Clickbait

Clickbait

I was at work and there was a lull so I took a few minutes to scroll through the news.

Some kids were trampled and killed at a concert in Texas. Truly tragic.

Some lady on some TV show where maybe she and her sister were married to the same man…..this woman was spotted and photographed either moving in or out of an RV.

There was an article about Kermit the Frog. I knew there’d been some controversy about Big Bird getting vaccinated as a way of showing kids it was okay. It appeared the Big Bird Vax “controversy” was gaining traction. But what was it, really? Was it the anti-vax crowd creating a controversy out of something so petty and stupid as puppets getting vaccinated? Or, was it their opposition creating the controversy to make the anti-vax crowd look more stupid than they already are by attacking Big Bird and Kermit? Fuck it.

Ben and Jerry, the ice cream guys, had made a statement about police brutality, claiming it’s more of a white problem than a black problem. It was news. It was a headline. I don’t necessarily disagree with Ben or Jerry’s sentiments. But why’s it news what two ice cream guys have to say about police brutality? If they were commenting on an ice cream controversy, I’d get it. More broadly, if they were speaking about business, I’d get it. But ice cream and police brutality seem pretty far apart.

Another article read “Prosecutors recommend 51-month sentence for ‘QAnon Shaman’.” It made me wonder what sort of punishments will ever cause people to wake the fuck up and start acting like real people instead of children playing make-believe. People wanna fuck around and play-act with shit like politics and religion and their relationships like there’s no goddamned consequences. They truly wanna be children all over again – believing stupid shit they know to be false just like they did Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny when they were toddlers. They wanna be fucking children cos-playing in MAGA caps, pussy hats or wrapping themselves in the stripes of red and white or the rainbow. Adult fucking cos-play with players that don’t want the spell of their fantasy broken cause then there’s nothing left but the stark reality of the own idiocy. They wanna act like naïve little kids that don’t know right from wrong in the way they conduct themselves in relationships. They wanna act like they don’t know the same dirty tricks employed by the other side are the same dirty tricks employed by theirs. In other words, they wanna act like the pieces of shit they oppose aren’t the same pieces of shit they know themselves to be. They wanna pretend they don’t know they’re the same thing wrapped in a different package. They wanna pretend they don’t want – they don’t desire – to be stupid. But they want it, they just don’t like the tag, so they pretend to the rest of us it’s naivete instead of abject idiocy. They form clans and tribes to reinforce to themselves what they wish the rest of us would believe. We are to accept they are naïve instead of willfully imbecilic, that way there’s a little room to feel sorry. Then we might be gullible enough to believe there’s some desire for nuance or truth. We might show them a different way of thinking or understanding something. We might be gullible enough to believe a desire for a high truth is there, they just need us to spoon feed it to them like the infants they are. You might be that stupid until you understand their desire – their will – to remain as stupid as they are. Strangely stupid and malleable – but malleable primarily to the forces of further stupidity instead of subtlety, nuance or even truth. Where’d all this determination for adults to be and remain infantilized come from? Again, fuck it.

I scrolled down. I got to the section with all the clickbait ads.

One had a picture of Charlton Heston kissing one of the monkeys from Planet of the Apes. The headline to the ad – disguised as an article – was “25 Actors Who Were Nauseated Kissing Their Costars on Camera.”

I didn’t click on the ad. Instead, I thought about Charlton Heston in the photo kissing that rubber-faced ape. It looked like the makings of a very passionate kiss. It made me wonder if it gave Charlton Heston a hard-on kissing that ape. It made me wonder if Charlton Heston was a method actor. If he was, it might make sense he’d get a hard-on. Or, at least a tingle under the loincloth.

I thought about the cast and crew and other actors noticing Charlton Heston’s erection at kissing the ape. I wondered if he’d be embarrassed. I imagined that, if he was a method actor, he’d be proud of getting an erection from kissing a rubber-faced ape. It would show he was truly in the moment. It would be proof that he was truly present. It would show he was embodying the role and the scene. He might want to show off his method acting prowess with his hard-on. But, if he did, he’d be wrong. Today they’d give him the Me Too treatment for showing off his hard-on, even if was more about his method acting than sheer exhibitionism. Then again, he may have been humble and concealed it. Then again, maybe it got hard but it wasn’t so big and he didn’t want anybody to know. That would be a crisis. Shame on the one hand for being so meekly endowed, yet symbolic of his method acting prowess on the other hand. The scenarios and possibilities were endless.

Then Hanna came over. She asked me if I knew if we had any more pipette tips. I said I’d looked around earlier and couldn’t find them.

I decided it was time to try to get back to work and away from the goddamned news.