Fake News isn't our problem. Fake Reality is our problem.

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You know it's bad when you can't tell the satirists from reality.

Between reality and the bubble of fantasy news stories, these are tough times for satirists.
The New Yorker magazine recently took steps to distinguish Andy Borowitz's humor columns from politically motivated false stories circulating online. His editor said the New Yorker was getting email asking if there was a difference between the two.
So they changed the tagline for "The Borowitz Report" from "the news, reshuffled" to "not the news" on the magazine's website. When the stories are shared online, they are more clearly identified as satire, said Nicholas Thompson, editor of NewYorker.com.
"It made more sense when people from another country would read one of my stories and not get the joke — that was kind of predictable," Borowitz said. "But the fact that so many Americans have to go to Snopes.com to find out that Trump didn't really hire El Chapo to be head of the D.E.A. or something like that, that's a reading comprehension problem."

But is it really the fault of the reader?
Consider, for example, Trump's cabinet, and then tell me honestly if you are absolutely certain that this is not satire.

As Trump appoints a white nationalist Breitbart executive to run his team, puts a fast-food baron opposed to the minimum wage in charge of the Labor Department, and hands former Texas Gov. Rick Perry control over the department that he famously couldn’t remember he wanted to eliminate, it can be easy to believe more and more unbelievable things. Maintaining some ability to discern reality amidst all of this is both crucial and increasingly difficult.

That's not even counting the guy running the Treasury, who specialized in illegal foreclosures, the new head of the EPA is a climate change science denier, and the new CIA guy who ran his own Black Site torture operation.
This made me learn a new word.
kakistocracy: government by the worst people

It's gotten so bad that the NY Times recently ran a sympathetic article for The Onion.
What is sanity and reality when you have a headline like this:
Bank of America analysts claim there's a 50% chance we live in a 'Matrix reality simulation'

What got me thinking about Fake Reality was today's Snapchat IPO.
snapchat.PNG

As expected, Snap Inc. (the company formerly known as Snapchat), has filed the paperwork for its initial public offering (IPO). According to the S1 documents in the filing, Snap Inc. is seeking $3 billion when it goes public and will value itself between $20 and $25 billion...
For one thing, Snap is losing an absolute shitton of money. According to the S1 filing, Snap LOST $514.6 million in 2016. It brought in $404.4 million in revenue, way up than a measly $58 million it brought in in 2015 (a massive 6X increase!), but it had to spend buckets of money to make that work. But for revenue to increase that much, its losses skyrocketed too. Snapchat lost $372.9 million in 2015.
As Bloomberg’s Shira Ovide noted on Twitter, it’s certainly notable that the cost of revenue for Snapchat was higher than the revenue itself.

"Notable". That's one word you can use. Not the word I would use.
I prefer Bizarre. Insane. Idiotic.

However, the Crème de la Crème of Fake Reality would have to our Forever War on Some Terror.
There is no clear definition of our enemy.
There is almost no domestic danger from this enemy, other than what our government invents.
There is no real expectation of it ever ending.
There is no real expectation of victory.
The only things that we can be certain of is: 1) we are destined to surrender all of our liberties to fight this war, 2) the war will bankrupt our nation, and 3) we will eventually lose.

And yet, no one cares!
Hardly anyone even talks about it. We pretend it doesn't exist, thus making Actual Reality into Fake Reality.
We protest not allowing foreign refugees into the country, but never even pause to consider not bombing their nations and making them into refugees in the first place.

It makes one wonder if we need to redefine the words "normal" and "insane".

I'm not sure what to do with this essay at this point. I'm going to have to sleep on it.

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When the suspension of disbelief becomes impossible, what are we to do? The whole thing falls apart.

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sojourns's picture

@artisan "suspension of disbelief", which generally refers to the theatre, could not be more apropos in these times.

What does happen (and it is happening now) when skepticism of MSM becomes so widespread that people who have been comfortable -- trusting of the media, seemingly have no where to turn. Maybe it's good. Maybe more people will make some effort to think things through instead of taking the smooth talkers at their word. Then again, I tend to be fatally optimistic.

