Options they don't allow us.

 

De-meme-ing! Part 2.

As I noted yesterday, my friend Philbin (if that is his real name) was unable to post this hilarious meme of mine on Facebook. It was cited by the FB cops for violating community standards. Yesterday I tried to explain the joke, just in case any Facebook representatives were standing by.

Philbin protested the ban in the same way, arguing to the faceless Facebook police that this is a victimless joke and inoffensive to anyone who understands it. That cuts no ice with the idiots who man the barricades at Facebook. But to his credit, Philbin then decided to push the issue, risking time in Facebook prison, to find out what problem the idiots at Facebook have with this meme. 

Was it the template?

The template is a picture of conservative comedian and podcaster Steven Crowder, who appeared on a college campus with a sign saying "Male Privilege Is a Myth / Change My Mind". Crowder is a happy warrior, ready to take on anyone. After he posted this picture in 2018, it immediately became a meme, with all kinds of challenging statements, like "A Hot Dog Is a Sandwich/Change My Mind". People who never heard of Steven Crowder have used it. Others have made anti-Crowder statements with it. It's a meme; that's how they work. 

Is it offensive just on its face? My friend posted another, even more anodyne gag with the same meme to see what would happen. 

He did not get an angry warning about this one. However, he also did not get a response from his FB buddies, not even a mercy like. He checked his feed and discovered that the joke had mysteriously disappeared. Was it an accident... like a Russian window fall accident, hmm?

So he put this one together and posted it.

That did it.

You can disagree with the decision on one hand, and crap in the other, and see which fills up first.

Okay, so what is the problem? Do they hate Crowder? Many people on the left do. He makes fun of them, often in childish ways. Only leftists are allowed to make fun of people, especially in childish ways. 

Once more into the breach! Philbin made and posted this one: 

You can't get more Crowder than that, and yet it was allowed to stay.

We put our heads together (clunk ouch!) and decided that the "Change My Mind" meme has somehow gotten flagged as is at FB, regardless of how it's worded, either because people were using it for genuinely offensive content or (more likely) because it was being used to actually challenge people's beliefs, and that gave people the bad feels. It's hard to tell, but from all the information coming out about the willingness of Silicon Valley to censor "enemies" and how what most Americans believed in 1983 would put them on the "enemies" list now, I think it's safe to say Facebook is ceding to the usual crybullies on the left over this. And many of their employees are the crybullies on the left. But that's all just conjecture.  

What can we say for certain? That no one at Facebook has a genuine sense of humor or irony, and probably doesn't know anything at all that happened before 2010. That they don't believe in free political speech in any significant way, and think plugging up one meme is going to change anybody's mind. Irony alert! 

It's all just further confirmation that everything is the world is being run by the worst possible people. We have military brass who can't win a war, comedians who aren't funny, schools that can't teach, politicians who can't lead, singers who can't sing, corporations that can't make money, representatives who hate their voters, an entertainment industry that doesn't entertain, surgeons who mutilate patients, an energy sector that won't provide reliable energy, information technology that spews horse crap, religions without God, and social media that's antisocial. Everything must be sacrificed if it leads to that bright socialist future. 

That's a lot of gloom for one little meme-ban, I know, but it's hard to shake the feeling that everything is geared toward trying to make our lives harder, more expensive, more miserable, and definitely less funny.

De-meme-ing! Part 1.

A friend of mine (let's call him Philbin) wanted to post my super-hilarious and super-dated meme about Tommy Chong and Foster Brooks on Facebook. Much to our mutual surprise, Facebook's idiot censors rejected the post, saying it was offensive (violating "community standards," which would imply that the "community" is made up of drooling morons).

So, as a public service, I thought I had better explain this joke. I figured that they didn't get it. I have often said that dissecting a joke is like dissecting a frog, in that you can do it, but don't expect the frog to jump afterward. Nevertheless, since our Social Betters are A) stupid and B) ten years old and "literally know nothing," I thought I had better explain it from top to bottom. 

Don't worry, Facebook censors -- I am typing this slowly because I know you don't read very fast. Okay, here goes:

1) Tommy Chong:

Tommy Chong is a comedian and comic actor, best known as part of the duo Cheech & Chong with Cheech Marin. Chong was born in 1938, so he's not exactly some brash newcomer of whom Facebook could not be aware. Cheech & Chong were famous for drug-centered humor, as witnessed in their first comedy album, 1971's Big Bambu. They later made the most marijuana-soaked film ever, 1978's Up in Smoke. The movie was well-regarded among connoisseurs (my elder cousins) for gags like the pot-smuggling van made entirely of compressed marijuana and the drug-sniffing dog that gets killed just smelling it. Chong wasn't just kidding around -- he became a marijuana activist and longtime fighter for legalization. So Chong's connection to marijuana has been pretty well established for more than fifty years. 

