Spencer Heckathorn - Spencer Heckathorn's Blog

I look at my site I have 41 drafted posts that are either not finished, or not worthy. I want to spend a little more time adding to and changing the content on here, but I'm going to move things first. I have a new server and I need to finish it's setup so I can move my sites and stop dealing with some of the issues I have on this current server. Soon there will be a sleek simple design and I will have to re-work a lot of posts to move them from Divi to Gutenberg, but these are good changes that need to happen. I'm not worried about ranking on this personal blog. I don't post often enough to care and I'm not really writing to get traffic. My mind is more on the side of the therapeutics of writing and the urge to share with those people close to me that care to read. Then there are some other things. Like I have been watching a lot of history and philosophical discussion surrounding the current political environment and tensions. Tonight I was able to see something that has bothered me but I couldn't put my finger on it. Several commentators have been pushing the discussion in an odd direction. They blame modern forces for the ill will of today's actors but ignore the actions of the past. Another interesting thing I have been finding is complete re-writes of history. YouTubers taking quotes of people out of context or using poor translations to paint the worst picture possible. This is interesting and note-worthy but this always happens. It takes a lot of research and time to prove these people wrong and they know it. And when you do speak up you are a single person amongst thousands. So I keep watching to try and understand. Today was different because I saw this technique used to hold up the ideals of our good ol' communist Karl Marx. The story they told was good, and it sounded good. The history was believable and flowed. And the commentator was skilled because just about the time you fall into a state of comfort with the way he is explaining things he throws in a little twist to the truth of history. The interesting part is how small of a twist it is. He didn't bold face lie and tell us something happened that didn't instead, he left a key piece of history out and let us fill in the blanks. If your mind was already past the skeptical stage you buy it. Karl sounds like a freaking genius and your left holding the bag of "why they hell did my ancestors go with capitalism and religion?" The video had around 100k views. Assuming they were all real and a small number of people drop off at this point. That is a lot of people that just accept the primus and believe the lie. I really have to ask how many people questioned things beyond that. It is one of the interesting things about the world changing effect of YouTube and podcasting. Imagine a world in which Hitler could reach more people. You might think, "I would not buy into his crap," but would you? When is the last time you stopped and really thought about the crap you are constantly feed in the opinion pieces that passes for news these days? When is the last time you stopped a YouTube video or podcast and asked what the person behind the mic could be motivated by? Did you check their historical references? In a lot of ways our modern world operates on a lot of trust. We trust the person telling us something has taken the time and care to tell us the truth. We trust Google to answer our most intimate questions. We trust that when we go to sleep at night there is not some governmental force serving a search warrant at the wrong address. And we know that goes wrong: Breonna Taylor What one should consider here is the relatively young demographic ingesting the propaganda. Another interesting thing is the current state of things really makes me wonder how many people are getting to talk with others, 1-on-1 people they trust or respect. Everyone seems to be behind a screen stuck inside. Alone with their thoughts. Only the internet trolls to comfort them. I don't have answers or pretend to have them. But I do think people should spend more time reading and writing. THIS was not the post I intended to write just now, but here it is. Tell me if you liked it or if you think it is junk let me know so I can stop doing that ;)