#instead all i found were clickbait listicles

[lets-steal-an-archive]

The rumor that Jensen was up for the role of Hawkeye/turned down the role of Hawkeye is DEBUNKED.

I was going to write up a post in the format of @messier51 's Media Journalism is a Giant Game of Telephone, but I'm up to 9+ single spaced pages in a Google Doc so here's the TL;DR version in a format inspired by @fandomdebunker

Today I did a Google search with the terms "Jensen Ackles" "Hawkeye" and took a cap of the top hits:

Let’s play follow the source on those hits:

The Things (Charr 2020) → Indie Wire (Sharf 2018) → Screen Rant (Ocasio 2014) → IGN (Goldman 2014)

Indie Wire (Sharf 2018) → Screen Rant (Ocasio 2014) → IGN (Goldman 2014)

Showbiz Cheat Sheet (Greg Brian 2020) → Indie Wire (Sharf 2018) → Screen Rant (Ocasio 2014) → IGN (Goldman 2014)

CBR (Curovic 2017)  → no source (clickbait listicle)

Quora (Light 2019)

Indie Wire (Sharf 2018) → Screen Rant (Ocasio 2014) → IGN (Goldman 2014)

Warped Factor (Geek Dave 2014) → Collider (Goldberg 2010) → THR's Heat Vision Blog (Kit 2010)

Looper (Boone 2016) → Screen Rant (Ocasio 2014) → IGN (Goldman 2014)

CBR (Curovic 2017)  → no source (clickbait listicle)

Popsugar (Prahl 2019) → Screen Rant (Ocasio 2014) → IGN (Goldman 2014)

All roads lead back to Screen Rant (Ocasio 2014):

Ackles is rumored to have given up the role of Hawkeye in The Avengers, and Marvel Studios continues to remind him of its interest in bringing him in to its ever-growing Cinematic Universe. On top of that, Ackles' current relationship with Warner Bros. (through Warner Bros. television) is likely to have DC interested as well, as they know exactly how strong – not to mention valuable – he his as an actor.

The Screen Rant tag for "The Avengers" is not a source, it is a time limited pile of clickbait and even using an archived link from January 24, 2014 I found nothing. Am I supposed to click back to 2010 to attempt to find a source? (Yes.) I'm guessing Browne 2010, Keyes 2010a, and Keyes 2010b are supposed to be the sources, not that there is a single word about Hawkeye? 

Oh, and sure to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the Screen Rant (Ocasio 2014) piece where you’ll see a link to Goldman 2014: Ocasio 2014 is basically a copy/paste of this article. 

Here's the complete text of  Goldman 2014:

The last show left to originally air on The WB, Supernatural has had an impressively long life, and is now in Season 9. The show not only continues to be one of the strongest performers on The CW, but its ratings have been up this season from the previous year. Still, just how much longer could the series go?

Asked that question at the TCA (Television Critics Association) press tour today, CW's president, Mark Pedowitz, essentially said the show could go on indefinitely - as long as the ratings continue to hold up and the Supernatural team wants to continue.

Said Pedowitz, "As a fan of the show, who’s seen every episode, as long as I’m here and those numbers hold, God bless them. They can go as long as they want."

As for the potential Supernatural spinoff, which will be set up in a backdoor pilot this season, Pedowitz was asked if that was still in play and he replied, "Yes, very much so. It's set in Chicago. Hunters, monsters... The script just came in."

As for whether any of the main Supernatural characters would appear in the spinoff, which will be centered around new characters, Pedowitz said, "In the spinoff episode, they'd be in it. Whether they're in the series... For me, for spinoffs to work, you have to stand them on their own two legs, so you can only do those crossovers when the time is right, like we did with The Originals. We didn't see Michael Trevino's character, Tyler, until the seventh or eighth episode. By that time, the show was standing up on its own two legs."

So where the hell did (Ocasio 2014) get the Hawkeye bit from? I'm going to speculate it was an internet created rumor stemming from either a dodgy publicist planting the rumor or fan casting back in 2010 becoming lore.