2) CBD:

As has been recounted on this blog, CBD, or cannabidiol, is the magic compound in marijuana that doesn't get you high (that's Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC) but supposedly cures everything. Maybe some people really have found relief from these CBD products, but the few people I know who tried them thought they were disappointing. I begin to suspect it was just a means of promoting the agriculture of marijuana, as George Washington Carver developed more than 300 uses for peanuts to help peanut agriculture. The difference is, most of Carver's inventions were useful. Be that as it may, Tommy Chong went all in on this, promoting his line of hemp-based products, notably those containing the magic ingredient CBD. So it's no offense to anyone that this former star stoner is promoting CBD; it's exactly the truth.

3) Foster Brooks:

Foster Brooks (1912-2001) was a comedian who had one schtick, but he was exceptionally good at it: He was a drunk. He had the knack for coming across as a cheerful, befuddled drunken man trying very hard not to appear drunk, and would stumble over words and make unusual statements in a way much funnier than any real drunk. In reality, Brooks was not a drinker, or had not been for many years when he became famous doing this bit. 

4) O'Doul's:

O'Doul's is one of the first successful U.S. brands of nonalcoholic beer, or rather beer with trace amounts of alcohol in it. This Anheuser Busch product has an alcohol content of .4%; a regular Budweiser has an alcohol content of 5%. So to get the buzz from one lousy can of Bud, you'd have to drink 12.5 cans of O'Doul's. It's still not recommended for people in recovery from alcohol addiction, but you can imagine how insanely difficult it would be to get loaded on O'Doul's. 

5) The Punch Line:

The comparison, then, is a simple one, that of a famous stoner who sells marijuana products that don't contain THC to a famous drunk selling beer that doesn't contain alcohol. Both guys were comedians who made a lot of comic hay playing people whose addictions were way out of control but were still funny to watch. So the meme is challenging others to disprove that this is a valid comparison. (This could be done by pointing out that Chong is still using pot while Brooks was not using alcohol, for one thing.)

6) Facebook:

So what's the problem? Does Facebook just not have a sense of humor? Well, no, it doesn't, because it's run by SJWs, but is that the whole problem?

Well, Philbin continued to investigate, and what he turned up is shocking! Tune in tomorrow for the revelation -- it's amazing! And if you disagree, change my mind! 

Is it that obvious?

 

To Helen gone!

I'm not one to go tooting my own horn, as you know. I'd much rather bribe someone to toot my horn for me, and then act all embarrassed about the tootage. Oh, please, you make me blush!

Nevertheless, I wanted to put up a post today about Helen's Page, upon which I have signed for a trial basis.

Dr. Helen Smith, author of Men on Strike and, in her spare time, Mrs. Instapundit, has decided to take the cultural challenge of canceling to heart -- and fight back. Since prominent Internet platforms are deleting books and events and even persons that might get in the way of El Narrativo (in Mikeski's term), she has begun her own media page -- Helen's Page, "A Happy Place for Liberty-Minded People to Meet." 

So I created an account there. It's not much yet, mostly a means of displaying my novels and a link to come here, to this marvelous blog, whereupon one might click on those links to the right and peruse the wares. I'd like to support the page and help get people more interested in it, even if they don't want to buy my books.

We know that approximately half the known universe follows Instapundit, or should, so that's a lot of people who might check out Helen's Page. I hope more people join up, and we can make this bigger than Etsy, Craig's List, Angie's List, Huffington's Post, Drudge's Report, and Stiiv's Bunk! (Yeah, I know I got them wrong and one of them doesn't even exist. "Drudge Report" -- ha.)

Wish me luck, but mostly wish Dr. Helen luck -- this is her "Build Your Own Platform" moment, and with the other platforms becoming cancel culture mouthpieces for monothink, or being canceled themselves, we need more platforms "for Liberty-Minded People." 

