Hey Factory Fans.
So just a quick soap box on that Charlotte riot. Horrible. Very bad. Glad they caught the guy. I think, however, the after-the-fact self-righteous posturing is not helping.
Standing up and proclaiming that racism is bad in 2017 is a little like announcing that you don’t believe the Pharaoh of Egypt was actually god. No duh. Racism, Nazism, white nationalists— These are all discredited theories. Have been for decades. And the tiny minority of trolls embracing those dead philosophies only want one thing: attention.
When I was in college, I was taking a journalism class and I had to do a story for the class. Something in the news that I could investigate and then do a video about. Standard news segment stuff. Like anyone else, I wanted my segment to be interesting so I went to the paper and read the news. At the time, there was this group of white nationalists that had robbed a bank to fund their various racist causes, I guess. It was a story that had a car chase, shoot out and racists. I started writing about it and preparing it for the class.
In the process, I stumbled across organizations that watched these groups. Klanwatch was one, I think. There were a few others. This is pre-internet so I actually had to send away for the info. When it came in the mail there was just so much of it and I thought, “Christ, these guys are giving these racists more attention than they really deserve.” These racists are pathetic, lowly individuals so broken that in desperation to build themselves up they latched on to a hateful ideology so people pay attention. Just like a bad kid who doesn’t care what kind of attention he gets.
At that moment, I thought, “Do I really want to contribute to that? Wouldn’t my story sensationalize these assholes? Shouldn’t they just be alone and forgotten in jail?” I dumped the story and did something else. The cops had arrested them, they were going to prison. What was the point of doing a story? Isn’t the point of the story to inform? I mean, you’d want to know about the robbery in case the guys were still running around and maybe so that you could choose another bank.
Since that journalism class, the news has changed so much. The media think nothing of stirring the pot and giving extremist more and more air time without any regard for the newsworthiness. And the endless pundits on TV and all over the Internet proclaiming their righteousness for being against violence and hate. It reminds me of George W. Bush when he was on TV every other day saying how bad Al Qaeda was. Implying that if you weren’t as just self-righteous about it, if you weren’t patriotic or self-righteous enough there was something wrong with you.
No, there’s something wrong with people that take a tragic event like this and make it about themselves.
The Nazi douchebags in Charlotte were a group of pathetic trolls. And you should never feed the trolls. Ever. It’s a tough lesson almost everyone learns on the Internet the hard way, myself included. That doesn’t mean you can’t do your own thing or fight the ideas through civil, but lowering yourself to the troll’s level makes you the thing you hate. To be the good guy, you can never throw the first punch, you always punch up, you don’t go looking for a fight and you defend the weak because it’s right. Not because of ratings or clicks on Facebook, but because some day you might be the weak one and you might need help.
Sorry for the long soapbox. Man, you could see that riot coming. It’s just a shame people are so caught up in trying to counter a bunch of trolls with zero power anyway. And it’s really a shame people got hurt and killed. Get smarter protesters, stop looking for a fight. Think what MLK would do.
Okay, onto to business:
Today at Super Frat, it’s Fat Guy Eats at Dim Sum Garden.
Monday means Validation!
And the Quote of the Day is from Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.”
