Tag: Facebook

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Disconnected: Don’t Make Me Pull This TV Over

CREDIT: Seanlockephotography | Dreamstime.com

It’s hard to pin down exactly when it happened, but at some point my wife and I stopped doing whatever new thing everybody else is doing. We’re in our late fifties — our very late fifties — and maybe there just came a point where we no longer had the energy to learn how to operate new gizmos. We are, after all, in the generation that still uses words like “gizmo.”

It could have been Facebook, at least for me. When Facebook initially showed up, I did participate. Well, about as passively as I could. What I did was accept every single friend request I got. It was fun to see how many people were interested in being my friend. Then I realized that they didn’t want friends, they wanted an audience. People I deliberately didn’t stay in touch with from school suddenly wanted to include me in their lives. If I had at any point been interested in what Kip Miller is up to, I would’ve picked up the phone and asked him. If I had the tiniest bit of interest in my long-lost acquaintances’ grandchildren … You know, I’m not even going to finish that sentence. There was never, ever going to be a point where I was interested in anyone’s grandchildren.

Seanlockephotography | Dreamstime.com

Turn down, tune out

Now I look at Facebook about once a year to see which of my so-called friends could muster up enough enthusiasm about our relationship to bother clicking on the notification that it’s my birthday and go to the smallest amount of effort to write two words. As for other people’s political opinions, it would be almost impossible to calculate how little I want to read those. If you don’t agree with me on the issues of the day, you’re an idiot and I refuse to devote one second of my remaining time on Earth getting worked up about how stupid you are.

We have never streamed. When the topic of conversation winds its way to the latest installment of a show on Netflix, we’re those people — you know, the codgers who can’t figure out where exactly on our television is the access point to streaming services. It could be that our television is older than my friends’ grandchildren I don’t care about. Many of our younger friends have proudly announced that they have cut the cord and dropped cable in favor of this or that streaming service, or they’ve gotten some kind of stick that you plug into your TV. A few months ago I did force myself to spend three minutes looking at our TV to see if I could find the place where a stick would be plugged in, but I got nowhere, other than realizing how badly our entertainment center needed to be dusted. To a guy my age, there is great comfort in flipping around cable, something that streaming services don’t seem to provide. At this point, I’m so calcified in my habits I would rather settle on a rerun of a police procedural I’ve seen seven times than jump through whatever hoops are involved in being able to watch a brand-spanking-new episode of The Mandalorian, whatever that is.

While I have a smartphone, it is, if anything, even more obsolete than our TV. Yes, I have all the apps, at least the ones that came with the phone, but it seems that the social media apps are even more ego-driven than Facebook. Why on Earth would I post pictures of my life online for people to judge? It’s been about a year since people stopped contradicting me when I say I’m losing my hair. The last thing in the world I want to do is document the process for the whole world to see.

Some people may say that I’m being cynical in assuming that people out there would be judging me, but I know the few times I’ve looked at Snapchat all I’ve done is judge people. To be honest, that part was kind of fun. For some reason, a lot of people I know don’t seem to have noticed that they’ve put on a lot of weight since high school.

Maybe it’s a lack of energy, or maybe it’s just a defense mechanism triggered by age. Accepting new things is a young person’s game. Which is exactly why I have to get one of my friends’ stupid grandkids to come by my house and remind me of how to operate my DVD player. Of course, they’ve probably never even seen a DVD player.

Dennis Phillippi is a writer, comedian, actor, and unemployed radio personality.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Doomscrolling: Surveillance Capitalism vs. Humanity in The Social Dilemma.

Hi, my name’s Chris, and I’m a social media addict.

It started back at the dawn of the internet. I’ve always read compulsively — books, magazines, ingredient labels, whatever. So it’s no coincidence that I’m a writer. At first, the internet was just a place where I could get more stuff to read. At the turn of the 21st century, the promise of the world wide web was that it would democratize the flow of information and give everyone a voice. I frequented message boards, where the important topics of the day were discussed — by that, I mean the Star Wars prequels and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. This was social media at its most primitive — and most fun. I skipped Friendster, didn’t really get the hype of MySpace, and then dove into Flickr, the early photo-sharing site. I made friends, whom I referred to as “internet friends.” Sometimes we met IRL (in real life), but mostly we knew each other only by screen names. Then, in 2008, came Facebook, and we had to give up the privacy of our real names.

Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist at Google, testifies in Jeff Orlowski’s The Social Dilemma.

Facebook’s quick success led to the launch of Instagram and Twitter. Later, I got a very lucrative gig producing social media content. It was good for my bottom line, but now I see that being immersed in social media for eight hours a day has had a lasting effect on my psyche. Like many writers and journalists, the flow of breaking news and scalding hot takes on Twitter pushes my buttons. I have an internet friend who was offered a job at Twitter while it was still a start-up, but he decided not to take it because he says he couldn’t figure out what the app was for. I’m not sure I can answer that question today, except to say, Twitter is for more Twitter. But what is all this stuff doing to us?

What were once esoteric questions about emerging technological platforms have taken on new urgency in the increasingly chaotic world of 2020, and The Social Dilemma meets them head-on. Director Jeff Orlowski, who previously tackled climate change with his documentaries Chasing Ice and Chasing Coral, goes straight to the source. His star witness is Tristan Harris, a graduate of Stanford University’s Persuasive Technology Lab, where he studied ways to make online ads work better. While working as a design ethicist at Google, he wrote a memo entitled “A Call to Minimize Distraction and Respect User’s Attention.”

He no longer works at Google.

Harris’ basic point is that the drive to “make online ads work better” has led to a dangerous set of incentives for tech companies. “Positive intermittent reinforcement” is a powerful hack of the human brain that both powers slot machines and keeps you coming back to see who has liked your selfie. But it’s deeper than that. In order to sell ads that are guaranteed to hit their marks, Facebook and Google have created what amount to “human futures markets.” They use the reams of data they collect about you to predict your actions, and they sell that knowledge to their advertising clients. Sometimes those clients are bad actors, like Vladimir Putin. Even worse, the platforms whose business models depend on user engagement have discovered that more extreme messages produce greater engagement. From Brazil to Myanmar to right here at home, the persuasive power of social media has transformed societies, and not for the better.

Skyler Gisondo stars in one of the film’s cinematic sequences.

Harris is not alone in his remorse about what his tech work has wrought. There’s Justin Rosenstein, inventor of the Facebook “Like” button; Jaron Lanier, the father of virtual reality; and Sean Parker, Napster coder and early Facebook investor who was portrayed by Justin Timberlake in The Social Network. At one point, Steve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple, is seen in the audience as Harris delivers a speech about how social media combined with artificial intelligence is effectively “checkmating humanity.” Naturally, The Woz is checking his iPhone.

You may have heard some of these arguments before, but when Orlowski serves them all up together, it’s beyond chilling. Less effective are the cinematic sequences, where a “typical family” deals with problems like Snapchat-induced body dysmorphia and political radicalization. These parts help clarify the problems with relatable examples, but the dramatizations undermine the documentary’s claim to truth-telling even as it attacks disinformation. Quibbles aside, The Social Dilemma delivers a vital perspective on how we live both digitally and IRL.

Now pick up your phone and turn off all notifications.

The Social Dilemma is streaming on Netflix.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

I Want to See Your Dog!

CREDIT: Shara Clark

“Y’all still baking bread or are we all just sad now?”

I saw this on a meme recently. It was actually a screenshot of a tweet, but anyhow, the sentiment resonated with me. I spent much of March and April baking — not bread, but cookies, coffee cakes, bundt cakes, brownies, muffins, all from scratch. Food is a major serotonin stimulator for me, and the process of measuring, mixing, following the recipe instructions to a T (should the butter be cold or room-temp?) helped occupy my time and brain space, to quell the ever-present anxiety of current conditions. I guess I got bored with baking. There hasn’t been a homemade cake in my house in months. Now I’ve got a pretty heavy case of the sads. And social media surely doesn’t help.

I get it. Everything is terrible. And I’m constantly reminded every time I log on to Facebook. Coronavirus has gotten out of hand. Our “leaders” can’t get their shit together and lead. Sex trafficking is a very real problem. Pedophilia is absolutely sick. Black lives do matter. The state of our nation is downright embarrassing. I think we can agree on all of this.

Since we’re not baking anymore, can I make a suggestion? Could you post more photos of your dog? Even though I’m not really a cat person, let me see them, too.

