My friend over at the Dacian wrote a piece recently that I believe is worthy of consideration. Namely - about how ragebait and clickbait were a slow and chronic Daily Dose of Poison.
The sick part is that we love it. We are addicted to the hate served by the Technodemons.
Did you see what the vice president did? Tweet, Retweet, Like, Comment.
Snow White is now a Zulu Princess! Tweet, Anger, Like, Comment.
Grilling is patriarchal white supremacy, eat bugs instead says Anti-Viral Magazine! Tweet, Hate, Like Comment.
We see the latest nonsense engineered to upset us and we click on it, seethe at the comments made by mentally deficient bugmen, bots, or actual demons.
There is some good advice:
Resist
Disengage
Create Beauty
The digital world is engineered by evil to keep you in a state of anger and agitation. A man gripped by irritation and anxiety is a man poisoned, diseased, like an animal who only reacts. A man in this state cannot create beauty. A man in this state is spiritually impotent.
...
Disconnect. Go outside. Bathe in forest and sunlight. Lift steel. Create beauty.
When you return, return with the knowledge that the field belongs to the enemy and come prepared to battle by lifting others and sharing beauty and art.
I'm not going to claim that I've never fed the clickbait monster in my reading and comment habits, or catered to mockery and fisking here, but as I've posted before, that's not the point, here. The goal was to lay a foundation. If I'm tearing an article or post apart, it's because I hope to dissect it and show you where it doesn't stand. I am horrible at rhetoric, but I hope to examine my own assumptions, and lay them out to provide the structure and strength to stand and use the rhetoric that others better craft.
My goal is to help strengthen the mind, and provide what limited insights I can into being a better man, building skills and assumptions that nourish and hold.
One place I can improve is in pointing people to other good stuff - much like my post referencing Macris and his look at Disney villains. There was not much to add other than maybe, perhaps, a bit of framing, but it was something that made me think, and was worth passing on.
