David Hogg, a Stoneman Douglas student and now gun law activist, is being targeted by the pseudo conspiracy trolls inhabiting 4Chan, Reddit and other nether regions of the net.
Recall it wasn't long after the Sandy Hook - Newtown massacre that a crackpot conspiracy clown named Alex Jones, e.g.
began spinning his delirious, drug-addled bullshit that the whole tragedy where 26 perished was merely a federal "false flag" operation. Those twenty kids and six adults weren't really slain, they were merely actors in an elaborate script to befuddle the public, forcing a mass demand for gun confiscation across the land.
Now we see these wretched, half witted memes and crappola resurrected again by a bunch of nitwits occupying the nether regions of the net, e.g. 4chan, Infowars, Gateway Pundit, Reddit and related enclaves of web trolldom. This time the pseudo- conspiracy crazies are targeting the outspoken students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas for their newfound activism and eloquence in speaking truth to power. It appears the loopy conspira-tards simply can't handle that presentation of acumen and brilliance, thereby resorting to painting the kids into being "paid crisis actors".
One of the prime targets has been David Hogg, 17, who went from Florida high school student to mass shooting survivor to inspiring advocate for gun-control laws in a few days. And just as quickly, online conspiracy clowns in the mold of Alex Jones' Infowars (I call them conspira-tards) began spinning viral lies attacking the teenager’s credibility.
By Wednesday — a week after a gunman wielding a semiautomatic rifle killed 17 people at Hogg’s Parkland, Fla., school — online media sites including YouTube swelled with false allegations that Hogg was secretly a “crisis actor” playing the part of a grieving student in local and national television news reports.
Hogg wasn't the only one targeted by an online campaign that flared up on anonymous forums such as 4chan and Reddit before it reached conservative websites, Twitter, Facebook and Google’s video platform. Collectively the posts questioned the honesty and credibility of the grieving students as they spoke out against gun violence. In some cases they publicly challenged President Donald Dotard, the National Rifle Association and lawmakers opposed to gun control -- and this is likely what brought out the Trumpian Trolls from their crevices and rat holes.
Many of these lowbrow kooks, which is what they are, were also foursquare behind helping to spread Michael Flynn's Pizzagate conspiracy, i.e. that Hillary Clinton was keeping child sex slaves in the basement of a D.C. pizza parlor and exploiting them.
One is led to inquire what engenders this fulsome crap. What defects in the brains of these losers causes them to spawn such bollocks, say instead of applying what gray matter they have to researching real conspiracies? Well, one answer is that researching the real ones - like the JFK assassination - actually takes hundreds of man hours of real work. Just plowing through Oswald's CIA files - e.g. the OS-351- 164 file from his 201- 289 248 CI/SIG file or his 74-500 file. as reported in the Appendices of John Newman’s book, ‘Oswald and the CIA’- can take hours. It's a damned sight more exacting than merely reading a bullshit text on 4 Chan or watching a fake video on YouTube.
But that's where we are now, and who can blame the conspiracy skeptics - like Michael Shermer and others - for going after anything that remotely smacks of conspiracy when a gaggle of clowns and conspira-tards have taken over the zeitgeist and converted it to clown fodder? Such as the likes of Alex Jones and this currently resurfacing retinue of goofballs trying to paint Hogg and his fellow Douglas classmates as liberal pawns or actors.
It was Barbadian psychologist Dr. Pat Bannister who once invoked the idea of a "conspiracy culture", to distinguish it from "conspiracy research community". The latter she envisaged as the province of mature, rational, educated adults. Serious people possessing some measure of intellect who brought their scientific, mathematical and other aptitudes to the investigation of multiple aspects of a putative real conspiracy - whether that be the BCCI banking conspiracy or the JFK assassination. These people put in real man hours and actually published their work in authoritative media and respected forums as opposed to spreading bunkum through the lowest dreg regions of the net.
The "conspiracy culture" by contrast was defined by the resident "conspiracy theorist", who put forward conspiracy conjectures but didn't advance adequate evidence or documents to support them. Or, if such were advanced, they didn't meet elementary scientific standards for acceptance, including consistent data selection. For example, the lot who claimed no men actually landed on the Moon and it was all filmed on a Hollywood lot. This, despite the fact we can actually use lunar ranging instruments - planted by Apollo astronauts, to make incredibly accurate measurements of lunar distance.
If Dr. Bannister were alive today I warrant she'd also include another more debased category, the conspiracy clown. Into this group would go Alex Jones and his gaggle of anti-intellectual loawbrows of the type now burping out nasty "conspiracy" memes against the FLA students. This lot - I am sure- she'd bracket as members of that half of the population with subnornmal I.Q. i.e. that their low intelligence spurred them on to attack kids like David Hogg because they could see their intellects were superior to their own. Unable to parse Hogg or his classmates as "regular" students, it became easier to simply dismiss them as 'hired crisis actors" or vilify them as "liberal pawns". Who also had to be "taught" by liberals what to do and what to say in front of the assembled media. Of course, because the lowbrows themselves were too mentally deficient to do it on their own, they couldn't imagine anyone else - especially a student - able to.
This is what low intelligence gets you in a nation whose median I.Q. is sinking ever lower by the day, under Trumpdom. When the 1.8 million DACAns are dispatched it will sink even lower, given the average DACA person has an I.Q. 25 points higher than a 4Chan internet troll.
But perhaps the best put down of this nonsense was a humorous one from one of Hogg's fellow students, Sarah Chadwick. She, tweeted that Hogg “can’t act to save his life,” adding that the fact some people think he is being paid “is hilarious.”
Again, it takes little to no effort to imbibe such twaddle or to share it, and spread it out to like-minded morons. This in a social media environment susceptible to moronic fake news infection because it has few gatekeepers. (It is estimated that Facebook and Instagram have perhaps 200 human monitors - i.e. apart from the algorithms - to detect specious conspiracy clown ideation. and preventing it from wider circulation.)