Last night I DM'ed Jules Wilkinson (SupernaturalWiki admin) and she said her "Jensen expert" friend didn't remember him ever mentioning it at a Con or otherwise. Jules thinks it may be an internet created rumor, possibility originating from a publicist: "It's an easy way to get press for a movie without actually confirming anything, and its unlikely an actor will straight out deny being mentioned in relation to a high profile project (although sometimes they do years later)".

Another possibility is fan casting back in 2010 became lore when a writer included it in their articles:

"If Ackles can't be cast in Captain America, can he pretty, pretty please be cast as Hawkeye in the upcoming Avengers film?" (Saucedo 2010a) 

"While the Supernatural geek in me would have preferred Jensen Ackles in the role, I have to say Renner is a nice addition to the cast — really complimenting the caliber of actors Marvel has recruited to don leather costumes and punch each other." (Saucedo 2010b) 

Finally, maybe the dude just made it up for hits.

I do not consider the speculative content in Ocasio 2014 to be a reliable source; therefore, I'm classifying this rumor as DEBUNKED.

Bibliography

Boone, Brian. (2016, November 28 / 2018, April 23). Actors who were almost cast as an Avenger. Looper. Retrieved from  https://www.looper.com/27858/actors-almost-cast-avenger/

Browne, Niall. (2010, February 24). Who Will Be Captain America? Now We (Sort of) Know... Screen Rant. Retrieved from https://screenrant.com/captain-america-mcasting-picks/

Chaar, Michael. (2020, August 7). 'Supernatural' Star Jensen Ackles Turned Down The Chance To Be An Avenger. The Things. Retrieved from https://www.thethings.com/supernatural-star-jensen-ackles-turned-down-the-chance-to-be-an-avenger/

Curovic, Irina. (2017, September 29). "15 Actors Who Turned Down MCU". CBR. Retrieved from https://www.cbr.com/actors-who-turned-down-the-mcu/

Geek Dave. (2014, July 24). The Actors Who Could've Been The Avengers. Warped Factor. [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20140808121212/http://www.warpedfactor.com/2014/07/the-actors-who-couldve-been-avengers_21.html

Goldberg, Matt. (2010, February 24). The First Avenger: Captain America Short-List Includes John Krasinski, Scott Porter, Garrett Hedlund, Jensen Ackles. Collider. Retrieved from https://collider.com/the-first-avenger-captain-america-short-list-includes-john-krasinski-scott-porter-garrett-hedlund-jensen-ackles-and-others/

Goldman, Eric. (2014, January 15). The CW President on How Much Longer Supernatural Can Go and the Status of the Spinoff. IGN. Retrieved from  https://www.ign.com/articles/2014/01/15/the-cw-president-on-how-much-longer-supernatural-can-go-and-the-status-of-the-spinoff 

Greg Brian. (2020, July 23). 'The Avengers': Hawkeye Was Almost Played by a Lead 'Supernatural' Actor. Showbiz Cheat Sheet. Retrieved from  https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/the-avengers-hawkeye-was-almost-played-by-a-lead-supernatural-actor.html/

Keyes, Rob. (2010a, February 13). Could Chris Pine Be Captain America? Screen Rant. Retrieved from https://screenrant.com/could-chris-pine-be-captain-america/

Keyes, Rob. (2010b, March 5). Captain America Casting Updates. Screen Rant. Retrieved from https://screenrant.com/captain-america-casting-updates-neal-bledsoe/

Kit, Borys. (2010, February 24). Captain America contenders: Krasinski, Crawford, Vogel, more. The Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision blog. [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/20100227045124/http://www.heatvisionblog.com/2010/02/captain-america-contenders-krasinski-cassidy-vogel-fluger-more.html

