People love fake stuff. Fake things always seem way better than real things. Fake news easily beats out real news. It's more interesting. It's not ambiguous and confusing. No thought. No analysis. No thinking of any kind. Just belief. Easy peasy.
And way more entertaining.
This is the secret of Breitbart and Fox News. It's more exciting than the real news. And you don't have to read through five pages of some deep thoughtful investigative reporting thing with big multisyllabic words in the Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker or Rolling Stone. Five or six short sentences with pictures is all you need. Or 140 characters on Twitter.
For fake news, back when I was first a consumer, we were stuck with the National Enquirer--stories of space aliens having sex with Jackie Kennedy in the White House swimming pool, available on every grocery store waiting line.
Good photos but otherwise not that great.
Things are definitely looking up these days in the fakery department.
First came fake breasts. Without question, many women people prefer fake tits to the real thing, despite their exorbitant cost. Who want real tits anymore? The hard-as-steel fake ones are so much larger, shapely, and more durable.
But breasts are only the tip of the fake iceberg, so to speak.
Today I struggled up a steep hill to the Center of New Zealand, ruminating all the way about the popularity of fake anatomical devices and other fakery. After huffing and puffing all the way up to the top and photographing the site, I discovered that it was the fake center of New Zealand. The real center is many miles away. Nobody goes to the real center. The fake center is the BIG tourist draw.
Another popular thing invented in New Zealand is fake suicide. People by the thousands pay $200 a pop to jump off cliffs and bridges plummeting earthward headed hundreds of feet down like Humpty Dumpty towards the river and rocks below. Suddenly they bounce up just before splatting. It's called bungee jumping. Everyone does it in New Zealand. Lots more fun than the real suicide thing. It is the main reason why there are absolutely no readical Islamic suicide bombers in New Zealand. Teenagers otherwise susceptible to the thrills of ISIS can comit fake suicide over and over again without explosives.
In politics also, fakery is the up and coming thing. Barack Obama was a real President. Boring. Predictable. Thoughtful. Complex. No drama Obama. Now Americans can lay claim to a much more exciting leader, a drama queen if there ever was one. We offer the world a fake President with fake hair, fake wealth, fake stories, a fake sex life, fake executive orders, failing casinos, fake terrorist attcks in Sweden, and fake inauguration numbers. Pretty much everything fake. He is like fake tits for an entire nation. Much weirder than the real thing.
Personally, I have never been all that thrilled with reality. Looking in the mirror, for example, is distasteful to me. In my fake imaginary world, I look one Hell of a lot better than I do in the mirror.
So far as the future of the planet is concerned, the fake future looks a lot better than the real thing.
The fake future is called "Utopia." It's a place where everything works out well. Peace, love, and rock and roll. “Love is all you need”, said Sir Paul. It's the world I thought we were heading into-- back in the day--when I travelled to Woodstock to see a hundred bands play, and then quit work to take the hippie trail to Nepal.
The real future is called "Dystopia." This is the world Donald Trump described in his campaign for President. And it is the world he continues to promote. In this world, crime is out of control, especially in Chicago and other cities. Rapists and terrorists are flooding across our porous borders. Enemies are everywhere, especially at the NY Times and Washington Post. Out national security is endangered by CIA analysts, scientists, and environmental advocates trying to purvey their crazed ideas. Our best hope is to allow the mentally ill to buy more weapons and get rid of the failed Obamacare health program.
Holy cow!!!
I definitely prefer the fake future.
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