Showing posts with label Identity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Identity. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 3, 2019

7/3/19: Broken Beasts of Intellectual Burden

A digital detox update and re-connecting with the organic world, Trump's 4th of July spectacle and the predictable "outrage", why I'm rooting against the US women's soccer team, the ridiculous debates, and half as many young people consider themselves "gay allies." Why? Beware the boomerang!



Also: 

-Social media is the new talk radio
-Visceral emotive manipulation and monetized propaganda
-Algorithms as propaganda delivery systems

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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net

Thursday, June 13, 2019

6/13/19: The Social Media Disease - The Virtue Batsignal, Moral Authoritarianism, The Exhausted Majority

Todd, Rich, and Chris discuss the unwiring of social evolution, totalitarian tribes spawning skittish clones, and an exhausted "center" with nowhere to land that's not infested by puritans.




Also:
- Is your child "really" transgendered, or is their gender voice really yours?
-The outright refusal to see our own team's propaganda.
-The "wisdom" of youth.
-More on thoughtless opinions.
-More on Social Media Intellectual Influencers and their "brands".


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Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Google Play, Spotify, & Stitcher.
Also visit: www.christophermedia.net

Wednesday, June 12, 2019

6/12/19: The Social Media Disease - Net Rage, Poking the Ape, Unleashing the Id

Cyber Space Monkeys continued. In part 1-of-3, I'm joined by Chris & Rich from Unregimented to discuss the effects of social media on individuals and society as a whole. Propaganda kerosene and the disinformation detonator, the connection between road rage and net rage, much of the IDW: for-profit social media brands and "right adjacent" influencers producing "content" for handouts, Nicholas Carr and how the Internet physically changes our brains, good deeds done solely to post the selfie, and more.


Like it? SHARE IT! F**k The Zuck & Twitter. You're my marketing team.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Google Play, Spotify, & Stitcher.
Also visit: www.christophermedia.net

Friday, June 7, 2019

6/7/19: Hey, Hilltucky! Reptilian Truth & The Outrage Fever

No Politics! Lots of drilling to the "get the f**k away from me!" meltdown core.

-Bulls**t Jousting
-The truth probably won't set you free
-Sausage Party Hope and the fueling Audacity of Belief
-How & why disinformation works: a first person play-by-play.


Like it? SHARE IT! F**k The Zuck & Twitter. You're my marketing team.
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Google Play, Spotify, & Stitcher.

Also visit: www.christophermedia.net
More: www.escapingthecave.com

Friday, May 31, 2019

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?



More episodes/subscribe:
My travel archives: www.toddzillaX.com
Also visit: www.christophermedia.net

Subscribe: iTunes and Google Play
Also on Stitcher and Spotify

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

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?

1) Seek help.
2) Click the links.
3) Gorge on your way to therapy.

More episodes/subscribe:
My travel archives: www.toddzillaX.com
Also visit: www.christophermedia.net

Subscribe: iTunes and Google Play

Saturday, May 4, 2019

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!



Need more Toddzilla?

1) Seek help.
2) Click below.
3) Listen on your way to therapy.

Subscribe: iTunes and Google Play

Monday, April 29, 2019

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.



Need more Toddzilla? 

1) Seek help. 
2) Click below. 
3) Listen on your way to therapy.

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

*Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and your favorite podcatcher.
*Also check out www.christophermedia.net

Saturday, March 24, 2018

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/


More episodes/subscribe: www.escapingthecave.com
My travel archives: www.toddzillaX.com
Also visit: www.christophermedia.net

Thursday, March 15, 2018

3/15/18: The Demon (2014 Throwback)

Recorded shortly after Robin Williams committed suicide in 2014, this was one of the most popular episodes from my old podcast. It covers many topics Friar Chris and I discussed in the previous podcasts, including the fraud of "normal",misguided identity, the emptiness of success, depression, and the performers need for praise and validation. Some of the early ideas surrounding the Social Media Disease, such as personal “branding” and virtual facades, are here as well as kernels of things that will become familiar to the regular listener, such as The Marrow of Humanity.