Light, Jeff. (2019, May 9). Why was Jensen Ackles offered so many Marvel movie roles? Quora. [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.quora.com/Why-was-Jensen-Ackles-offered-so-many-Marvel-movie-roles

messier51. (2014, July 2014). Media Journalism is a Giant Game of Telephone. [Tumblr post]. Retrieved from https://messier51.tumblr.com/post/92751093562/media-journalism-is-a-giant-game-of-telephone

Ocasio, Anthony. (2014, January 17). 'Supernatural' Season 10, 11 (& More) Will Happen if Ratings Hold. Screen Rant. Retrieved from  http://screenrant.com/supernatural-season-10-11-renewal-cw/ [archived link: https://web.archive.org/web/20140124075455/http://screenrant.com/supernatural-season-10-11-renewal-cw/]

paul rudd. [philsadelphia]. (2018, December 24). sometimes i think about the fact that jensen ackles was offered the role of hawkeye but he was busy with supernatural so he turned it down and now we have j*remy r*nner instead and i get ....... SO bitter [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/philsadelphia/status/1077401977657675776

 Prahl, Amanda. (2019, November 26). 15 Actors Who Were Almost Cast as Your Favorite Avengers. Popsugar. Retrieved from  https://www.popsugar.com/entertainment/photo-gallery/46952214/image/46952318/Jensen-Ackles-as-Hawkeye

Saucedo, Robert. (2010a, February 25). The Office star Among Contenders to Wield America's Shield. Inside Pulse. Retrieved from  https://insidepulse.com/2010/02/25/the-office-star-among-contenders-to-wield-americas-shield/

Saucedo, Robert. (2010b, July 26). Jeremy Renner Confirmed as Hawkeye in The Avengers Movie. Inside Pulse. Retrieved from  https://insidepulse.com/2010/07/26/jeremy-renner-confirmed-as-hawkeye-in-the-avengers-movie/ 

Sharf, Zack. (2018, May 3). 13 Actors Who Almost Became Avengers in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Indie Wire. Retrieved from  https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/actors-turned-down-marvel-cinematic-universe/

Singer, Matt. (2018, March 29). Please Stop Sharing Bad Articles. Screencrush. Retrieved from https://screencrush.com/why-you-should-never-share-bad-articles/

Wilkinson, Jules. (2021, January 1). Personal communication.

Is it true that jensen ackles turned down the role of hawkeye in the mcu so he could keep doing spn cuz if so those are the actions of a complete lunatic in an insane toxic relationship with his own character on a cw tv show

[nomanwalksalone]

MAKING THE MYTH

by Réginald-Jérôme de Mans

Why make a myth? I had that question reading David Dowsey’s Making the Cut, a history of the Australian tailoring firm John Cutler. By coincidence, I’d also finally got round to reading Roland Barthes’ Mythologies, his exploration of myth-making in the modern world, where pro wrestling is our morality play, the steak frites is a sort of French Eucharist, and soap flakes promise absolution to our flatware.

It is blessedly easy to mythologize bespoke tailoring: its vocabulary is arcane and ancient, its true practitioners rare and its initiates often exult in being part of the elect – men (generally) who have not only cash, but the time and the unnatural will to have sought out a legendarily disappearing craft. Tailors now hold themselves out to be – or are held out to be by credulous bards in the media –not only that modern Jedi, actual craftsmen, but practitioners of a sort of wizardry, who lay hands on cloth and thread to create garments that transform the wearer – supposedly slimming the fat, straightening the stooped – into the icon he dreams of being. And the price of that magic is also of another world.

In fact, it was the price of one Cutler garment that caused whatever global notoriety he enjoys, and which was the likely trigger for Making the Cut: in 2013, Meg Lukens Noonan came out with The Coat Route, an examination of all of the materials and crafts that went into the creation of a $50,000 custom coat Cutler made out of a length of vintage Dormeuil vicuña for a customer who had given him carte blanche. Noonan visited vicuña conservators in Peru, met with Cutler’s horn button suppliers and the smith who made the gold chain inside the coat, and interviewed Stefano Ricci, who supplied a length of his trademark garish silk for its lining, as well as, of course, Cutler in Sydney and his Canadian customer.

