There’s been a popular meme today shared and rehashed by innumerable people. The wording changes but the idea remains the same. Essentially : April Fool’s Day – The only day of the year that people engage critical thinking when encountering information online.
Dog Opera. A Victorian Barge for politicians to escape the blitz. A pterodactyl photo from a bird watching hide. Apparently ITV’s This Morning rehashed an old Antiques Roadshow April Fool from the 1980’s. Attribute huge value to an object and then smash it on telly to freak out a presenter. Apparently on April 1 1992 they put signs in LAX welcoming passengers to Chicago. There was a famous spaghetti harvest reported on 1960’s BBC news. As a kid I remember all sorts of silly things in the papers and on telly. Now it’s a little harder to parse as so many people have lost the ability to understand the passage of time and how science works. Just yesterday my nephew tried the old “It’s a theory of evolution” thing and I had to try and explain what “theory” means in scientific terms. Literate human beings with functioning minds have forgotten the time and input that have led to many things that many of us now take for granted. They see us take it for granted and they think they are being clever by announcing that the things we take for granted are wrong. Flat Earth, Creationism, Nephilim etc etc. In fact, one of the April Fools I saw this morning was about Nephilim. And an old friend of mine thinks they built the pyramids. He hasn’t ever been involved in a huge group project so can’t believe what numbers and ingenuity can achieve.
Of course it is moronic to just absorb what you’re told. But it’s even more moronic to tell people they’re dumb for taking for granted that the world is round or that there’s Nothing out there or that God has a specific name and list of intentions. It’s the “sheeple” type language used in all this conversation that makes me want to hadouken all the exponents of alternative narratives. It’s always wet with smugjuice and usually from brilliant right brains who have been made to feel dumb by the left brain dominance of the territory that has been called “clever”.
Within this horrible made up world of cabals and satanists and maneating liberals there’s never any particular mission or thing we can do to help. It’s more about the person telling you knowing it than it is about a call to action. The purpose of it appears to be about being seen as knowing a thing. Back to the playground. “I know something you don’t know!”
Any of these April Fools jokes could be substituted for whatever gumf your old mate is banging on about. Like my old mate and the nephilim.
But the meme has a point. We all keep absorbing things like sponges. Which news outlets are not carrying bias? The only way to work out what’s going on in the world is to get out into it, and to get out of your bubble, but there’s a lot of ground to cover and it can be exhausting.
I’ve done neither today and I’m fine with that. I got Bone Daddy to send me a Tantanmen 2 and I wolfed it down while watching the world go by past my window. Tomorrow I’ll go back into it. Today I had a bank holiday.
AlBarclay 