5/31/19: Propaganda 101: Corrupt Data & Distinguishing Truth From Falsehood

“There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.”  
“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” -Walter Lippmann

Also: The difference between clever & smart and more on the DIKW pyramid and what happens when citizens ignore corrupt data.

- Justin Amash and the criticism from the left.

- Mueller's fumble and the Democrat's ensuing demand that he star in their 2020 reality show/campaign ad.

- To Impeach or not Impeach: just do it or STFU!

- Democrats are politically impotent to stop anything Trump does. How does that "protest vote" look now?



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5/23/19: The Social Media Disease - Illusion of Knowledge & Democratized Opinion

Technology enables, and social media perpetuates, prioritizing the cheap appearance of knowledge instead of fostering knowledge itself.  Also, how the Internet changes cognition and the abandonment of expertise to the holy opinion: "my ignorance is equal to  your knowledge."

Also: 
-The DIKW pyramid and drowning in data.
-The Id on Parade, the natural state of man, and Leviathan.
-What happens when reasonable voices abandon the public square to mindless mobs of roving avatars?
-When avatars attack
-A classic full-frontal Toddzilla rant salvaged from The Lost Episode about Twitter, and more.






Elias Aboujaode's Virtually You: 
https://www.amazon.com/Virtually-You-Dangerous-Powers-Personality/dp/0393340546

Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: 
https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/0393339750

Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death: 
https://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Business/dp/014303653X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1558613196&sr=1-1


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5/14/19: The Social Media Disease - Virtual Mobs, Conformity, External Truth

Unsophisticated media consumers and the failure to take personal responsibility for our own intellectual maintenance. The surrender of the individual's intellectual autonomy to the conformist mob. How mobs-cells no longer need to leave the couch and are now free to anonymously molest & terrorize the "other" via Twitter, Facebook, and their phones.

Also:

• Social Media Influencers and how the Media 101 Model applies to them
• Emerson on independent thought, conformity, and consistency
• The abandonment of external truth and the path to authoritarianism 

Need more Toddzilla?

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3) Gorge on your way to therapy.

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5/9/19: The Elephantitis Pandemic; Winter Is Here

Haidt's elephant and how it relates to our constitutional crisis, rising authoritarianism, and our likely dystopian future. "Evolution didn't end with opposable thumbs."

• The thin veneer of civilization
• Self-dehumanization
• Extremists v. Moderate
• The Social Media Disease

Need more Toddzilla?

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3) Listen on your way to therapy.

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5/7/19: Political Orphans & Constitutional Hospice

Parties, their power-first representatives and constituents, fundamentalist ideologues, extremists, etc. are failing everyone. Government institutions are melting down and the faith of the governed along with it.

Hey! What could go wrong?!?




Need more Toddzilla?

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5/4/19: The Boomerang Effect: "Hold My Beer"

Confused as to why your self-righteous demands aren't being met? Behold! 

• Narratives, mythology, religion, and how they bind us together
• Making Enemies of Allies
• Haidt's Elephant
• Surrendering to the Grand Design of Ideological Religions
• Intellectual refinement and allowing yourself (and others) to make mistakes and change your mind
• The abandonment of External Truth and Reason
• Totalitarian and authoritarian creep
• No Hitler references!

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Media 101 - It's The People

Escaping The Cave returns! 

Are you wondering why every source of "news" and information sucks? It's because everyone from MSNBC to NPR to FOX to Alex Jones to Social Media "Influencers" operate according to the same for-profit model: drawing eyeballs to their product to sell someone else's.

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3) Listen on your way to therapy.

*Like the pod? SPREAD IT!  F**k The Zuckerbeast & Twitter. You are my marketing team.

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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net

3/24/18: The Social Media Disease - Cyber Space Monkeys

First Social Media Disease antibiotic treatment. Starting with an X-Pod flashback to 2014, Todd discusses Cambridge Analytica before turning to more recent effects of our collective addiction to social media on society and how a bilateral abandonment of a commitment to basic common facts--in favor of tasty propaganda--is having a dehumanizing effect and rapidly eroding the social contract. Also: cyber space monkeys, avatars showing off for each other in the Matrix, and the digital-organic hybrid: meme belching cyborgs.

Need more Toddzilla? First, seek help. Second, click the links below. Third, listen on your way to therapy.