Noonan found that nearly all of her interviewees were endangered species (now humanely herded and sheared instead of killed for their wool, the vicuñas are an adorable exception). For seeking them out, customers of bespoke clothing can pride themselves on being connoisseurs, not least the coat’s owner, who I believe has now ordered a second one.

As it happens, Dowsey, the author of Making the Cut, first met Cutler (one of a long series of tailors of that name) on a Ricci-sponsored junket in Italy. Like its subject’s custom clothing, Making the Cut itself has been hard to obtain, exquisitely packaged and prohibitively priced: various special editions came with bottles of Scotch or lengths of vicuña cloth, all reminders of Cutler’s creating the most expensive coat known to popular imagination.

Making your vanity book so rare and expensive it itself is a luxury item seems a strange way to make a myth, to get the word out about your subject. Certain of the Savile Row tailors Making the Cut explicitly references sell their books on their websites and through online booksellers, and use their publication to do tie-in articles and pictorials in magazines like The Rake and Vanity Fair. Making the Cut definitely draws on those dutiful and dry tailors’ histories for inspiration. It repeats their narrative arc: heroic founder, struggle of heirs against unforeseen challenges, and eventual restoration to a secure footing, recounting the Cutler dynasty’s immigration to Australia and gradual development into a prestigious bespoke tailoring business making for the rather colorful Australian great and good – athletes, hotheaded sheep farmers, politicians and businessmen. Dowsey compares the Cutlers’ rise to that of another traditional bespoke craftsman who had emigrated to Australia, John Lobb, who became successful making boots during the gold rush there before returning to London and opening what is undoubtedly the most famous custom shoemaker in the world. The Lobb family’s own history, The Last Shall be First, came out 45 years ago. Making the Cut seems intended to set Cutler among these otherwise British legends of traditional craft.

But why? The reasons the British tailors and bootmakers whose stories set the pattern for Making the Cut came out with books were apparent: age-old houses, many under different, corporate ownership now, seeking to spread their reputations in an age of new accessibility. Their continuity was assured. In contrast, Making the Cut itself notes that the current John Cutler’s children are not likely to enter the business, and that most of the cutters and coatmakers instrumental to custom clothing have gradually left. So this book, for all its painstaking immigration details, vivid recitation of John Cutler’s romantic histories and dozens of pages of press cuttings and customer pictorials, attempts to create a myth without much commercial justification – the justification for so much of today’s myths. Cutler the man, Cutler the business may soon be names out of time.

Does recognizing the components of a modern myth collapse it? Both The Coat Route and Making the Cut approvingly inform the reader that no less an authority than Forbes magazine proclaimed that Cutler was one of the best tailors in the world. The reader must be expected to imagine that Steve Forbes (or Teve Torbes) himself announced this epiphany. Unfortunately, the article in question is a clickbait listicle from the Forbes website, which is better known for unhinged and unsupported op-eds that would make The Wall Street Journal opinion page blush. Its support for why Cutler is the best appears to be that a customer can also order a custom overcoat and a pair of shoes there. But any tailor who makes suits cam make an overcoat. As for being able to order shoes, if variety meant quality then the Chinese place near my house that also sells sushi and Thai food must be the best restaurant in the world. In any case, Cutler’s shoe offer was a special order service with the late Italian shoemaker Stefano Bemer, not a true bespoke service with a custom maker creating a wooden last for each customer and welting shoes by hand. For all I know, Cutler may be one of the best tailors in the world, but the Forbes list isn’t why. I have no personal experience with Cutler or any Australian tailors, but my friends and I have worn out the carpets at the good tailors of Paris, where the Forbes article recommends solely the bespoke section at the department store Galeries Lafayette, which is a bath-salts level of unreliable, crazy and stupid. None of us had ever heard anything memorable about this service, although my 2003 Paris sur mesure does mention, as an alternative to good full bespoke and cheaper made-to-measure tailors, a demi-mesure service at Galeries Lafayette, where customers could select cloth for a factory special order made to stock sizes, with the possibility of some alterations after the fact. But in no way could that compare with having someone who knows what he or she is doing measure, create a pattern for, fit and otherwise hand-tailor you.