Shara Clark

Doogie

Shara Clark

Steve

Shara Clark

Frances

At the end of most work days, I settle in — wrapped in soft blankets like a burrito to soothe me from all the insanity of recent months — and scroll through social media. I totally understand that many of you want to bring awareness to all that’s wrong with the world: bad people, dumb decisions, morons, and injustices. And that is well within your rights. Keep fighting the good fight!

But for the love of 8-pound, 6-ounce, newborn infant Jesus, can I see more photos of your pets? The fuzzy, cuddly puppers. The feisty little kitties. Hell, show me your guinea pig. And, brace yourselves: (I never thought I’d say this, but) what did you eat for dinner? Let me see that fancy plate of grilled salmon and risotto! I’m actually to the point of missing daily “here’s something I ate” pics. Tell me about your meal prepping. Give me the recipe for mawmaw’s chocolate pie, dangit!

Share those funny “everything is cake” videos. Or the ones of parrots dancing to MC Hammer. Don’t we need a small break from all this gloom and serious stuff? Fight the sadness, Artax! Yes, I saw that Poppy doll has a button on her behind. I saw that employees at retail outlets across the nation have been assaulted by anti-maskers. I’ve seen protesters being gassed and arrested. I’ve seen the Epstein flight logs. Things are horrible. It seems we’re in a sinking boat on a raging, endless sea. It’s enough to drive a person mad. Have you all gone mad yet?

I could disconnect from social media to avoid much of this, to be sure. But I do remember a time when my Facebook feed was mostly good news, family portraits, food, and pets — the more social side of social media. The “snooze” option works well to get the constant dose-of-doomed-reality posters off your page for a while (bless them; they’re just standing up for what they believe in), and I’ve taken advantage of that. My newsfeed without that stuff is still sad, though. There’s not enough fluff, literally and metaphorically. And I think we could all use a little more fluff right now.

Start baking bread again. Tell me what you’ve learned. How’s that art project going? Are you making music? Have you had any epiphanies? What are your pets’ names, ages, and favorite toys? Lemme see ’em! Show them to me!

The thing about dogs is, for one, they don’t have social media, and they can’t comprehend pandemics, politics … they just want to be fed and loved. Me too, little buddies, me too. Now if you’d all be so kind, provide a little soul food and love to your Facebook friends or Instagram followers. Share the bright spots in your world — they’re there, even if you don’t see them right away. Look harder.

And you can send your dog pics directly to my email inbox.

Shara Clark is managing editor of the Flyer.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Dining With Myself: Dinner for One During Quarantine

Dining With Myself is a Facebook group for people who are dining by themselves during the quarantine. And they’re coming up with strange dishes.

The group was designed to “bring people together” by sharing whatever crazy concoctions they come up with, says founder Emily Brown.

“Hey, everybody eats junk food,” she says.

Dining With Myself/Facebook

In Dining With Myself, the rules are simple: “I don’t want to see your pretty food.”

The group’s tagline is “What do you eat when nobody’s watching?”

“I want to see the bad side of what you’re cooking,” Brown says. “I don’t want to see your pretty food. Show me what you actually eat.”

The group primarily is for people who live by themselves so they’ll “just not feel alone,” says Brown.

She got the idea for the group after wondering what her friend who lives by herself in Fayetteville was eating. She was worried about her.

The group name was inspired by Billy Idol’s song, “Dancing With Myself.” Brown had asked a friend to photoshop Idol holding a fork, which became the perfect image for the group.

Dining With Myself now has 750 members, according to Brown. She’s been getting about 20 new members a day.

People send positive comments even if the dish doesn’t sound or look so great. “Everybody compliments everybody. It’s hard to be offensive with food,” Brown says.

“Somebody posted a slice of American cheese and Vienna sausage, and it probably got 20 comments.”

People do post “restaurant-worthy” dishes, but not everybody “knows how to cook like that,” she says.

The group gets lots of posts of salads and pasta dishes. “Comfort food.”

People also share recipes. Brown recently got feedback from a chef friend in England, who shared fancy dishes as well as his “junk food.”

Dining With Myself isn’t a political forum, Brown says. “We don’t talk about anything else except what goes on in the kitchen.”