I was a guest on two Christopher Media shows this week:

Politics, society, social media: Unregimented - http://christophermedia.net/229-its-still-all-about-trump/

Baseball! And other unfortunate things: Sporgy- http://christophermedia.net/093-03-22-18/

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Also visit: www.christophermedia.net

2/6/18: Media 101: It's (We) The People

In this episode: thoughts on the popular escapist conspiracy theory about the mainstream media “dumbing us down to keep us docile and ignorant." I also dissect the reasons why our media is now composed nearly exclusively of boutique news outlets producing chum for echo chamber sharks, media desensitization and the cure, as well as the need for sugar-coated truth, and our insulated and self-cleansing propaganda ecosystems (news, standup, and Hollywood). 

Also: thoughtless “opinion”, white inheritance, Sausage Party Hope, Fleecing The Fucktards, and more. Not for everyone. Ask your doctor if Toddzilla is right for you. Use only as directed.

(This is the edited-for-time 2019 version. Original file linked below)

ORIGINAL FILE: Download(right click/save)/Play In a New Window

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1/29/18: He Is Risen!

Please update your iTunes and Google Play subscriptions to download future episodes.  

Stitcher: Coming soon

The rebranded X-Pod returns! Toddstradamus discusses his return to podcasting, social media, misguided consistency, fires his opening salvo at political religions and bilateral extremism, synapse pruning and The Useless Shit Epiphany, and establishing a solid signal to noise ratio. He also lays the foundation for exposing The Talking Dead and creating a more sophisticated media consumer while weeding his garden of that pesky Green Tea.

(2014) - The X-Pod 007: Slithering Fascism & Tribal Warfare

Recorded in 2014 shortly before the first podcast ended, this episode discusses my initial Facebook purges, Trumpism (before Trump), the social damage inflicted by echo chambered disinformation (fake news) on facebook as well as the human inclination toward delusional tribalism. Not recommended for those looking for Sausage Party Hope! Definitely recommended for those wanting to reflect back on the not-so-distant past and reminisce on how we got here. And how things not only haven't changed, but gotten worse.

More:www.escapingthecave.com
www.upperworldphoto.com

A Virtual Salinas

The Social Media Disease #1

What follows is just the beginning and I’m under no illusion that the overwhelming majority of you still possess anything close to the attention span required to read all of it. Check back when you see "The Dennis Doctrine" for my thoughts on that matter. Unicorns, rainbows and shit. Promise!

Anyhow, this took an incredibly long time to even start and runs in a lane parallel to The Dopamine Drip. As I sit here this afternoon, I still don’t know exactly where to take it, even after two and a half months of psychologically sorting out what’s happened to me, and us, over the last decade. But, I’m on a deadline now. So, as Mickey Knox so eloquently put it, “Let’s roll the fuckin’ dice, Wayne.”

When Avatars Attack

A Recycled Prelude

An excerpt from an earlier post. This tells of what turned out to be a personally profound moment that took place in Phoenix on Halloween, 2016 just before Trump's election. It sets up nicely what you'll see sprouting here over the next several days and/or weeks. 




Facebook Avatars Escape The Matrix

Jeff and I went to a tiny Halloween get together at his apartment complex and toward the end of the night, the host’s neighbor stopped to chat. Seemed like a decent kid. Personable. Pleasant. Mid 20’s. I didn’t think anything of it. Suddenly, while he and the token liberal/anti-Trump partygoer were having a nice conversation, the liberal gun slinger decided to show off his ideological marksmanship and, out of the blue, yanked his Progressive Facebook Avatar from the Matrix dropping it, meme guns a-blazin’, into the Desert of the Real. The Trump supporter naturally reacted in kind and it predictably, and quickly, devolved from friendly polite banter into The Battle of Arizona and almost a physical fight.

Nazis, Hippies, and The Bloody Political Purge

No writer achieves success advising his readers to ignore him. I’ve come to define “success” differently. In this specific case it’s maybe a good idea, especially if you're ideologically pure or identified uncomfortably with my previous Talking Dead post, to click elsewhere. While I don’t mention it often in this post, it illustrates the tangible effects of our cyber mobs and political zombies. It’s also full frontal Toddzilla and amounts to taking the final shot on my aforementioned bender while at the same time serves to purge the one thing that’s been inexplicably safe: Zombie Politics.

If you click, you and you alone are responsible. Consider yourself warned, Snowflake.