With Making the Cut, Cutler no longer needs to found its myth on Forbes’ shoddy support. It has all the architecture (long history and heritage, glossy photos and testimonials and mildly entertaining anecdotes) for today’s mythmaking, craft trades edition. Even if it’s a final snapshot for a family album.

Quality content, like quality clothing, ages well. This post first appeared on the No Man blog in 2018.

[ericpoptone]

Last Sunday, the Super Bowl took place. For the 98.7% of the world’s population who didn’t watch this televised spectacle; it featured billionaire Enos Stanley Kroenke‘s Rams in competition with billionaire Robert Kraft’s Patriots; the musical stylings of the Empress of Soul (Gladys Knight), Proactiv’s Maroon 5, Kardashian rapper Travis Scott, and Big Boi; as well as no doubt hilarious advertisements for products sold by Amazon, Anheuser-Busch, CBS, Mars, Microsoft, and Walt Disney.

Despite the fact that most Americans don’t watch the soporific Super Bowl — an estimated 70% of the country did not tune in for any part of the roughly nine-hour long spectacle during which time the ball was actually in play for only about twelve minutes — Super Bowl Sunday has emerged, in recent years, into what some trade publications appetizingly describe it as the “second largest food consumption event of the year” after Thanksgiving. It all seems a bit Ancient Rome to me — and as someone who loves holidays feasts (especially pagan ones), I decided last December to host a Super Bowl party without any Super Bowl — something I call “Thanksgiving II.”

One of the things I love about Thanksgiving [I] is its pronounced autumnal character (autumn is one of my top four favorite seasons). On Thanksgiving, even people who think that “seasonal eating” means Shamrock Shakes in spring and Pumpkin Spice Lattes in fall get closer to the actual spirit. Apples, baked winter squash, beans and rice, Beaujolais Nouveau, boiled onions, Brussels sprouts, cider, collard greens, cornbread, cranberry sauce, fruit cake, grapes, hickory nut cake, lasagna, mashed potatoes and gravy, parsnip fritters, pecan pie, pickles, potato salad, pumpkin pie, sauerkraut, stuffing, and sweet potatoes all make sense to eat at autumn’s conclusion.

Thanksgiving II — which falls on the first Sunday of February, takes place near the end of winter — about halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox and toward the end of winter by meteorological reckoning. It occurs, in other words, around the same time as Imbolc, Candlemas (and thus, Groundhog Day), Setsubun, Lunar New Year, and of course, Lupercalia. It also thus marks the beginning of several vegetables’ “spring seasons.” Carrots are back, as is celery, which is handy because both are commonly eaten at Super Bowl Party’s dipped in Blue cheese dressing. Small, sweet, turnips also appear around this time, and I mixed them with potatoes to make a sort of mashed “neeps and tatties.” Having more potatoes than I could handle, I also roasted some with garlic and rosemary from the garden. I also cooked collard greens — now at the peak of their season — which I would’ve mixed with turnip greens but they’d already been removed by the time they made it to the market.

The roots of Thanksgiving II are in an annual American football competition, first held in 1967. It seems, from pictures, that straw boaters were once typically worn for such events — although I’m not sure why and sadly that practice seems to have faded long ago and the favored headgear of today’s jocks — regardless of sport — is the lowly baseball cap, usually unflatteringly worn backward.

Interestingly, whereas the first Thanksgiving was observed by the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony, the first Super Bowl paired the team of Greenbay, Wisconsin‘s Indian Packing Company with the Chiefs team of Kansas City, Missouri — two teams at least nominally connected to Native America. The annual match used to take place in January but was moved to February in 2002, following a postponement of the season on account of the terror attacks of 11 September, which took place the previous year.