More episodes/subscribe: www.escapingthecave.com
My travel archives: www.toddzillaX.com

Monday, March 12, 2018

3/12/18: Hitchhiking and Philosophy

The final episode of the Friar Chris Series begins with a discussion about the differences between bicycle touring and backpacking then moves on to deeper topics, including (@ 15:45) my experience volunteering on the Gulf Coast in the immediate aftermath of Katrina and the corrosive and corrupting effects of tribalism and dogma in the Disaster Relief Industrial Complex. We then move on to (mostly) explore the fundamental ideas behind why he and I chose hitchhiking and what we learned and experienced while traveling the country as “disposable” vagabonds loitering out on the fringe. 



SPOILER ALERTSausage Party Hope lies within!

More episodes/subscribe: www.escapingthecave.com
My travel archives: www.toddzillaX.com

Cheat Sheet follows:

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

2/27/18: Friar Chris - A Gringo In The Andes

The first of three expansive (and nearly politics-free!) episodes with Chris Dyson, we discuss the mystical route leading to his founding of The Hof, his hostel in the Cordillera Blanca range of the Peruvian Andes and the difficulties he encountered in being a gringo outsider trying to integrate into the nearby Quechuan community, including the multiple robberies endured during his six and a half years living in Peru. We also discuss "The Personal Peace Corp" and the Dennis Doctrine, tribalism, non-caucasian based racism, apocalypse cultism, the epidemic of human disconnection, the related death of the sense of community, and more.




My photos of The Hof: www.upperworldphoto.com
More: www.escapingthecave.com
Subscribe: iTunes and Google Play

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

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)



Tuesday, January 30, 2018

1/30/18: Ideological Religions and The Talking Dead

Identity politics being mutually exclusive with “equality”, ideological drift, political doctrine as competing and hostile secular religions, online mobs, and the zombifying effects of dogma. Not for the easily triggered or those requiring intellectual safe spaces. 

Subscribe: iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher

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Sunday, January 28, 2018

(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

Thursday, October 19, 2017

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.

Saturday, July 15, 2017

What's Past Is Prologue

This trip started in Vermont, took me into eastern New York around the western shores of Lake Champlain thru Ticonderoga and Plattsburgh to the Canadian border at Rouses Point then south. The original "plan" (ha!) was...stop me if you've heard the before...Maine. The last of the lower 48 I've yet to see.

Like most of my "date's" fathers as a teenager, Maine clearly hates me despite having never met me. I've aimed for it no fewer than three times with three failures. At the end of June I actually started in New England! At least this time I didn't end up in Idaho. Progress?

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

7/4/17 (1): Alburg-Colcester, VT - Daddy Mammon's Consumerist Plantation



Part 1

I'd arrived in Rouses Point feeling rejuvenated! The stomach bug…so familiar by then I’d named it Ticonderoga’s Revenge…had passed and I was ready to attack my old friend Route 2 and make my way to Maine.

Things began perfectly and generated optimism. It took just 10-minutes to hitch a ride across the bridge spanning part of Lake Champlain back into Vermont and Alburg, a little town on an islet surrounded on three sides by the lake and attached by land only to Canada.

Saturday, June 24, 2017

Quixote's Primer




Prelude: This will sound familiar. What you’re about to read is both a time capsule and an invitation to watch a natural birth. Without the screaming…wait…there is eventually screaming involved. Ok. Fine. Without the blood. Most of this was left in the archives as an undistilled work in progress, one I intended to revisit over the last 7-8 years in order to edit it for clarity—both mine and yours—but, as often happens, I just moved on and clarified on the fly. 

It was originally hatched in Port Townsend, Washington as a large part of my 9/19/09 birthday post but I quickly retracted when I realized this idea, Quixote, was enormous. That’s an inadequate word. It’s literally (proper use!) impossible to overstate the impact and effects it would have on me over the next decade. 

The concept was conceived as a simple observation of the human experience. But over the years it’s proved to spread well beyond the confinements of inner dialogues and identity. As social media’s bubbles inflated, Quixote has been weaponized as the exploited means by which people intellectually isolate themselves away from unpleasant intrusions on comfortable, egocentric personal narratives and world views. Don’t be mistaken in believing that Quixote is specific to one cave or the other. It tramples truth wherever it inconveniently sprouts.  Yes, Moonbeam. Even inside your magically evolved crystal bubble.

I’ve added some contemporary 2017 meat, but the bulk was written in early-mid October, 2009 at the end of a life changing summer. Anything added or cut was for brevity (ha!), clarity and fun; the basic concept has slightly evolved over the years but very little; I’ve changed my name more often than I’ve altered the foundation lying beneath what lies beneath. (That was not added for fun.)