A couple months ago on Hulu I watched this really awful "anti-documentary" called You Can't Kill Meme. When it said it was about "meme magick" I thought it meant "magic" in a non-literal way. You know, like the "Magic" Eraser or things like that. So I thought it was about making memes and how they spread and shit like that.
But it turns out this was dedicated to supposed "real" magic using memes and shit on 4chan and whatever other bullshit. Yes, there are right-wingers who think they used actual fucking magic to make Trump president in 2016. (I guess that magic was limited to winning the Electoral College.) They even think they caused Hillary Clinton to stumble that one time she had the flu. It wasn't that she had the flu or it was hot or she was exhausted or whatever; nope it was that some dorks on the Internet put a hex on her.
One of the people the "filmmaker" talks to is this crackpot in Nevada who thinks her cat was acting weird because of a "vortex;" not just because it's a cat. And this one time her husband kicked some scroll of hers with his left foot. Weeks later he was playing real-life Frogger on a busy Las Vegas street and got hit on his left side. So clearly this was cosmic payback, right?
That's an example of a big problem in this "film" and a lot of other nutty conspiracy theories and the like. People take two things and assign one as cause and one as effect. Cause: He kicked my scroll with his left foot. Effect: He was hit on his left side by a car. In reality, the two events are a coincidence. But logically it's not surprising that a ragey douchebag who would kick a woman's scroll would also be trying to weave through traffic on a busy street and thus get hit by a car. It really has nothing to do with magic or karma or whatever so much as the guy is an asshole.
The same thing is true with this idea that they somehow used magic to make Trump president. Cause: We cast this spell with memes or whatever. Effect: Trump "won." In reality there are a variety of reasons Trump won, including appealing to wackos who cast "magic" spells.
Something that pops up (probably thanks to bots and trolls) is this phrase like "Going Woke = Going Broke." It comes up on Twitter and such any time a streaming service like Netflix, HBO Max, or Disney+ has any kind of setback. Whatever service it is and whatever happened, it's all because of "wokeness" to these people/bots. Netflix lost 200,000 subscribers in a quarter? Woke = Broke! Some show on HBO Max didn't perform as well as people thought it should? Woke = Broke! Ms. Marvel has the worst audience rating of any Marvel show on Disney+? Woke = Broke!
Which is pretty ridiculous. I mean, there's no way that 200,000 people quit Netflix because of "wokeness." But it's the kind of cause and effect that's pretty much impossible to prove or disprove. Common sense says that "wokeness" is probably a small, if nonexistent, cause of things, but you can't really get any hard data to say whether it's true or not. So if you're the kind of person inclined to believe that, it's easy to say that's the cause of whatever happens.
Especially in these times of social media and memes and all that bullshit, it's easier than ever to spread bogus theories. And a lot of these theories are based on this bullshit of taking two things and making one the cause and the other the effect, when they probably are not really related. It's important to actually consider whether the "cause" and "effect" actually do follow a logical pattern or it's just two things that someone is jamming together because they conveniently make a point.
Something that happened a couple months ago is one day Elon Musk declared that he was going to vote Republican and Democrats were going to take shots at him. Almost three days later, this article about him harassing and then paying off a stewardess came out. People on the right were then, "See, he was right! The Left (or Elites or New World Order or whatever) is out to get him!" They thought his Tweet about being Republican was the Cause and the article the Effect.
In reality it's most likely the other way around. Musk knew the article was coming and so sandbagged by making himself seem like a political victim. The idea that this article was thrown together in just a couple of days is pretty bogus. A potentially libelous article like that is not going to be thrown together and put out into the world like a Chive list of the 20 Greatest Marvel Movies. I'm sure it had to be approved by editors and legal staff far in advance so they wouldn't be open to a lawsuit. Though probably Musk would threaten to sue them and then quietly wait for no one to be paying attention to drop it.
That the article dropped on Friday--the worst weekday to drop news--is actually a blow to Trumpers thinking the "haters" were out to get Musk. If the haters or Left or Elite or Mainstream Media or New World Order were really out to get him, wouldn't they want to position this at a more opportune time? That's the kind of thinking a lot of people just don't do.
In writing you should also make sure that if you have a cause and effect they actually flow in a logical way. Things that just don't make sense are always really annoying in a story--at least to me. It really spoils the magic of the story--see what I did there?
Ironically this "film" actually debunks itself. It quotes this one guy who considers himself some kind of magician and goes around painting his face up like The Crow for some stupid reason. He says that magic is like science: if you can do a spell and get the same result over-and-over then it's real magic. Well, guess what? Yeah, these assholes who claim they used "magic" to win the 2016 election could not do it again. Thus their "magic" is clearly not real. Of course they would use some bullshit excuse like "the Left is doing magic now too!" Or "not as many people believed in Trump in 2018 or 2020." The point is if they really could do magic then they could have done it more than once.
A couple more random thoughts about this "film": this guy who literally wrote the book on meme magick looks exactly the way you would expect a conspiracy nut to look: flabby, pale, balding, glasses. I mean if you were casting a real movie for a weird guy to be promoting some oddball theory, he would be perfect. And also I really wish the "filmmaker" had not done the narration herself, because it sounded like MTV's Daria Morgendorffer.
Anyway, I suppose if any of those people read this they might put a hex on me. Or whatever. So if I "magically" disappear you'll know the cause of that effect--see what I did there too?
3 comments:
Becoming an adult who has had time to reflect on a life has been a real wake-up call for me. There are so many people out there that (for lack of a better example) are just plain crazy, and they vote. Here's a sample of what I've observed: 1) grown men who believe that magic is real, 2) deeply closeted gay men who are religious and have married wives and popped out a couple of kids and their marriage just absolutely sucks but they keep a good face to the world while harboring anger at homosexuals who get to live free, 3) people who were just given stuff for free and all they had to do was exist who then turn around and lecture other people on work ethic, 4) people who can't take any personal responsibility for how bad things are in their lives and need to blame a boogeyman, 5) people who want to control everything in a world where control isn't possible, and 6) people who only care about themselves. That's just a tiny sample. So, this whole blog post really rings true. I feel like we are both stuck living in a society that has gone mad. I wonder where it all will end up.
speaking of "woke" bullshit, I got a random text today from some right-wing asshat governor candidate asking me for their support to stop "whitmer and her woke school" plan. screw that guy. I'm more interested in stopping mass shootings at schools and making sure no weapons are brought in...teaching kids the truth about slavery and history and the holocaust is a far better thing than having those kids mowed down by a crazed idiot with an ar-15. smh.
People who believe magic is real, can only be suffering from some sort of mental illness like schizophrenia. They manage to get by, so they remain undiagnosed. I know a person like this.
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