This being my first Thanksgiving II, it was a bit of a learning experience…

I had decided that I would bake the pizzas at 3:30, when the actual football game begins. This was another mistake, because due to the large number of guests and the potluck nature of the buffet, there was also a massive quantity of non-pizza foods including salad, seitan jerky, grapes, pies (pecan and pumpkin), pigs-in-a-blanket, veggie chicken, as well as cheese and crackers. The vegan neighbor brought a jug of kombucha as well as a dish made of broccoli and kinwa. Because of the pre-pizza feast, by kick-off, everyone was too full to eat any more and the pizzas were thus never baked. Next year I will serve the traditional pizzas alongside the sides, pass-arounds, and hors d’oeuvres.

After pizza, the second-most traditional food at Super Bowl parties is the Buffalo wing — a food made of a section of a chicken’s wing which is deep-fried and subsequently coated or dipped in a sauce composed of a vinegar-based cayenne pepper sauce and melted butter. It was invented at Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York by Teressa Bellissimo. Although invented in 1964, I don’t remember ever hearing of them until sometime around the early ’00s, perhaps after the 2003-founding of WingStreet and incidentally, around the time cauliflower wings began to appear on the menus of sports bars I occasionally found myself dragged to. Because wings are apparently so important (and I am vegetarian), I had planned to buy mock chicken at Silom in Thai Town by one guest made cauliflower wings from a questionable recipe (it called for breading). I’m still not entirely clear about “dipping sauces,” although a co-worker endeavored to explain them to me. Is a dipping sauce distinct from a condiment? Do people make their own or buy them? Where those sauces developed on Breaking Bad for Pollos Hermanos (e.g. “Kick-ass Cajun, “Franch,” and “Honey mustard”)? Still not sure, I put out bottles of brown sauce, dumpling sauce, gogigui sauce, hoisin sauce, lechon sauce, salsa picante, and sriracha.

Chips, both potato and corn varieties, are traditional fare for Super Bowl parties — as are their associated dips and sauces such guacamole, pico de gallo, and “queso.” I first experienced “queso” a few years ago and at first, wondered why these Anglx friends of mine kept consistently (and I assumed, pretentiously) referring to cheese by its Spanish name. I soon learned that, in the Tex-Mex vernacular, not only does “queso” not refer to cheese — it doesn’t even refer to a dish made with cheese at all. Instead it refers to a corn chip dip made of “pasteurized processed cheese food product” (e.g. cheese-adjacent Velveeta®) and Ro-Tel® brand canned tomato and chili mix. In other words, it’s a bit like the Thanksgiving II equivalent of Campbell’s® green bean casserole — a corporate creation which despite its corporate origins is nevertheless pretty tasty. I put in a request from my friends who introduced me to the concoction but they instead brought a bag of pita bread.

Pretzels, popcorn, and nuts are also popular — the sort of salty snacks typically associated with dive bars and mass-produced and watery lagers. On this day, Americans consume around 424 million liters of beer and 94% of it is a macrobrew produced by either Anheuser-Busch or MillerCoors. As a wine drinker and this being winter, I was leaning toward full-bodied reds like Bordeaux blends, Cabernet Sauvignons, Malbecs, Syrahs, and Zinfandels. Had I gone white, I’d have chosen an oaked Chardonnay. It was pretty chilly out, in fact, and rain was pouring down. I thus entertained the notion of mulling the wine… but I’m glad that I didn’t. After trying to pace myself with red wine for nine hours, I learned just why people drinking for the long-haul favor lager.

So next year, I’ll bake the pizzas at the beginning, make sure queso is accounted for, buy lots of lager, and maybe start a bit later in the afternoon. Oh, and should you celebrate your own Thanksgiving II, the most important thing is to have fun… well that and to not watch the Super Bowl!

Eric Brightwell is an adventurer, writer, rambler, explorer, cartographer, and guerrilla gardener who is always seeking paid writing, speaking, traveling, and art opportunities. He is not interested in generating advertorials, cranking out clickbait, or laboring away in a listicle mill “for exposure.”

