[ExI] fake news again was: ian came home

[spike at rainier66.com]

…> On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] fake news again was: ian came home

 

>…Barring the man on the street, everyone you see on TV is an actor with a script. Esp. 'reality shows' -  bill w

 

 

Billw, this gets where I was going originally with the offshoot thread: the internet has collectively educated us.

 

Consider the famous misunderstood line by PT Barnum:  A sucker is born every minute.

 

That comment was made in a boardroom meeting where there was concern that people were growing too sophisticated in 1900 to fall for a lot of the acts they were accustomed to selling to local rubes.  Barnum assured the board that the target audience was the young people who hadn’t actually seen it.  He cynically referred to the young as suckers.  The way we use the term today is gullible people.  He meant it more literally, which also explains the “…born every minute…” comment.

 

OK well then, consider young people today.  I did community volunteer service this week assembling charge carts for a kinder thru grade 2 school, so the kids could all have computers on which they do their studies.  They have restricted internet in all these public schools.  Result: these suckers grow up fast.  They know a lot about skepticism, which is the result of internet use, at an early age.

 

When I was their age, we were urged to trust, to step out on faith.  Now the opposite is the norm, so I suppose we could even kinda make a rhyme: at an early age, we take the step of skep.  We learn to cross check, being as it is suddenly very easy to do.

 

This alone has an enormous impact on society.  We catch the phony nonsense offered to us as news.

 

spike

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Thu, Sep 29, 2022 at 12:29 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

…leaning into it, the way even a cow (a stupid COW fer cryin out loud) understands:

https://youtu.be/tocuyJ1Fu7U

spike




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