Morning Thanks

Garrison Keillor once said we'd all be better off if we all started the day by giving thanks for just one thing. I'll try.
Showing posts with label culture news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label culture news. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 07, 2016

Silliness?--or not so?



The guy's name is Jestin Coler. He voted for Hillary. But he and his buddies haul in some extra dough by a game they've created, a game called false news. Coler is a fiction writer. He and his friends created a story about a Texas family contacting Ebola (you can read it here), and hauled in the take from five million hits when that fiction went viral. Slap a few ads on the page, and there's money to be made.

A story Coler wrote about Hillary--remember, he voted for her--got a half-million reads in just one day, just three days before the election. It was a stinker of a story, but all kinds of people read it. Went like this--an FBI agent died mysteriously after investigating Hillary's emails. Never happened. Pure fiction. Pure bullshit, but Jestin Coler made about eight grand on that one. Just telling stories. (Some videomaker cranked out a You-Tube using the story--be sure to read the comments.)

I'm in the wrong racket. 

NBC found Jestin Coler. They were looking for someone like him because a North Carolina man named Edgar Maddison drove up to D. C. last weekend, got himself heavily armed, and then Lone Ranger-ed into Comet Ping Pong, a family pizza place to "self-investigate," he told police. He'd read on line that the joint was center stage for a child porn and sex trafficking ring created by Hillary and her buddy John Podesta. Those emails Wikileaks were releasing before the election?--they proved it, or so Maddison claimed. 

He carried in a rifle, did a little shooting. Thankfully, no one was injured. He wanted to free the poor children.

He didn't find Hillary, nor Podesta, nor any child sex racket. It was and is all fake news. 

No matter. Some souls believe it. They badly want to.

Let me do the math. Jestin Coler, who's a nice guy--he's got a wife and kids and a Christmas tree--created and armed Edgar Maddison, another nice guy with a wife and kids. Jestin Coler, and others like him, bears responsibility for what happened last Sunday at Comet Ping Pong, to say nothing about shaping the election. Jestin Coler ought to go to jail, but right now technology's myriad opportunities are only beginning to be charted. We have no laws governing what he did. Besides, it's free speech, right? First Amendment.

Jestin Coler is picking up extra cash for his kids for Christmas. Buy 'em a drone maybe, something he couldn't have afforded otherwise. He's what we call an "entrepreneur," isn't he? He didn't break any laws. Look for yourself.

"It's addicting," he told NBC news, meaning creating fake news. He loves it. Hits come up his screen and he laughs all the way to the bank. 

"Don't sweat it, lady," the serpent told the woman. "You certainly will not die." 

False news has a long history. People want badly to believe.

And it's not over. Almost immediately another story went up. In this one, Hillary's people hired Edgar Maddison to get arrested. It was all a set up, a diversion. She and Podesta's people paid him richly to cover the evil racket that's still going on at Comet Ping Pong Pizza. 

No, don't go. Please don't go. Leave Comet Ping Pong alone. There's nothing there but pizza.