So I have a new non-fiction book (well, fiction if you consider that the topic is about fake news and smear campaigns) that I seem to not shut up about. I love reading stuff that is a bit off the wall but grounded in analysis – maybe that’s the Sherlock Holmes wanna be in me that gets stoked. At any rate, The Smear, by Sharyl Attkinsson (sp?) is my latest reading binge. It’s taking me away from Turn: George Washington’s spys on Netflix.

I’m ranking it up there with Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches by Marvin Harris. Mainly because I love perspectives that make me rethink how I look at things, as well as possibly gain an insight that I tend to miss being an anti-social hermit.

The main reason I’m devouring it has more to do with what I’ve been seeing on my FB feed and the various stories propigated by friends and acquainences. It also lends an interesting perspective to the fallout I’m seeing from the recent Gillette commercial addressing “toxic” masculinity and the debate that has been sparked. I followed the rabbit hole and read through the comments on the YouTube post, and if you can’t tell the majority of the comments are the same, or just slight modifications of the same post.

It half makes me wonder what would happen if all of us ceased posting, what would the bots and the humans paid to write the reviews come up with, if all of us just didn’t pay attention to it. It really reads like those article transcripts of people who set up a couple of AIs and let them talk to each other. The only difference is that AIs will debate, argue, and discuss their subjects. These things just regugitate a single talking point.

It half reads like a modernized theatrical production based off Huxley’s Brave New World with some Fahrenheit 451. The only difference is that we’re living it, instead of reading and discussing it in our Senior year lit class in HS.