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

Bollox Ref's picture

Earth is a hard place to navigate.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Bollox Ref I only wish that were our problem. It's not 7.4 billion realities, it's just one. All the other realities are getting shut down in favor of the One True Rich Person's Reality.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Pricknick's picture

Fake Reality

What better definition of the main stream media is there?
Pick up a camera and cut the tube.
Better yet, is to come here with open minds.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

shaharazade's picture

and so surreal. What can I say other then bejeezus I sure hope people stop freaking out and believing this shit. Oh and once agaqin the Democrat's and the self identifying stupid 'progressives' who still think that they are somehow better then or will save the day and stop this shit get a grip.

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kakistocracy- rolls off the tongue, pretty good word for already

and the swamp's not yet drained

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bygorry

riverlover's picture

TV pundits are making up fake words to describe lying. What a boor. How much longer will this nightmare last? Oh right, he's on vacation already? I am getting an opiate buzz, guess I didn't throw up all two pills. Kinda wild with pain. Hydrocodone, do magic so I can shuffle to the sofa, but that may be too far from a toilet. Decisions, decisions.

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

@riverlover why anyone would knock over a drugstore to get that stuff is beyond me. Does nothing for pain, just makes you very dizzy and slightly hopeful that the pain will end sometime. I hope your doctor knows what he/she is doing. I was given that miserable drug after being misdiagnosed by a very inexperienced doctor. Don't hesitate to switch doctors is my advice.

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jorogo's picture

@GusBecause that is, to Oxycodone. But RL mentions Hydrocodone (Vicodin), which though considered similar to Oxycodone, I've found to be profoundly more effective for pain, as well as totally absent of the side-effects of Oxycodone.

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"If I sit silently, I have sinned." - Mossadegh

sojourns's picture

@GusBecause for many people. Especially patients suffering advanced cancer pain. Not to negate you entirely. There are those who do not respond to opiates in terms of pain management.

Those that are knocking off drugstores for the shit are just as likely to be the people that got hooked on it by an unscrupulous doctor as they are to have nothing more than criminal intentions. Worse, there a growing numbers of opiate addicts that received prescriptions for legitimate reasons then, months later their insurance runs out or something else catastrophic happens causing loss of access, to turn to heroin with all it's related ills.

I certainly don't condone it, but I understand it. There are new means to help people get of off the various codones and contins and most dangerous of all, fentanyl. I wish for them, that those remedies would be more widely known and faster.

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

Creosote.'s picture

@riverlover
to work -- the 5/375 kind. Helps to split them in half, keep a list of times when taken so you can tell when to take next without agony. Perhaps too personal a tale . . .

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Song of the lark's picture

We are just in the grip of it. I'm just going to wait but not neglect to oil and polish my guillotine in my spare time between daily debt slavery. " the center will not hold" and the storm comes apace ...but meanwhile the spice must flow.

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Song of the lark's picture

You wake up and overnight the forex markets are on tilt. The world is full of black ice, and hoar frost. And ice 9 has the credit markets frozen, hypothermic, zero hedged, flatlined, trumped. With any luck my eyes will be shut from rime ice as assets zero out. Maybe I'll catch them on the dead cat bounce, or pick something up in the debt jubilee. Food, water, and a space heater. More likely I'll be dodging the long knives. I must say it's going to be a simply splendid bonfire in the present moment. Opposite world, retrograde, oblique and plutonic. Martial law.

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@Song of the lark sounds peaceful somehow. Then again i have 2 full cords of great firewood which always makes me feel rich and safe.

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jorogo's picture

@GusBecause but the woodpile is under constant watch and evaluation.

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"If I sit silently, I have sinned." - Mossadegh

gulfgal98's picture

and the words that were swirling in my mind is that we all are now living in a really bad "reality tv show." No one can make this stuff up and we are powerless to do anything about it.

I am beginning to think snoopydawg's sig line might just be our reality now.

Maybe this Planet is another World's Hell

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

@gulfgal98

It seems enough for this to be our hell, since we're the ones on it.

Unless this is perhaps a devil's playground for off-time staff, where Americans are only able to get demons elected because that's their favorite role-playing game when on holiday and they really like building up the already ginormous military and crating suffering and destruction all over an entire world? That might explain a lot...