The mainstream media then, confers way too much dignity on these net trolls from Reddit, 4chan, Infowars and elsewhere by saying they are spawning "conspiracies". No, they are in fact lowbrow loons spawning and spreading low I.Q. memes. A meme here being the equivalent of a basic mind virus first elucidated by biochemist Jacques Monod in his book, Chance And Necessity. Sadly, as we've seen with Pizzagate, even a lowbrow can create mind viruses. The power inheres not in the meme's innate value, but in getting like minded idiots to spread it. Receptacles who lack mental acuity, basic critical thinking skills and any familiarity with logic.
The "conspiracy culture" by contrast was defined by the resident "conspiracy theorist", who put forward conspiracy conjectures but didn't advance adequate evidence or documents to support them. Or, if such were advanced, they didn't meet elementary scientific standards for acceptance, including consistent data selection. For example, the lot who claimed no men actually landed on the Moon and it was all filmed on a Hollywood lot. This, despite the fact we can actually use lunar ranging instruments - planted by Apollo astronauts, to make incredibly accurate measurements of lunar distance.
If Dr. Bannister were alive today I warrant she'd also include another more debased category, the conspiracy clown. Into this group would go Alex Jones and his gaggle of anti-intellectual loawbrows of the type now burping out nasty "conspiracy" memes against the FLA students. This lot - I am sure- she'd bracket as members of that half of the population with subnornmal I.Q. i.e. that their low intelligence spurred them on to attack kids like David Hogg because they could see their intellects were superior to their own. Unable to parse Hogg or his classmates as "regular" students, it became easier to simply dismiss them as 'hired crisis actors" or vilify them as "liberal pawns". Who also had to be "taught" by liberals what to do and what to say in front of the assembled media. Of course, because the lowbrows themselves were too mentally deficient to do it on their own, they couldn't imagine anyone else - especially a student - able to.
This is what low intelligence gets you in a nation whose median I.Q. is sinking ever lower by the day, under Trumpdom. When the 1.8 million DACAns are dispatched it will sink even lower, given the average DACA person has an I.Q. 25 points higher than a 4Chan internet troll.
But perhaps the best put down of this nonsense was a humorous one from one of Hogg's fellow students, Sarah Chadwick. She, tweeted that Hogg “can’t act to save his life,” adding that the fact some people think he is being paid “is hilarious.”
Again, it takes little to no effort to imbibe such twaddle or to share it, and spread it out to like-minded morons. This in a social media environment susceptible to moronic fake news infection because it has few gatekeepers. (It is estimated that Facebook and Instagram have perhaps 200 human monitors - i.e. apart from the algorithms - to detect specious conspiracy clown ideation. and preventing it from wider circulation.)
The mainstream media then, confers way too much dignity on these net trolls from Reddit, 4chan, Infowars and elsewhere by saying they are spawning "conspiracies". No, they are in fact lowbrow loons spawning and spreading low I.Q. memes. A meme here being the equivalent of a basic mind virus first elucidated by biochemist Jacques Monod in his book, Chance And Necessity. Sadly, as we've seen with Pizzagate, even a lowbrow can create mind viruses. The power inheres not in the meme's innate value, but in getting like minded idiots to spread it. Receptacles who lack mental acuity, basic critical thinking skills and any familiarity with logic.
Props to Hogg for shrugging off the low I.Q. troll attacks, saying "This is just American democracy".
But in fact, Thomas Jefferson would disagree with him that this crude mode of expression - in terms of cockeyed conspiracy ideations - would qualify. No, Jefferson would see these nutso expressions as a debasement of democracy. After all, in his 'Notes on Virginia', he wrote:
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. AND TO RENDER THEM SAFE, THEIR MINDS MUST BE IMPROVED."
Jefferson understood that a citizen "depository" of false beliefs and misinformation would ultimately destroy the Republic on account of the regression of citizens' minds. This is why he harped on mental improvement. He understood that for citizens to attain this improvement of mind they needed to read in a focused and critical fashion and not believe anything without basis.. Another Founder, John Adams, wrote:
“Facts are stubborn things,”
Because they do not admit of being merely twisted into what one wishes or prefers. Sure, the dregs of 4Chan or Reddit might hate that an articulate bunch of Florida kids could find their voices after a school shooting massacre - but there it is. Instead of feeding the green envy monster by concocting imbecilic conspiracy memes that don't fit the facts, they'd do better to do some real research and reading themselves.
Why? To improve their minds of course! That is assuming they have the intelligence to sustain any improvement.
Footnote: A wannabe Vermont shooter - Jack Sawyer- was recently tripped up when a friend reported him to the authorities. He had packed away an AR-15 and shotgun as well as handgun to attack his former High school. See e.g.
https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/2018/02/16/teen-arrested-fair-haven-school-shooting-threat/344409002/
He told that friend (as reported on CBS Early Show this a.m.) he had been "excited" about the Parkland massacre because it "was just stepping up natural selection a notch". In fact , he had it backwards: The Parkland shooting was reverse natural selection in that a mentally debilitated guy took out 17 students with vastly higher I.Q.s than he had. But this is what happens when military style weapons are allowed to be purchased by anyone.
https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/2018/02/16/teen-arrested-fair-haven-school-shooting-threat/344409002/
He told that friend (as reported on CBS Early Show this a.m.) he had been "excited" about the Parkland massacre because it "was just stepping up natural selection a notch". In fact , he had it backwards: The Parkland shooting was reverse natural selection in that a mentally debilitated guy took out 17 students with vastly higher I.Q.s than he had. But this is what happens when military style weapons are allowed to be purchased by anyone.