Brown, who is on furlough from her job as a server at Amerigo, cooks for herself. “I can do fancy. I can make scrambled eggs. I can go across the board. It depends on the kind of effort I want to make,” she says.

She’s made Crabmeat Justine from the legendary Memphis restaurant, Justine’s. Her favorite go-to dish is “roasted salmon and asparagus.”

She has a large pantry. “It’s the only big closet in my house.”

As for her friend in Fayetteville, she’s doing fine. She told Brown she recently prepared a dinner consisting of “fake crab, olives, Ritz crackers, and a glass of wine.”

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We Recommend We Saw You

Corona Confessions

Lindsey Scott

You’re stuck at home. The high points of your day are breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You have more time on your hands than you need. You’re finding yourself doing things — good and bad — you’ve never done before.

Enter “Corona Confessions.”

Founder Brandon Aguirre, 38, began the Facebook group April 15th. He had 600 members in the first 24 hours. About a week later, he had 1,600 members.

Explaining how the group began, Aguirre, a bartender before he got laid off because of the pandemic, says, “I posted something about how I was blaring and

Brandon Aguirre

singing at the top of my lungs power pop ballads.”

Then he commented, “This is totally not me. Just another Corona confession.”

His friend Tim Wood told him, “You might be on to something with this Corona Confessions thing.”

Aguirre’s opening statement after he began the group: “Everybody’s world has been readjusted and we’re all doing things we wouldn’t necessarily do. Eating things we wouldn’t ordinarily eat, listening to music we would never listen to under ordinary circumstances, enjoying movies or TV shows we would never take time to explore. All under the confines of quarantine. We would normally feel ashamed or hide these things. Secrets. Show it! Tell it! We’re all doing it!”

And people confessed.

Vincent Bruno posted a photo of his foot with blue-painted toenails. He let his girlfriend paint them. Bruno wrote, “My girlfriend got bored with me playing Doom Eternal 4 days straight.”

Vincent Bruno

Lindsay Scott posted a photo of herself in a protective mask on which she painted scary red lips the Joker would envy. She wrote, “Going to visit my young nephews through a window today. Thought I’d make it less scary by painting my face mask. This is a hard nope.”

Other posts:
“Just sitting in the kitchen in our underwear searching for and removing bits of rotted roots from my giant jade, like you do.”
“I’ve eaten Taco Bell five days in a row.”
“All I want to do is drink, snack, and fool around.”
“I’m drinking a Clementine White Claw laying in a bubble bath instead of a La Croix this morning. It’s like my hand just reached for it on its own …”
“Have you ever been this incredibly fucking bored in your entire stupid life?”
“I put on earrings, lip gloss, and a flower crown to day drink by myself.”
“What if ‘getting back to normal’ is the last thing you want?”

There are no restrictions on Corona Confessions, Aguirre says.

As his friend Wood, now a moderator along with Aguirre, Jodie Merryweather, and Alex Martin, recently posted: “Perusing posts from this morning I find excessive alcohol and drug use, loads of masturbation, and disturbing hygiene tales. Everything seems to be in order here. Carry on.”

Why does Aguirre think Corona Confessions is so popular? “‘Anybody can relate to it ’cause everybody’s life has changed.”

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Memphis Sandwich Clique Hosts Online Sandwich Challenges

Memphis Sandwich Clique is a phenomenon. The Facebook group began last July with Ryan Joseph Hopgood and Reuben Skahill asking people to post their favorite sandwiches.

Membership grew faster than someone could devour a finger sandwich.

“We started out with 100,” Hopgood says. Membership now is at 12,900.

Michael Donahue

The clique: Ryan Joseph Hopgood (left) and Reuben Skahill

Because of COVID-19, Memphis Sandwich Clique is adapting. They now focus on “self-quarantine” and “flattening the curve,” Hopgood says. “We’re taking a focus on homemade sandwiches and using what you’ve got in the kitchen, being as creative as possible.”

Memphis Sandwich Clique now streams sandwich challenges, which feature Skahill as host.

It’s a “challenge video series,” says Skahill, who wants people to “support local businesses but still stay safe and stay in the house. We decided to still let people post their to-go order from spots that are open, but, as far as the content we’re creating, [we] focus more on a homemade sandwich challenge, where you can send a live or finished product.”

The challenge streams to several places. “I go live on my personal Facebook and then share it to the group and all these other groups. And people start watch parties,” Skahill says.

The posts are “like TV episodes,” he adds. “At any point in time during the day people are going live.”

As for the first challenge, Skahill says, “We’re doing hashtags. This one is called #cliquebreakfastwars. That’s the breakfast sandwich one we’re doing.

“You pick three people to do the challenge. I nominated my mom who is in North Carolina, and I nominated someone in Boston. It’s not just limited to Memphis anymore. It’s good to get inspiration from across the nation.”

The three people Skahill nominated challenged three more people. “It goes on as long as the chain goes on.”

He plans to introduce a new sandwich challenge weekly. “I’ll make a new hashtag this week. So we’ll have people nominating people for the breakfast challenge while another one is going. It’s like a round. It’s very fun.”

The series initially began with Hopgood making a breakfast sandwich at home. “Ryan is by no means a professional chef,” Skahill says. “So, I believe he sparked the movement.”

Describing his “breakfast bagel,” Hopgood says, “I didn’t really know what to use, so I just threw a bunch of stuff together … eggs, creamed cheese, bacon, salami, pepper jelly, and cheddar cheese.

“People were making fun of my eggs. I looked on Google how to cook scrambled eggs, and I watched Gordon Ramsay’s way, but I didn’t have the cream, so I used mayo.”

His breakfast bagel “kind of kicked off the challenge.”

Memphis Sandwich Clique administrator Stephen Hoffman tore Hopgood’s sandwich apart in his comments. “He basically one-upped me,” Hopgood says. “He went live the next day and made a breakfast sandwich. That’s how the whole thing started. It was really just the moderators challenging each other — just us checking each other — and it grew to adding more people to the challenge.”

“My submission, I think, is the best,” Skahill says. “It’s called The Tiny Breakfast Bomb, where I used an everything bagel and I put Tiny Bomb beer in my eggs and in the cooked turkey sausage. And I used Central BBQ rub on my eggs. Then avocado, cucumber, and tomato.”

Hopgood will be a semi-regular in the challenges. He doesn’t have a lot of groceries on hand at home, but he also spends time at his family’s home. “I’m going to pop up now and then,” he says. “My mom is still getting groceries.

“The main thing is we want people to keep the competitive edge going in their home kitchen, their cooking skills sharp even though they’re in quarantine. A lot of people in the groups are chefs around town, so you’ll see some great creations.”

Skahill believes the series will get bigger and bigger: “Everyone’s getting real creative now that they’re bored out of their minds.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

MEMernet: A Bad Day, Coronavirus Fun, and a Coronavirus Warning

CREDIT: Eric Newsome/Nextdoor


Back to Better Days
Patrick Reilly, owner, chef, and “head fish cleaner” (according to his Facebook bio) at The Majestic Grille found himself looking back to a better time last week.

MEMernet: A Bad Day, Coronavirus Fun, and a Coronavirus Warning

Coronavirus Fun!
Eric Newsome/Nextdoor

Over in Central Gardens, Nextdoor user Eric Newsome shared some coronavirus fun over the weekend.

“We’ve got the big screen out tonight for those out walking — Beauty and the Beast starting about 7:30. Taped the sidewalk to help with distancing. Cowden between McLean and Barksdale.”

Coronavirus Excitement!
Janie Hataway, a Nextdoor user in Cooper-Young posted this message under the heading: “Going out.”

“I’m preparing to take out the garbage. I’m so excited but I don’t know what to wear!”

A Coronavirus Warning!
Christina Massey, another Nextdoor user in Cooper-Young, posted this warning “for people walking down Felix Ave.”

“Between Barksdale and Tanglewood, a man has illegally blocked off the sidewalk in front of his house with caution tape and will verbally assault you if you step over it. He swore at my husband and I, threatened us, tried to bait my husband into a fight, called us ‘disease spreaders,’ and said he hopes we die a slow death. This is impeding pedestrian traffic. Just giving my neighbors a warning in case you go out walking.

P.S. You cannot catch the coronavirus from someone walking down the sidewalk in front of your house.”

