Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
What Blair had first conceived of as an elaborate joke was beginning to reveal something darker. “No matter how racist, how bigoted, how offensive, how obviously fake we get, people keep coming back,” Blair once wrote, on his own personal Facebook page. “Where is the edge? Is there ever a point where people realize they’re being fed garbage and decide to return to reality?”....“Nothing on this page is real,” read one of the 14 disclaimers on Blair’s site, and yet in the America of 2018 his stories had become real, amassing an audience of as many 6 million visitors each month who thought his posts were factual.
Comments
Couple of money quotes in this piece, mho, on the essence of trolling, even though these guys were more into satire than trolling.
This is what trolls do and why they do it. To manipulate humans who are in a emotional state over one thing or another gives a sense of power, of being smarter and more in control
It is used by trolls of all political persuasions and sometimes the actual political persuasion isn't that strongly held, because getting the sense of power from manipulation is the more important thing.
by artappraiser on Sun, 11/18/2018 - 8:00pm
Trolls don't do this:
“Nothing on this page is real,” read one of the 14 disclaimers on Blair’s site"
yet:
"Blair’s page had become one of the most popular on Facebook among Trump-supporting conservatives over 55."
or:
“We live in an Idiocracy,” read a small note on Blair’s desk, and he was taking full advantage. In a good month, the advertising revenue from his website earned him as much as $15,000, and it had also won him a loyal army of online fans. Hundreds of liberals now visited America’s Last Line of Defense to humiliate conservatives who shared Blair’s fake stories as fact. In Blair’s private Facebook messages with his liberal supporters, his conservative audience was made up of “sheep,” “hillbillies,” “maw-maw and paw-paw,” “TrumpTards,” “potatoes” and “taters.”
“How could any thinking person believe this nonsense?” he said."
The WaPo reporter visited, in her home, the Pahrump lady and told her the Michelle Obama photo wasn't her, but.....
"Chapian saw the (you are a sucker) comments after her post and wondered as she often did when she was attacked: Who were these people? And what were they talking about? Of course Michelle Obama and Chelsea Clinton had flipped off the president. It was true to what she knew of their character. That was what mattered."
by NCD on Sun, 11/18/2018 - 10:38pm