Last week I wrote an article talking about the polar shifts between the Left and the Right and how Musk taking over Twitter could be a sign that the pendulum is swinging back to the right.
Within this article, there is one part I inserted that wasn’t contextually correct. I said, “On the Far Left, the idea of post-partum abortion (aka infanticide) is a perfectly acceptable idea, however on the Far opposite side of the spectrum – a woman should have no right in the process of birth whatsoever and any form abortion is murder.”
This statement was made due to a controversial bill in California Assembly Bill 2223, which aims to reduce liability of mothers who abort in a number of ways, and there was one term within the initial Bill – that has now been amended and removed - which included the term “Perinatal”.
This set off some “Pro-Life advocates” who said things like, “I saw a sign over here that had the [California] health and safety code,” Ms. Brennan said at the rally. “That code specifically says perinatal death is up to 30 days after [birth], and they amended it to say for ‘pregnancy-related causes,’ but that could be anything. Birth is a pregnancy-related cause.” As reported in the Washington Times.
If you look at the new bill, which passed – the term perinatal was completely removed because if there was a law signed that included that term, “legally” there was a lot of grey areas that could have created a world of chaos in California.
Fortunately, it was changed and now the bill is passed…
But why am I retelling this story you may ask?
Well – because that little part of the original article, set aflame some people who identify as “left” and called me a disinformation right wing whack job. When the inflamed commentary started piling up, I decided to throw some gasoline on it and see what happens and within a period of a few hours the article wracked up 60+ comments and landed me a ban in the group I shared it in.
Now the stoner confession is that, “I knew that the interpretation of the bill was right leaning” and continued to use it as is. But if you remove your emotionally soaked panties for a bit you’ll notice that I used it as an example of “extremism” and that in the EXTREME of the left or as they call it “THE FAR LEFT” – the idea is perfectly acceptable to THOSE EXTREMISTS. I’m sure it would take me about 30-minutes to find someone who agrees with the idea to do postnatal abortions and who considers themselves “left”.
Does this mean that EVERYBODY on the left thinks like this? Of course not! Just like not EVERYBODY on the right thinks the way that the left thinks they think…you know.
This was the ultimate objective of the article;
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Stoke some dogmatic fires (achieved)
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See who actually reads the articles (achieved)
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See how offense perpetuates bad ideas (achieved)
Now, that we’re hearing that the United States wants to create a Department of Disinformation or as many people called it “The Ministry of Truth” in reference to Orwell’s 1984 – my interest was piqued in finding out how it “operates” and the best way to do that is to test it.
This is why I leaned more into one narrative (something that every major news media outlet does) and to see if it would trigger a reaction. To do this, I shared it into a group I believed people would read it, which they did…but the backlash was supreme.
Before we continue…
I was called “Right wing” during many of the interactions mainly because some on the left has gone so far left that what was once considered “left” is now far right…
However, anyone who reads my stuff knows that I’m neither left nor right – I’m more of the “Without rulers” philosophy and believe that we need to decentralize power as much as possible, irrespective of their poles.
Nonetheless, I think it’s important to point out that when you engage in a dogmatic debate with people who are drenched in their dogma – no matter what you say you’ll be labeled as the “other” and attacked for it.
Did I deserve the attack? Probably, egging on a bunch of dogmatic folk will most certainly inspire a reaction, so I can’t blame them entirely for the way they reacted.
Nonetheless, let’s take a closer look at “how” this type of controversial ideas spread on social media, how the people who hated on me helped spread it, and what you can do if you ever run into content that inflames or is outright disingenuous.
How Mis-Mal-Disinformation Spreads like the Herpes…
Firstly, before we can understand why it spreads we need to understand why it starts in the first place Being misinformed means that you don’t know all the facts and are operating under the assumption that what you know is “true”.
Disinformation is typically utilized with an agenda. Militaries utilize disinformation campaigns to feed the enemy information that is wrong in relation to their own actions, creating an opportunity to capture your enemies off guard.
Malinformation is more vengeful but in a public sense. Revenge porn is a good example of malinformation, or information designed to harm another intentionally.
Now, these are the definitions that the government would use to justify whatever they are cooking up behind closed doors. Of course, most people are guilty of spreading misinformation mainly due to the influx of content on the internet.
With so many people having access to a computer it’s nearly impossible to report on anything without getting “something” wrong. In most cases, the bigger your dogma, the higher your likeliness of spreading misinformation due to the simple fact that dogma requires reaffirmations of ones beliefs.
Therefore, the people who are typically spreading misinformation are deeply entrenched in their own set of beliefs and feel the need to “share articles/blogs/videos” that align with their views to create evidence for the accurateness of their internalized belief.
In simpler terms, “They share shit because it proves to them that their opinion is the popular opinion.” In the world of digital people, ideology is worn as a garment meant to impress the faceless masses.
Yet even when we venture into the realm of misinformation we run into a problem – who decides what is and isn’t “mis-dis-malinformation?”
This is something that the Biden Administration is currently proposing. And even with the proposal we can see ideology clash as is seen in this picture;
As you can see here, even “news media” is leaning into a narrative as the NY Post frames the move as an assault on Free Speech, while CNN frames it as a “defense against disinformation”.
But once again, here I’d have to side more with the Post on the move – who gets to decide what is and isn’t misinformation, disinformation and malinformation?