Categories
News News Blog

TECH: St. Jude Shares Patients’ Stories Using Virtual Reality

CREDIT: St. Jude

St. Jude

A dozen 50-foot statues in the likenesses of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital patients line the St. Jude Hall of Heroes.

They aren’t actual statues, though. Instead, they stand in the virtual reality world.


In partnership with Facebook and its VR company, Oculus, St. Jude worked with the 12 patients to memorialize their stories through a VR experience. Each child worked with a 3D artists from the creative agencies BBDO New York and Flight School to create a superhero-stylized statue that best represents the patients’ battle with cancer.

Users can explore the collection of virtual statues, walk up to each, and hear directly from the patients and their families.

St. Jude

Screenshot of VR experience

The VR experience will be available for demo on Oculus Quest devices in select Best Buy stores beginning December 6th. The experience will officially launch early next year on Oculus’ Quest and Rift headsets.

Learn more about the 12 patients and preview the experience here.

This isn’t the first time St. Jude has used VR to tell the stories of its patients. The hospital uses VR to share its No More Chemo parties, confetti-filled celebrations where doctors and staff give patients a send-off after their final chemotherapy treatments.

Dan Yohey of ALSAC said when the first party was shot it was a “Eureka moment. I was like ‘we have it.’ That was pretty much the genesis for the Hall of Heroes.”

President and CEO of St. Jude’s fund-raising arm ALSAC, Richard Shadyac Jr. said the St. Jude Hall of Heroes was inspired by the hospital’s “spirit of leading-edge change.”

“The rapid acceleration of VR technology allows for the exciting reimagination of the way we tell stories, connect to communities, raise funds, and drive fundamental change,” Shadyac Jr. said.

TECH: St. Jude Shares Patients’ Stories Using Virtual Reality (2)

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Trumped by Facebook

If Senator Elizabeth Warren wins the Democratic nomination, her prime opponent in the general election will not be President Trump. It will be Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

That’s because Zuckerberg refuses to halt even the most obvious lies from popping up in political ads on Facebook.

Juan Williams

“I think we are in the right place on this,” he told The Washington Post last week. “In general, in a democracy, I think that people should be able to hear for themselves what politicians are saying.”

That’s great news for the Russians and President Trump. The Russians continue to use social media, principally Facebook, to stir political division, racial division, and hatred, according to the FBI, the CIA, the Mueller Report, and the Senate Intelligence Committee. Meanwhile, Trump’s team is acting on its own to swamp Facebook with lies about former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter — and there are no consequences.

Facebook allowed a manipulated video of Speaker Nancy Pelosi to go viral, even though Pelosi pointed out that it was fake and asked for it to be taken down.

Now Warren is campaigning on a promise to break up big tech companies. They are so powerful and so wealthy that they are able to ignore questions about how they are enabling propaganda. By selling politicians the chance to twist the truth and deceive voters, Facebook profits at the expense of the public good.

Warren put it bluntly: Facebook is guilty of taking “money to promote lies. … A handful of monopolists” should not “dominate our economy and our democracy.”

Zuckerberg could largely solve this problem by simply refusing to accept political advertising. It is not a significant source of income for his company, which is worth upwards of $500 billion. Another solution is for Facebook to set its own rules to stop political lies and propaganda. That is what newspapers and cable television companies do.

In both cases, Zuckerberg refuses to act. He did nothing even after the documented abuse of Facebook was proven to be the No. 1 pathway for foreign interference in the 2016 election.

Zuckerberg claims he is protecting America’s free speech rights by allowing political spin, distortion, and mockery to flourish on Facebook. People can decide if a politician is telling the truth for themselves, he says. He says he is open to having the government put rules in place. That position allows him to use political paralysis in Washington as a smokescreen.

Warren has a quick, simple solution: Break up these reckless firms. As you can imagine, Zuckerberg opposes Warren’s plan.

“If she gets elected president, then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge. And does that still suck for us? Yeah,” Zuckerberg told his staff in audio leaked to the website The Verge. “But look, at the end of the day, if someone’s going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight.”

In other words, Zuckerberg has no interest in Warren becoming president. Meanwhile, Trump and his campaign are betting big on the power of social media platforms like Facebook to carry the president to re-election. That explains the elevation of Brad Parscale, whose primary experience is as a digital media guru rather than in political organizing, to be campaign manager.