Nah, actually, a combination of pathology and ignorance explains it better.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Citizen Of Earth's picture

Not fake news. Holy crap, If Trump actually does this it could force me to rethink my Hatred of Pres Douchebag.

Three bills and a Trump executive order train their gun sights on the H1B visa

Of course the devil is always in the details. Afterall, We know there are corporate law firms that specialize in gaming the current H1B system.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU

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Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Citizen Of Earth I wonder if Trump actually intends to fight with the establishment? Wouldn't that be weird.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Citizen Of Earth's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal Yeah. Of course his environmental deregulation
will turn the country into a polluted dumpster -- so I not too worried about having to eat my Trump swearwords.

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Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.

sojourns's picture

@Citizen Of Earth and tributaries rules (epa) recently decreed by Drumpf, the the faltering coal mining industry will just start polluting these spot just out of spite. I think they are that mean spirited.

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

@Citizen Of Earth

Our own swearwords might be the only safe thing left to eat...

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Citizen Of Earth Oh, no doubt that he's a piece of shit. That's the thing; everybody assumes that if I note a couple of things he's doing that I like that I'm saying he's awesome and not evil and that I think he's a good choice. There's a real "with us or against us" vibe going around right now, like a nasty little virus.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Citizen Of Earth Not that I think *you're* promoting a "with us or against us" vibe, but a hell of a lot of people I run into are right there. And before I left Twitter, it was rife. Holy shit. I had to get out of there.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Oh, honey, I've been called "crazy" all my life. And worn it with pride.
But I'm beginning to think that I'm one of the few sane people in the room.

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riverlover's picture

My left foot is 2X normal size, making walking very painful. And I can't even keep anti-nausea medication down. Cold sweats. Gall bladder attack #6. Broken bone in my foot. No sleep again. Tiresome.

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

jorogo's picture

@riverlover If the name fits, you'd enjoy this place. Might be able to upload some soothing river video too - the Chipmunk Rapids is just outside the east window.

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"If I sit silently, I have sinned." - Mossadegh

jorogo's picture

I had to look that up, and found that on the Wiki page explaining the term, a reference was made that "Stephen Wolf of the Progressive website Daily Kos said the Trump presidency appears to be headed toward a kakistocracy". Well, that (referring to the GOS as "progressive") could not stand. I had to learn to edit Wiki, and I did.

You can now see the Wiki refer correctly to the Democrats' website Daily Kos, with reference and link, instead.

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"If I sit silently, I have sinned." - Mossadegh

Lily O Lady's picture

@jorogo

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

@jorogo

Thank you! Always nice when disinformation can be fixed, even if likely on a temporary basis.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

ZimInSeattle's picture

would hire flesh eating bacteria to run it. I'm quite sure behind all the surreality there's lots of bad shit going down.

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"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - JFK | "The more I see of the moneyed peoples, the more I understand the guillotine." - G. B. Shaw Bernie/Tulsi 2020

jorogo's picture

@ZimInSeattle it's ironically fortunate that we never got a Department of Peace.

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"If I sit silently, I have sinned." - Mossadegh

aka video screens. There are big wall-size ones, and tiny ones you can carry in your pocket. Everyone has one, at the very least. When people peer into their monitors what do they see, but an ersatz kind of reality? Representations and misrepresentations, communications and miscommunications, facts and fables, faces and dramas and scenes from around the world... billions of them! All jumbled together, all very real, and all accessible via the all-seeing, all-knowing, magical monitor. Each reality is distinguishable from the next by the mere touch of a finger. You can choose your very own ersatz reality! It may or may not however, correspond closely with anyone else's.

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native

jorogo's picture

@native Interesting that "monitor" can refer to an observer, the act of observing, and any device which facilitates or enhances the observation. We should keep in mind that we are all monitors, watching, observing, and should not fall prey to the notion that in that sense, monitoring is the responsibility of any of the devices we use; the responsibility is with each of us.
You can choose your own reality, so make it a worthy one.

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"If I sit silently, I have sinned." - Mossadegh

They've been out-polluting us for decades.

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native

k9disc's picture

16427596_1248261825255000_7853374974655692040_n.jpg

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu