Bot Did You Say? That Does Not Compute

 Yesterday a gal on my town's local Facebook site accused me of being a bot and a fake account. I get that a lot, not because I'm a bot or a fake account, but because there are a lot of slow-witted people out there on the internet. It seems that being a bot is just like being *woke* to some of these people in that it simply means you are their enemy. No one can define woke, but they know they are against it. That foolishness goes all the way up to the White House and pings all over social media. It has become a pejorative, yet it's not a very effective insult as it's really hard to see the rancid meat behind it when it's not actually a bad word as far as epithets go. It'd be like deciding "handsome" was a bad word. 

"Ferrerman- you are HANDSOME!"

<blush!> Well, thank you!

"Now, get your handsomeness the hell out of here, you handsome jerk, until you learn to love Donald J. Trump!"

Kind of a mixed message, like woke is. Huh.

Well, this gal didn't accuse me of being handsome or woke, but I found the 'bot/fake account' thing to be quite bemusing when I went to block her and saw we had a mutual friend in one of my girl cousins. She went to all the effort of viewing my FB bio but missed the part where we have a mutual? Account locked up but only 40-some friends, so this guy is a bot? That is not good detective work. More like mental defective work.

Luddite that I am though, I'm no internet virgin. I long ago closed up my FB so that random scumbags could not go to my page and learn about my life, friends and family and use that against me because of my opinions on fascism (I'm against it) differ from theirs (they are for it). I think everyone should do that. I generally don't bother to care about anyone I'm debating with, anywhere on the internet. If you're an asshole to me, we're not going to be friends and you're not going to be posting to me very long. I block early and often. I've probably blocked half of this smallish town. If I say something nice about our governor, for example, and you reply with a laughing emoji when I've said nothing funny, I have to assume you've already given me your best and that you won't get any better. So, I'm done with you. I've stolen your easily amused laughter. You got off easy, like getting killed on your first day in 'Nam- you didn't suffer as much.

This morning, I watched a video with the lovely and talented journalist, Taylor Lorenz. She's quite good-looking, and I mean that in the old school meaning of good-looking, not in the ugly pejorative way that may or may not be in use by the reichwing today or tomorrow. She's woke too, and you can take that anyway you like. 

She was talking to some nice fella about how the police are starting to use AI as a tool to search out people they perceive as troublemakers- you know- woke people. It's not perfect yet, but you know it will be before we know it. The Nerd Reich is hard at work at weeding out Americans who might be disloyal to the Trump regime. Yes, Virginia, there are bots about, and they are using AI and fake pics and Chat GPT and all that shit to fast-track us to El Salvador. Taylor and the guy warned of the good intentions of efforts to identify everyone on social media, the idea being that people would behave better if others knew who they were. Well, good intentions have gotten us to this very point in America where the whole fucking show could collapse any day now. As true as it is that people say stuff to others on the internet that they might not say in public, that same internet is also chockful of videos of people reacting very badly to other people in public. A fair degree of anonymity protects us all, even the cocksucking trolls. 

Be careful out there. Shit's about to get real fake, real soon.