Thomas B. Edsall, writing in The New York Times, noted that Trump’s campaign has spent more than all three leading Democrats on social media. According to CNN, in the last week of September more than 1,800 ads ran on Trump’s Facebook page mentioning “impeachment.” Those ads wildly distorted reality to make Congress and Democrats into villains attacking a blameless president.

CNN reported: “The ads have been viewed between 16 and 18 million times on Facebook, and the campaign has spent between $600,000 and $2,000,000 on the effort.”

Just as the right-wing smear merchants put bogus stories about Uranium One into the 2016 election to damage Hillary Clinton, they are doing the same in 2020 with anti-Biden smears regarding Hunter Biden’s position with a Ukrainian gas company. If Facebook continues to allow their platform to be abused by propagandists, they will be giving Trump a giant advantage in the 2020 campaign.

Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.

Categories
News News Blog

Warm Your Hands on These Social Media Dumpster Fires

CREDIT: Memphis As Fuck/Instagram

Memphis As Fuck/Instagram

Did you see the bright lights over Memphis this weekend?

It wasn’t barbecue. It’s actually the glowing lights from two Memphis social-media dumpster fires. And you should have a look.

The flames are still being fanned on an Instagram photo posted by Memphis As Fuck (@memphisaf_ck) on Saturday. It shows a orange-brown rock in some desert landscape with the words “Memphis As Fuck” scrawled onto it.

Memphis As Fuck captioned the photo (above) ”#fanart #memphisasfuck #allday 🛒: memphisasfuck.com.” And a bunch of internet people are having none of it.
[pullquote-1] “Nice job asshole! Way to really flex your douchebag muscle,” wrote macscac.

“This is fucking gross, dude,” wrote zpeckler. “Stay the hell out of our public lands if this how you’re going to behave. I hope the Coconino [National Forest] rangers press charges.”

Apparently, someone did alert the authorities.

“I have sent this over to Coconino Co Sheriff’s office,” wrote rugerandtitan. “It’s been confirmed in their county, and they absolutely want to pursue charges.”
[pullquote-2] However, Instagram user instajunk said there were more things to worry about.

“I love how all these keyboard warriors are so distraught over a scratch on a rock and choose to spend their time worrying about this when they could be worrying about something really disgusting, like the state of our nation 🤦🏻‍♀️,” wrote instajunk.

The instagram picture was posted to Reddit (where, so far, 46 comments have piled up) Saturday. A Reddit user named PublicLandsHateYou said, the photo is believed to have been taken at Grand Canyon National Park, though that has not been verified.

“National Park Service would be greatly appreciative of any assistance you could provide in helping to identify potential suspects,” wrote Public LandsHateYou. “Actions like this are what close down access to public lands. Thanks for your help.”

Wanted to know what else is Memphis as fuck? Getting busted and going to jail.

Maybe whoever scrawled the city’s gritty, underground motto didn’t know the federal government has police that really do care about stuff like scrawled rocks.

The National Parks Service’s Investigative Branch busts folks for hunting on federal lands, smuggling protected plants and artifacts from them, and, yes, vandalizing them.

National Parks Service

Investigators are now looking for whoever carved “Ferny and Nicky” into a ruins at Tumacacori National Historical Park in Arizona. In 2016, Casey Nocket was sentenced to two years of probation and 200 hours of community service for drawing and painting on rock formations in seven national parks in 2014.

National Parks Service

And, it looks like Victory Bicycle Studios removed a Saturday post that also sparked a roaring fire. The photo showed a cycling jersey printed with a handgun in the rear pocket. Printed on the pocket is “Memphis” in a graffiti print. The post was captioned #memphis.

Victory Bicycle Studios

Bob Nelson wrote, “Good shop. Lousy taste.”

Daphne Maysonet wrote, “Ew, god, fire your marketing and design team. This is so embarrassing it’s hard to look at: creatively lazy AND cheaply produced. Looks like y’all just collectively read a definition for the word ‘subversive’ and landed on this. Lol. Cringeworthy af.”

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Some liked it, though.

Douglas Loreman commented, “Change it to a Glock and I’ll take 2!”

Since you can’t see the post anymore, check out some of the many comments below.

If you see any raging social-media Dumpster fires blazing, let me know at toby@memphisflyer.com.