Tall Tales and Short Thinking

Plus a small discussion about Bespoke Realities.

I’ve been toiling away on book marketing and finishing the content for the two other books,which had led to a delay in posting here on Substack.

Because of those things my “idea well” has been pretty distracted from cranking out laughs. However, I’ve found that when I hit a writer’s block like that, sometimes you just have to open up your eyes and ears to the world around you to see what tumbles your way.

For example, the following cartoon is evidence of that.

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P.T. Barnum once said, “No man ever went broke overestimating the ignorance of the American public.”

One could say that these words are the guiding motto used by the CEOs who run Social Media apps. Make no mistake, although there are some great things about social media, such as connecting people/organizations with shared interests or community/government news dispersal, increasingly it’s the lies, disinformation, misinformation, and negative news stories that algorithms are promoting. They prey upon the human emotion to focus on the “bad” or the sensational to keep people glued to a site's feed. This focus on the negative is what Social Media really makes their money from in the same way that TV news did, or before them, newspapers did. It’s also what a growing number of social influencers rely upon to build out their network and spread power over others.

It’s an aspect of social media that lately has literally turned me away from using most of these apps.

Regarding that topic, I’ve been reading a brilliant book that was published this year which takes a hard look at Social Media and other means of propaganda and what it’s doing to politics, culture, and society. It’s called “Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality” by Renee DiResta. If you enjoy reading about sociology, advertising, and propaganda, you’ll want to read this book.

One of the main take-aways of this book is how people are now falling into their own bespoke realities thanks to the 24/7 influence of the new propaganda machinery. A prime example of this would be individuals who believe in Q-anon, or anti-vax nonsense, or the false idea that an igneous rock plateau could be a giant, petrified tree.

People are becoming willfully ignorant and opening themselves up to being as gullible as they were during P.T. Barnum’s time. They’re easy marks for any old malarky. If P.T. Barnum was alive today, there is no doubt that he would find that fact vastly amusing.

How I rid myself of the need to influence anyone.

One of my first real advertising Art Director jobs was in 1992. I was working at Barnum and Souza, an agency partly founded by P.T. Barnum’s great grandson. Ironically, while working at the agency is when I also started a weekly half hour Manhattan cable access TV show dedicated to disrupting ( or “adbusting”) the mindsets created by advertising and propaganda. (I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with advertising, same any other person who worked in the biz.)

Each show was a wacky discourse on anti-capitalism, anti-mass media, and anti-conservative group-think that sometimes used street theater, short documentary, or humorous sketches for its mockery. I even got Michael Moore to once do a short promo blurb for my show!

Creating the show taught me alot about media manipulation and its effects.

However, it was after one particular show where I learned about the negative power of the media.

I was desperate for a show premise that week and needed material. So, I got lazy and created a 20-minute episode where I focused the camera on a tiny set I had constructed out of a shipping box and made it resemble the inside of a UFO. Inside the UFO I had set up some Madball heads and various weird lights.

It was the most craptastically low-budget set you could imagine. It made Ernie Kovacs sets seem like big budget Broadway productions.

While the camera captured the set and lights flickered, I provided a narration about Aliens manipulating your televiions set to control minds and promote the unnecessary purchase of products.

Yes, I basically ripped-off John Carpenter’s “They Live” storyline.

I turned in my show to the channel on Wednesday, it aired late Thursday night, and I breathed a sign of relief at having met another deadline, then thought nothing more of the show.

That is, until Friday, the day after the show.

I was in a pub after work and New York One News was playing on their TV that was in the corner hanging up over the bar. NY1 ran the usual news items of that time: Gang shootings, mob busts, local baseball scores, and then up popped an oddball headline on the screen.

“MAN SHOOTS UP TV. CLAIMS ALIENS WERE IN IT.”

Uh Oh. I clutched my beer.

The video showed some poor deluded chap being led away in cuffs after he shot up his apartment and TV. His excuse was that the TV was evil and filled with aliens. Talk about creating Bespoke Realities!

I finished my beer and slunk out of the bar and back to my apartment.

Thank God there weren’t such things as Smart TVs or DVRs back then. Any evidence linking me to this loony’s gun antics was laying in shards around his apartment.

But even so, I swore to never try and do that kind of careless “influencing” ever again.

Fast forward to today and social media. That experience has stuck with me and is always in the back of my mind. Since then I’ve never fooled myself into falling for the path of “influencer” in any way. Furthermore, it’s given me a huge distrust of anyone who tries to claim that moniker.

I’ve come to accept that because of this hesitancy, I’ll never be one of those few who make tons of money from using (overusing IMHO) social media.

This admittedly has had a negative effect on the visibility and distribution of my art and book sales, but honestly, who really needs really needs to see the 24/7 postings from yet another jamoke on the internet? I know I don’t. Instead of playing that distorted game of constant “show and tell”, I’d rather enjoy my life in privacy, sitting down and making my art and comics at my own pace, then posting them at my leisure.

If you enjoy my creations that’s great, and I thank you. But If you don’t, no sweat. I’m not going out of my way to influence you otherwise.¹

That only results in spent shell casings scattered around an apartment.

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Until next time, as my grandfather used to say, “Don’t take any wooden nickels.”

I didn’t realize the meaning of that phrase until I was well into my teens, after I tried cashing in all the damn things at a local bank.

At least I got a pen out of the exchange, whose ink was all dried up.

Gullibly yours,

Ed

1. Except with my book marketing right below this footnote. Ha!