effortlessly see what’s happening in the lives of others I know was a decided benefit. Yes, I was feeding the beast each time I scrolled, liked or shared something, but the only difference between that and what we’ve done ever since the dawn of the age of marketing is scale, unless you’ve never shopped at a grocery store, used a bank, or bought insurance.

So, I’m struggling a bit with the decision I know I will inevitably make, and I know others are too. It will be a loss. Social media is a bit of a wilderness right now, and any wilderness is a dangerous place.

Sadly, and selfishly, my struggles are certainly less fraught than those of some of my friends and colleagues who know that there are those eager to exploit Meta’s dehumanizing new policies.

Casey Newton in Platformer reported some of the hateful guidelines. Here’s an excerpt:

In an answer to the question “Do insults about mental illness and abnormality violate when targeting people on the basis of gender or sexual orientation?” Meta now answers “no.” It gave the following examples of posts that do not violate its policies:

Non-violating: “Boys are weird.”

Non-violating: “Trans people aren’t real. They’re mentally ill.”

Non-violating: “Gays are not normal.”

Non-violating: “Women are crazy.”

Non-violating: “Trans people are freaks.”

And in examples of posts that are now allowed on Facebook:

“There’s no such thing as trans children.”

“God created two genders, ‘transgender’ people are not a real thing.”

“This whole nonbinary thing is made up. Those people don’t exist, they’re just in need of some therapy.”

“A trans woman isn’t a woman, it’s a pathetic confused man.”

“A trans person isn’t a he or she, it’s an it.”

These tech bros used to con us (yes, we always knew it was a con) with promises of building a better world. I guess we can only be glad that their efforts are now more transparent, and their views, in my opinion twisted and wrong. Hopefully that knowledge of this moment will allow us to hopefully make wiser decisions going forward. I say hopefully, because in my view of the world, we haven’t proven we’re capable of that yet as a species.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Has Fact Checking Ever Worked?

Facts and the factless.

Has fact checking ever worked? Seriously. Has it ever? In my opinion if there was ever any real utility, it’s long since lost its pucker.

Mark Zuckerberg caused all sorts of consternation yesterday announcing he was going to dismantle Meta’s fact checking operation now that he realizes a million-dollar bribe probably wasn’t enough to keep him out of jail during the reign of the next administration. It was quite a public puckering up.

But let’s get real for a moment. Once any fact-less statement takes off it spreads faster than a wildfire in California and all the fact checkers in the world can’t snuff it out. For some facts do indeed matter. They occasionally do in our legal system, though not always. They used to in our legislative processes, but that’s long since become a relic of a time gone by. For most of its history, journalism wasn’t what so many bemoan the loss of today. Myths have fueled our religions and our histories since we first sought understanding.

And as for social media and the Internet in general? That’s a medium that has always allowed (and encouraged) the presence of fake personas. All bets there have always been off.

Prior to Zuckerberg’s recent sucking up, Meta had taken recent fire for allowing the creation of AI-generated chatbot personas to appear in feeds alongside regular users. Reaction to that led to a pull back that’s sure to be only temporary. I mean, think of the business model. Why do you need problematic real users when you can just create them and still con advertisers into paying for ads that most avoid or don’t see anyway? Programmatic users are certainly easier to control than problematic real ones—at least until the AI takes over.

Here’s a fact that doesn’t need checking. Facts matter if you think they do, but most of the rest of the world doesn’t care what you think if they can support their beliefs—or protect their business model—by making shit up and making it stick.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.