Brightwell has written for Angels Walk LA, Amoeblog, Boom: A Journal of California, diaCRITICS, Hidden Los Angeles, and KCET Departures. His art has been featured by the American Institute of Architects, the Architecture & Design Museum, the Craft & Folk Art Museum, Form Follows Function, Los Angeles County Store, the book Sidewalking, Skid Row Housing Trust, and 1650 Gallery. Brightwell has been featured as subject in The Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Magazine, LAist, CurbedLA, Eastsider LA, Boing Boing, Los Angeles, I’m Yours, and on Notebook on Cities and Culture. He has been a guest speaker on KCRW‘s Which Way, LA?, at Emerson College, and the University of Southern California. Art prints of Brightwell’s maps are available from 1650 Gallery. 

Brightwell is currently writing a book about Los Angeles and you can follow him on Ameba, Facebook, Goodreads, Instagram, Mubi, and Twitter.

Click here to offer financial support and thank you!

  Thanksgiving II; or, a Super Bowl Party for people who hate the Super Bowl Last Sunday, the Super Bowl took place. For the 98.7% of the world's population who didn't watch this televised spectacle; it featured billionaire Enos Stanley Kroenke's Rams in competition with billionaire Robert Kraft's Patriots; the musical stylings of the Empress of Soul (Gladys Knight), Proactiv's Maroon 5, Kardashian rapper Travis Scott, and Big Boi; as well as no doubt hilarious advertisements for products sold by Amazon, Anheuser-Busch, CBS, Mars, Microsoft, and Walt Disney.

[simondriverlove-blog]

Information Overload is a Weapon of Control

by James Corbett corbettreport.com July 20, 2019 

Do you feel confused? Listless? Overwhelmed? Have you ever found yourself scrolling through news feeds and flicking mindlessly through social media posts with a strange mixture of outrage, dread, and boredom? Is your disgust at the thought of going online consistently overwhelmed by your compulsion to pick up your fondleslab?

Don’t worry. You’re not alone. More and more people are finding it harder and harder to put their devices down even though it leaves them feeling restless, angry or empty. As a result, some are seeking ways to disconnect and unplug from the 24/7 siren song of never-ending news feeds, instant messaging and social media distractions, whether by ditching their smartphone in favor of a “dumb” phone or taking device-free holidays.

Yes, we all succumb to information overload, and yes, we all need a break from the online maelstrom every now and then.

But what if this state of information overload—the malaise we experience when we find ourselves paralyzed by a ceaseless stream of noise and nonsense—is not a mere byproduct of this vaunted “Information Age” but the actual point of it? Has it ever occurred to you that these devices have been weaponized against us? Or that the confusion and exhaustion we feel after spending an hour mindlessly scrolling on our smartphone is the effect that this weaponized technology has on our psyche?

And, more to the point, what can we do to protect ourselves from these daggers of digital distraction?

First, let’s examine the problem.

Suppose you start your day by checking your friends’ social media profiles. The stream of dream vacation pictures and posts about happy relationships and fun parties leaves you feeling miserable as you head out the door for work.

Later that morning you take a break from your desk job (entering information on a computer, of course) to check the news. Clickbait nonsense battles with atrocity porn for your attention in the news feed. You finally find something interesting and informative only to scroll down to the comment section and find it populated by trolls bent on starting flame wars and disinformation operatives deploying every trick in the book to derail thoughtful conversation.

Closing the browser window you get back to work and discover an angry email from your boss in your inbox reminding you that your latest report was due yesterday and several messages from your coworkers asking for your help with their own projects.

Running to the one place you know you can get away from it all—the washroom—you lock the stall door . . . only to feel a buzzing in your pocket. You got a new message on Facebook! You pull your phone out of your pocket and start the whole process over again.

The worst part is that you know that this constant flow of information is making you miserable, but you can’t help yourself. It’s harder and harder to leave the phone at home when you go out to the store or turn the TV off when you’re eating dinner. You’ve become a slave to the technology that once promised to free you.

