As IF Times

Source: Fashion designer urges industry to refuse to dress Melania Trump – CBS News

Post the US election, there seems to be more and more evidence to prove the existence of a rampant disease affecting the part of the brain that controls reason and logic among a large part of the population. It seems to be an outbreak of ‘adultus interruptus’.  The tsunami of hysteria and petulance released by almost all quarters of the media and entertainment sectors is unprecedented in our time.  But that’s somewhat understandable; no one likes to lose.  As Vince Lombardi famously said, show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.

I get it. The Seahawks’ loss to the Patriots in SuperBowl XLIX still stings.  Usually however, the dust settles and life goes on.  But in the case of the liberal left, they just can’t let it go. They feel compelled to loudly push their obtuse views as if they were Hare Krishnas at airports from the ’60’s. They are like the unfortunate homeless lost souls seen mumbling loudly to themselves in many inner cities.  Imagine if they followed you everywhere and interrupted every aspect of your life.

The particular act of petulance described in the linked story is but an example of the puerile and annoying behavior foisted upon the public by the possibly brain damaged left. This particular fashion designer will not dress the new First Lady and no one else should either!  Oooh, take that!  Many will recall singers not allowing their music to be played at Republican events.  Ooof!  And all their friends too! Wasn’t this a Lindsay Lohan teen movie?  Does this not remind parents of children who cover their eyes and demand not to be looked at when they don’t get their way? And they wonder why no one takes them seriously.

As the New York Post columnist Kyle Smith remarked, the hysterical left have been barfing over themselves since the election with their bleating hysteria.  It’s stunted adolescence in the extreme and they are kicking and wailing as their fantasy bubble seems to be deflating.  As parents know, you can’t reason with children when they’re hysterical.  All you can do is place them in a time out corner.  Four years at least.

Source: Facebook, Google Crack the Whip on Fake News

Back in the day, if it was on TV or in the newspapers, it must be true.  The modern iteration of this flawed wisdom now is that a story has validity because it was posted on Facebook.

There’s no denying that Facebook has morphed from a quaint social platform where friends posted their activities and kept in touch with distant relatives to become a commercial behemoth generating hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue and becoming the de facto village bulletin board for all types of spam.

For many, Facebook has become a compulsion as people out-do each other with envy invoking pictures of recent vacations or thrilling adventures.  Voyeurs and narcissists alike find reasons to be participants.  Naturally, the sheer size of the worldwide audience begged for commercial capitalization and so ads were introduced into the application and next thing you know, your neighbor’s vacation in Thailand is sponsored by Viagra.

People can post only so many interesting things since, well, most lives are dull punctuated by the occasional vacation episode or rock concert, or baby birth.  Enter the introduction of sponsored links and likes.  Now, users can further embellish their profiles by passing on stories, articles and opinions that they ‘like’, causing their contacts to also ‘like’, much like clapping when someone else starts it.

From liking videos of rescued dolphins,  puppies and cats to passing on interesting recipes for kale, the site became more and more a commercial billboard than personal scrapbook. Running out of original content, people lazily forwarded videos and clever quotes instead.  It became a natural place to distribute faux news under the cover of blessing from the social network.

A recent study revealed that more and more people were getting their news from either Facebook or Twitter, fully 67%, up from only 50% two years ago.  What this may mean is that opinion shapers may not be the mainstream media outlets of years gone by. Stories and opinions may now have to go through the gatekeepers on social media with the largest number of followers.

This is only alarming when you find out that among the people with the largest followers are, Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, Barack Obama, Rhianna, Eminem, Shakira and believe it or not, Michael Jackson.

The Facebook company has denied the distribution of fake news even as they promise to eradicate this practice going forward.  A particularly ironic nugget of science offered recently was a story that claimed that accepting Facebook requests would allow you to live longer. I suspect the global warming crowd are moonlighting in their storytelling.  Next thing you know, décolletage images will get un-likes on user pages.

It’s unlikely that Facebook’s influence on shaping social perceptions will diminish in the foreseeable future since the trend is towards short headlines and soundbites rather than in depth personal analysis.  My guess is that intellectual laziness and the pressure of social conformity will contribute more and more to the naïve population we see today.  The echo chamber of opinions is much like inbreeding.  Convenient at first, but eventually leading to undesirable consequences.