According to Biden, it’s going to be Nina Jankowicz, who according to the NY Post;
In October 2020, after The New York Post exposed damning emails and other information in Hunter Biden’s laptop, Jankowicz scoffed at the laptop controversy: “We should view it as a Trump campaign product.” During the final Trump-Biden debate, she tweeted, “Biden notes 50 former natsec officials and 5 former CIA heads that believe the laptop is a Russian influence.” Not only was that not what they said — they said it could be a Russian plot — they offered no proof to reach that conclusion. And of course we know the Hunter laptop is real and is helping to inform a possible criminal case against the first son. – NY POST
While you wish to subscribe to this narrative or choose a different one, objectively speaking someone with a Party Affiliation such as Nina Jankowicz surely means that there will not be any “objectivity” at the newly established “Department of Disinformation”.
How can you honestly trust someone with such deep political ties to a particular ideology from telling you the truth or not acting in their own self interest? When you look at surveys, people do not trust their government…and now more than ever, there is so little trust in the current administration that Biden is polling as one of the worst presidents in American history. And with Trump as the previous president, the bar was already low…
The point here is not to fling feces at your political dogma but rather pointing out the underlying systemic issues that irrespective of what color shirt you wear…remains “true”.
Hell, throughout this pandemic – can you remember how many times you were told conflicting data from official sources? Who is going to hold them accountable? Are we supposed to trust that they simply “won’t fall to human frailty like the rest of us?”
What studying the War on Drugs for over a decade has taught me…
I don’t trust the government at all. I am one of those people, who simply believe that no matter how hard the “government” tries to unscrew-the-unscrew-able, they are incapable of “not obeying their nature”.
The politician seeks power via popular vote. To be seen by the masses the politician requires funding from private donors or “corporate persons” and in return, do favorable things for their “constituents”.
The War on Drugs revealed that there were major corporations that benefited from cannabis prohibition and since they fund a large portion of the government – utilized the government as a weapon to keep cannabis and other drugs illegal.
Industries that benefitted from the legal slave trade, where people were arbitrarily arrested for consuming a plant or any other form of narcotic, classified as a “criminal” and seized by the state to work for years and be treated like a delinquent in the system.
Police Unions were spending money on maintaining prohibition due to the sheer amount of property they seized and pocketed for themselves over the years.
These days, people try to call you a conspiracy theorist as if it’s a bad thing…but it’s starting to seem more like “not believing in conspiracies” is the naïve thing to do. Sort of like a kid who refuses to believe that Santa isn’t real nor does he live in the North Pole and for damn sure there are no reindeer that fly.
Just go back to how Epstein – who’s clients are CEOs of these top firms and high political offices – allegedly had himself “suicided” by using someone else’s hands against his will – according to the “Official Story”.
How Misinformation Spreads
Getting back to the piece I wrote; while the angry commenters were saying what a piece of shit I am, they were also doing something…something that if they truly cared about the spreading of misinformation wouldn’t do….they engaged with it.
When I mentioned that the reason I swayed the article with a little bit of ideology, one person told me, “You’re not special, it’s not like we don’t know this…this is common knowledge from way back” paraphrased.
Which is true, the idea that Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms use content that angers you to keep you engaged on the platform (I saw the documentary too) – it seems that they simply didn’t understand the mechanism behind the message.
If you engage with the content you dislike, you inform the algorithm to give you more of it because it will anger you to leave angry comments and get into fights with strangers on the internet because “YOU HAD TO PROVE A POINT!” in all caps.
At the end of the day, you told the algorithm, “HEY YOU, MAYBE YOU SHOULD MAKE IT MORE VISIBLE TO OTHER PEOPLE WHO THINK LIKE ME!!!”
Of which the algorithm says, “It’s already done bro!”
Next thing, your digisquad shows up, you all fling feces at the other side – achieving absolutely nothing – except perhaps upsetting the internal peace you may have had.
So what do I do when I genuinely run across outright disinformation (with mal intent)?
The best thing you can do is to simply report it as spam and continue on about your day. It’s that simple.
If all of those angry commenters instead simply ignored or reported it – the article would have probably made a small blip in cyberspace and then fade into the infinite expanse of the digital world.
The problem with dogma however is that even though you can logically explain these things – those under the influence of their belief systems will defend it to the grave.
What did I learn from all of this?
Firstly, I typically research my work “fairly” well. I’m also not a journalist and a weed blogger, so if anyone takes my words as “religious truth” they should really ask themselves as to “why”.
I don’t hold myself to the same standards as places like CNN – who have been misinforming millions of people with a blueish filter just as FOX misinformed their followers with a tint of red. These people should be held up to the scrutiny I faced.
But then again, if you are a small person faced with a BIG SYSTEM where you hold absolutely no power, it’s far easier to pile on and shit on a single blogger than to hold the actual institutions who are supposed to report the factual truth to those same standards.
As for me, I won’t be writing about left or right political talking points anymore. I find both sides to be fairly annoying and would rather engage with people who want to expand their minds, enjoy freedom, respect, and true love for one another.
Those who are balls deep in their third or fourth cup of Koolaid can enjoy their heaven’s gates…I have zero fucks to give. This doesn’t mean I excuse myself from the responsibility of life…rather, I’m not focusing on the “external narratives” as much anymore.
To me, political debate is like tobacco…if I engage in one…I’ll finish the whole damn pack. So best to avoid it altogether and do things that actually make me feel good…like weed, let’s smoke some weed!
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