What the Fuck is Wrong with People?

I received a curious comment today on an old post I wrote last year:

Just so that no other semi-professional media types make the same mistake that Linux Insider did, this article is A *joke*. A *spoof*. A *parody*. Second Life has lots of weapons, but they can’t be used to “kill” other residents except in consensual combat zones, and death is very temporary. Second Life is also divided into a Teen Grid for kids from 13 to 17. and the main grid, for people 18 and up. So “Rebecca-Anne” couldn’t have been in SL at all, and “Timothy” would have been on the Teen Grid, where the two adults would not have been able to go.

I know it’s a shame to spoil the joke by explaining it, but sheesh there are gullible people out there

Curious, I decided to check out Linux Insider to see what this was all about.

Emma Cowing is apparently a “journalist” for The Scotsman. She apparently mistook my obvious Drama News Network satire about a Second Life murder-suicide to be a legitimate (read: real) story and included it in her article about the invasion of virtual worlds by “society’s ills.”

Jim McAllister and his family do not exist. Jim did not murder his wife and children in Second Life with a gun that he purchased for L$50. Scottsdale police officers did not burst into the McAllister home to find them eating dinner. Indicted United States Senator Ted Stevens did not ask, “Just ten criminals rampaging through Second Life and what happens to your own personal Second Life?”

My DNN “story” was a figment of my imagination; a satire about the absurdities of virtual worlds.

Yet it is now inevitably “fact” to many who read Linux News. And it has visibility through plenty of other websites.

Why?

Because a “journalist” took my satire at face value, apparently oblivious to the many clues that it was satire. In addition to the absurdities included in the “story” itself, one might have questioned the existence of the “Drama News Network” and might have applied a little more caution to information being provided by an anonymous blogger with ripped abs who refers to himself as the “Internet’s version of Keyser Söze.”

Unfortunately, Cowing is hardly the first gullible person to prove that common sense really isn’t so common.

From Fake Exxon to Fake Al Gore, it is apparent that individuals are more than increasingly gullible – they’re increasingly downright fucking stupid. I have no idea what they’re doing but they’re clearly not thinking when they’re reading.

For those who don’t believe that the Internet is making us stupid, I say: look around.

As I wrote in response to Nick Carr’s article in The Atlantic:

It’s not simply that the possibility that “information overload” promoted by an internet that makes everything “instantly available” will lead to a society filled with individuals incapable of focusing, concentrating and thinking deeply but that it will lead to a society that lacks all perspective and that is infinitely corruptible because the masses lack an ability to “separate the wheat from the chaff.”

In other words, the multitasking, follow-20,000-twats, ADHD-ridden minds that the Internet is helping to create are ill-equipped to distinguish satire from statement, fact from fiction, reality from delusion.

While the publication of my satire as fact realistically won’t harm anyone, the fact that billions of dollars are lost to phishing schemes and that fake news can (temporarily) shave billions of dollars in market capitalization off of a prominent company demonstrates that a society filled with mindless sheep is just waiting to be slaughtered.

Today you don’t need to rob a bank to steal money. You don’t need to coerce people to do something less-than-savory on your behalf. You don’t need to invade a nation to control its people.

All you need is disinformation. And in a world where even the best and brightest in the most respected nations would rather browse Facebook and read Rotten Tomatoes than learn something worthwhile that just might help them contribute something of value to civilization, your disinformation doesn’t even need to be all that thoughtful to be effective.

To adapt Scarface’s Tony Montana, “This Internet is one big pussy waiting to get fucked.”

It’s sad that a tool as powerful as the Internet has helped society devolve into a herd of helpless sheep. On the other hand, there’s never been a better time to be a wolf and I for one welcome the easy money-making opportunities that stupidity provides.

Today’s stupidy:

Leads to this: