Twitter Idiots: The Boiling Frog

I published this, in a slightly different format, a day or so ago on my own blog. Perhaps a portion, or most of it has some relevance here:

You probably all know either the meme or the original story:

The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. The story is often used as a metaphor for the inability or unwillingness of people to react to or be aware of sinister threats that arise gradually rather than suddenly.

Unsurprisingly, there’s some debate as to the story’s accuracy. Frogs aren’t dumb. Neither are lobsters, another creature which is often used to illustrate the paradigm. That’s probably why we’re instructed to put the lid on and hold it down while the creatures are murdered. (TBC, I love lobster as a main course.) Nevertheless and for the sake of argument, perhaps it’s a defensible premise: that which surrounds us and and moves forward very slowly, doesn’t always seem to pose a threat.

Until it does.

Which brings me to my recent Twitter (or whatever the hell it’s called nowadays) experience.

I have several dozen Twitter followers. I love you all. I’m pretty sure none of you are loons, or bots, or manufactured shills. (I take precautions that way, and I’ve bounced plenty; otherwise I might have a few hundred of same. As it is, exhibit such predilections, and you’re whacked, quite early on.)

Thanks, all of you normies who (along with the Dude) endure.

There’s another slice of my Twitter experience: those I’ve known either online or IRL, those who’ve followed me because they think they know me, those who think they're annoying me by their presence, those I’ve come across at one point or another and whom I’ve since consigned to another circle, one I don’t spend all that much time on, but among which I do occasionally paw through in the interests of seeing whether I might have made a mistake in jettisoning them. (Right now, I’m thinking that’s a “Hard No” in terms of any such.)

People like this:

This is someone I once knew. Someone I've had regular conversations with. A former member here. Someone who seemed--if a bit off the grid--at least reachable, until she spent years imbibing the Twitter sewage, and after which she seems to have completely lost the plot.

As far as where she's got to now: Bless. Innumeracy even I can spot. (Trust me, this is meaningful in terms of my own (recognized) occasional mathematical difficulties.) “What a maroon,” as Bugs Bunny–himself not a Mensa member–might have remarked.

More generally, I say to myself, “Sweetie, I don’t know what the hell happened to you. You never were all that bright, but at least you were decent and fairly rational. I tried to reel you in, but I guess you had more attractive options calling you home." LOL.

Most recently, I’ve seen a couple of memes circulating. One is claiming that US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg (someone for whom I hold no brief at all; what a despicable, incompetent tool) was arrested for killing dogs when he was a teenager.

That one comes along with a supposed snapped image of the newspaper in which the story was reported. Only problem? That image (and the story) never existed. And even the person who first posted it now says that he was lying, for “fun.”

And then there’s the matter of Sunday’s Army-Navy game, and the pretense that military school members in the stands were chanting “[REDACTED] Joe Biden.”

Here’s the meme, together with the enhanced (fake) audio:

No, you jackass, it didn’t “really happen at the game.”

Please see the context added by Twitter users. (Thank you, Elon Musk, someone so many of you truthers are happy to celebrate when it supports your agenda. How’s that going for you now, when it doesn’t?)

Because here is the unedited video:

You morons, you who cling to the idea that the rest of us are so stupid and so gullible that we'll pretend—as you do—that this fake video is somehow a “hopeful” sign in these here United States.

It’s not. It’s fake. Fake isn't real. Fake isn't hopeful. Fake isn't a promise of things to come.

There are “hopeful” signs (and some of them have been enumerated on this site), but this isn’t one of them. The real “hopeful” signs take a bit of work and a bit of intellect, something which you’re apparently bereft of recognizing or incapable of engaging in. ‘Nuff said.

All you nitwits are doing, in all the above examples which you can’t stop shouting about, is diminishing the value of any actually justified indignation that comes from the actions of those truly reprehensible people who need to be accountable for them. Whether it’s racists, rapists, sexists, colonialists, or—even in the most recent case—the Palestinians, you are aligning yourselves with the liars and the false, the folks who assert pretended harm for imagined offense, and who position themselves as the defenders of the fantastical while having nothing at all to back it up. You pour shame on that which is actually meaningful and you diminish that which is real.

Get a grip, please. Grow up. Learn to do a bit of research. Check your sources (It’s super-easy these days). Stop being so narcissistic, so gullible, and so desperate to be “right” that you can’t even imagine a world in which someone who disagrees with you about some things but who is—in the main—on the same side as you, might have a point.

What an utter disgrace you, your supposed mentors, and your half-witted followers have shown yourselves to be.

#ThatIsAll