Now this may not be a description of your average day, but we all know people to whom this description applies. And if you use electronic devices on a daily basis, it’s getting harder and harder to deny that you’ve experienced the strange mixture of compulsion and depression that those devices bring.

This is not even controversial at this point. We hardly need a scientific study to tell us that social media is making us dumb, angry and addicted, but in case you missed it here’s a scientific study telling us that social media is making us dumb, angry and addicted. As you might expect, people who compare their mundane, humdrum existence to the idealized lives that people present online—fun parties, great food, perfect vacations, happy families—are more likely to develop depressive symptoms.

But it’s important to note that this state of affairs has not come about by accident. This technology has been weaponized against you. This is not conspiracy theory or conjecture; as I pointed out in my podcast on The Weaponization of Social Media, many of the founders of the social media giants don’t even use social media themselves and they actively keep it away from their children. If you haven’t seen it yet, watch Facebook co-founder Sean Parker admitting that they designed their product to keep you addicted by exploiting vulnerabilities in human psychology.

When you realize that all aspects of our online experience—like the red badges and phone buzzers that alert us to new social media notifications—have been precisely fine-tuned to keep you clicking indefinitely, you can at least appreciate that it is not merely a matter of weak will that has led you to this spot.

It is also important to realize that this is not merely a ploy to earn more advertising revenue for the big internet companies. It does do that, of course, but this addiction to (and, ultimately, enslavement to) the very source of our unhappiness if part of a much more insidious agenda. We are being groomed by the hucksters and charlatans of our era to accept the coming integration of man and machine. Or, worse yet, to embrace it.

Never mind that the Borg-like vision of the future propounded by these transhumanists is a nightmare beyond comprehension. Never mind that free will will be rendered meaningless in a world where we are nudged by devices along pre-determined paths. Never mind that privacy will be unthinkable when our every thought will be monitored and analyzed in real time. Never mind that dissent will be impossible when our ability to access the networks upon which our lives are built can be turned off at the flip of the switch. We’ll be able to surf the internet in our head! Where do I sign up?

If you think information overload is bad now, wait until you’re interacting with avatars of your friends in augmented reality while listening to music that only you can hear and ordering your Alexa to adjust the thermostat and order you a pizza for dinner.

So what do we do about this?

If this were just another clickbait listicle designed to give you some trite pieces of warm and fuzzy advice and keep you coming back for more, this is the point where I’d give you a few bullet points about setting a screen time limit on your phone or practicing mindful browsing (searching for something specific instead of scrolling and clicking aimlessly). These things are all well and good, as far as they go . . . but they don’t go far enough, do they?

Because if we really face up to the fact that these devices have been weaponized against us, and that they are leading us into a transhuman future, then we arrive pretty quickly at a conclusion that might put you into a cold sweat: Every time you pick up your device, every time you check that news feed, every time you scroll through your social media notifications, you are putting a loaded gun to your head.

Or, even worse, you are ingesting a little bit of poison. One or two doses won’t hurt. A thousand doses might make you sick, but you can probably handle it. The fatal dose might be the millionth. And if the poison is sweet enough, then, like any addict, you’ll convince yourself that it’s OK to keep taking it; after all, we’ll be able to quit before we get to that millionth hit, won’t we?

And what’s the alternative, anyway? Giving up on this tech altogether? Is that even possible?

These are not rhetorical questions. They are very real questions with answers that have very real consequences for our lives. And I’m not posing these questions from up in the clouds. I make my living online. My life right now revolves around the very information overload that I’m writing about. Will I know where to draw that line in the sand and stop using the tech before it becomes an implantable brain chip? Will you?

Feel free to tell me that I’m being overly dramatic and that there’s nothing to worry about here. But the next time you feel yourself reaching for your phone in a moment of silence or scrolling aimlessly through a news feed with a gnawing sense of emptiness in the pit of your stomach, take a moment to reflect on that sensation. And then see if you can put the phone down.