Elephants and Jackasses...

He also was the driving force behind Andromeda taking a nose dive in quality because "audiences don't like complicated stories" and because the creator of the show kept giving scenes to his costars.

 

Edward Norton is famous for doing that. However to his credit, unlike Sorbo he can actually act. I mean, it took Lawless’ supporting villain character less than a year to completely steal his show’s narrative and fans. And not even Bruce Campbell liked Sorbo. Campbell, who famously quoted in his biography “I never met a man I didn’t like... except for Tom Arnold, fuck him.”

 

I always liked Xena better. She actually killed people, and looked sexy as hell doing it. And when they started dabbling in the "are they or aren't they" with Danielle, hoo boy.

 

That was a very underrated show. It deserved a better promotion.

 

Bigger picture, I worry about what comes next. This cartel-esque behavior exhibited by Big Media and web hosting services doesn't fix anything. Q anon out? Parler out?? Cool. There are still the remainder of the Trump voters out there who don't support rioting at the Capitol that also don't support Big Media/Big Data on this either. I know this is their business, their choice but it impacts more than just the q-anon types. Greener pastures will pop up with less "moderation" and more data control eventually.

Not sure long term where it goes but I know where it doesn't go. It doesn't go to Republicans saying the Media and Liberals are right or that they agree with them. If anything, this steels resolve. This dentralizes one group, which defeats monopolies eventually and creates blind spots.

 

I guess the outcome of decentralizing insurrectionists is seen as a bad thing by people who support an insurrection.

And I guess tRump voters being forced to see what tRump has done and having to decide what kind of people they want to be is a painful process.

74,216,722 people have a lot of deciding to do.

Are they traitors to their nation or are they not traitors.

The traitors in that rather large group of people look at that number and think that they have huge numbers behind them.

The non traitors in that rather large group have an opportunity to speak out against tRump's behavior, and the longer it takes the more it looks like they are a traitor who is shambling back under the rock they crawled out from.

You worry about what comes next?

Dumb fuck insurrectionists will sue Twitter, Google, Amazon, Facebook and the US Government and get defeated.

Companies will continue to have Terms of Service that say things like "you can't use our services to commit treason" and they will continue to deplatform traitors.

"Greener Pastures" won't pop up to allow this shit to spread.

Qannon and Parler were never going to fight against monopolies when their entire purpose is to make themselves into the monopolies.

All I know is that every single person who voted for tRump in 2020 has been tainted by his actions. And they can stand around looking like they followed a manure spreader a bit too closely huffing and puffing about consequences or they can denounce tRump and say that they regret their vote and that they look forward to helping heal America.

Because either you want to be part of the solution or you support an insurrection.

 

My prediction is the misinformation gets treated like a security issue, CISA plays a more active role in how this influences government, we form some sort of body to regulate politics on social media (under a security umbrella) to set rules for the politicians/candidates, and the social media empires face serious regulation under an administration interested in actually governing. I think the things I just broadly highlighted would have broad support from both parties and the companies will let it happen in exchange for not having their monopolies disrupted, and probably a little looking the other way at anti-union practices.

I think this does help rid the "mainstream" social media platforms of fringe nonsense. It's one thing if you're radicalized and move to Parler, or have to hunt the latest on the Satanist pedophile liberal conspiracies to overthrow America and pee on Jesus or whatever, it's another if you're not already into it or looking for it and Facebook casually bombards you with outrage fuel.

I also think Fox News is hearing a LOT of pitches about how to create their own social network right now. I'd be very concerned if 3-6 months from now, when the news cycle has moved on, if they actually do it.

This is the result of incompetent government: more government, done retroactively, after pissing everyone off thoroughly. I don't like where it's going, and God knows what they are doing now was better done in I dunno, 2012? I think a lot of the talking points are missing something: the GOP didn't start this slide to lunacy because Obama was black...it started this slide to lunacy because Obama beat them at the social media game, and they've been playing catch up ever since. It got to this point, because no one agreed that this could or would happen, until it totally did. It pisses me off to no end that no one took a history lesson from the early stages of newspaper or radio or television, before those platforms were regulated to avoid straight up lying to people.

As far as "steels resolve", wait til you see what happens to folks who commit treason. Trump re-instated death by firing squad for treason, and it'd be nothing short of poetic justice, now wouldn't it?

I hate to keep calling these folks stupid, but....smart people have a better plan, don't they? Smart people would commit a crime they at least potentially could get away with. Smart people would realize that these actions have real consequences, and it's not the same as looting a fucking Foot Locker. They were mislead, sure. They made it incredibly far on not a lot of great information, and it's still shocking to see the folks clinging to party, or defending the folks responsible. I am not worried about where the Trump supporters go from here: the smart ones abandoned ship already, and the ones who stay to the bitter end likely just don't vote anymore. Conveniently, a lot of them just popped up on the domestic terror radar in a big way.

This is the first time for many of these folks that they have no benefit of the doubt extended to them by a system designed and run by them. It's the first time their bubble of invulnerability, righteousness and ignorance has been burst. It's the first time someone lucidly got them out of their cult and their echo chamber and said "Patriot? Try traitor. You just committed treason, and a host of other crimes, for a conman who swindled you into believing nonsense to get your vote instead of your dollars."

As long as the GOP continues to think of the Media as something standing in the way of their distorting reality, this will continue to worsen (or did I miss a Congress critter saying these rioters were antifa in disguise....in response to full-faced photos and arrests of the people responsible?).

Finally, what happens if the social media companies did nothing? This was a coup attempted on the US government, that they could have prevented in a dozen ways over the past few years. This is the kind of shock all the experts predicted would come to pass when Trump runs out of options, and hopefully it's severe enough to right the ship (and it's the only one he has fucking left). Agree or disagree with what these platforms chose to do, but if they didn't act, their future was in serious jeopardy.

 

They won't. I say this because we've seen this attempted many times before, and it always goes the same way:

1. New "free speech" platform arises that promises little or no moderation.
2. Said platform attracts the kinds of people moderated out of the mainstream platforms. These people, by and large, absolutely suck.
3. "Normies" who visit the new platform see that it's filled with Nazis, pedophiles, and other undesirable types who make everything terrible. They leave.
4. Site exists in a self-reinforcing cycle of attracting the worst people and driving off the normal people.
5. Site either caves and starts moderating aggressively, or they collapse under their own inability to attract and monetize mainstream users.
6. Nazis and pedos crawl back to Twitter under alt accounts until they're banned once more and the cycle starts anew.

 

Oh no, I am suggesting that if they didn't act, their platforms would be deserted by the folks who weren't on board with what happened, and a lot of angry legislators would be gunning for them with punitive legislation, investigations, and other fuckery. How hard would it be for a company like Twitter to be held accountable for it's role in inciting a coup or a riot? Even Trump himself has threatened their relatively sparse liability.

I can't be the only one whose Facebook has gotten more toxic, and who avoids Twitter/Instagram like it'll give me ass cancer of the mouth.

 

Of course, that is my point about decentralization. On Twitter and Facebook, it's easier to track. For normal people, their bullshit is as easy to ignore as Russiagate was. Why force them underground? That is how blind spots form; I think you create a different problem that way.