There's a report on NBC that quotes a senior Department of Homeland Security official saying that "DHS plans to expand its relationships with companies that scour public data for intelligence" (you know which companies those might be). "'The idea is to identify people who may through their social media behavior be prone to influence by toxic messaging spread by foreign governments, terrorists and domestic extremists,' the official said. 'We want to Identify the narratives that are emerging, assess which narratives are likely to incite violence, figure out what targets are likely and then take steps to mitigate the risk.'" 

The ostensible cause for this plan is not the rioting last year that killed 25 people, injured hundreds, destroyed livelihoods and caused millions (if not billions) in damages; it's a handful of unarmed knuckleheads who got into the Capitol on January 6. The idea is that the government, which knew Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa of Colorado was a problem and did nothing to stop him before he murdered ten innocents, is going to put people on a no-fly list (among other things) for Liking the wrong things on Facebook. I think it's safe to say that if this had been a Trump administration initiative, you'd have heard the screaming on cable news in the Kuiper Belt.

In other words, Helen’s Page is about more than getting some books in front of eyeballs. This is about creating space on the Internet for a free citizenry to enjoy basic freedom of political expression without fear of reprisal. We need a lot more of that. 

Gab grab bag.

Parler is fighting for its life now after being cut off at the knees by Google, Apple, and Amazon, fearing that the president of the United States (for two more days) will flee to that platform. So I've established a profile with my handsome Vitamin Fred icon on Gab's site now. 

As I wrote when I joined Parler back in October, "I always entertain hopes that my blog might entertain others, and maybe even entice them to try one of my novels," and I thought that the site might help me do that without enduring the firehose of horror that is Twitter.  

Now it's become more than that, though. For years I desired to keep this blog free from political content beyond some light satire. I never intended to write fiction for political purposes, hoping to entertain any reader. I would prefer to write funny stuff about food and dogs and middle-class life and post goofy cartoons every day. But I was raised by libertarians and conservatives and liberals to love free speech, even when I don't like the content, and the cancel culture that's gripping the West is an abomination to everything for which our nation stands. Books are being forced out of publisher's lists or literally out of stores; persons are not only attacked but their families and livelihoods threatened. The only law these victims have broken is the law in some dillweed's imagination that says YOU CAN'T SAY THAT, although everything in our culture and history is meant to say we can. Meanwhile, our totalitarian enemies around the world smile.

The weird thing is, the Left used to garb all kinds of things as political speech -- comedy, obscene music, getting naked in public -- as political speech to prevent its being banned. Now the very speech they most seek to ban is political speech, and of course everything is political when you look at it through blood-colored glasses. The kind of speech that conservatives are apt to censor is very narrowly defined -- obscenity, threats, slander and libel (especially of private citizens) -- but if you remove all that I think half of the world's Tweets would disappear.

This all makes it sound like I'm using Gab for firebrand purposes, but no -- I just want to help support a free-speech centered company that believes in the user's privacy and doesn't support the Leftist mobs. A lot of people feel that way, and the Gab servers are being somewhat overwhelmed as I write this. I'm sure it will all settle down soon, and when Gab becomes popular enough to pose a threat to Facebook, the tech oligarchs will come after it as well.

Meanwhile, should you decide to join up, look for your friendly Fred Key on the site and let's have a gabfest. Hey, talk is not only cheap -- it's free.

Just doodling.

If you were on Google yesterday you may have noticed that they've started the Google Doodle contest again. I immediately decided to enter. Unfortunately it is only open to kids up through grade 12, and whatever else I may identify as, a teenager is right out. ("How do you do, fellow doodlers?")

It's a shame, because the topic is right up my alley. 

This year's theme is:

I am strong because...

Hey, I'm all over that. Me manly man! Super strong! Walk giant dogs! Eat massive cookies! Break bottle of Man Lotion, me so manly! 

So I figured I would at least do a doodle for the benefit of you, my friendly visitors. Actually I had a couple of ideas on the topic, and here they are. 

Pretty good, huh? I'll bet I can work yesterday's Big Brother into this as well. Maybe Google will start a competition for adults as well! 

Parler games.

Their quarry cornered, Twitter, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and even Pinterest have decided to make Donald Trump a nonperson by refusing him access to their platforms. 

And just in case, they are delisting Parler, expecting Trump to flee to the same free-speech app that I joined a couple of months ago. 

I noticed that on Sunday Parler had refused Apple's ultimatum to knuckle under to their enforced censorship codes, and thus the Parler app was removed from the App Store.

Little pipsqueak of a nobody that I am, I sent Apple a note suggesting they develop an A.I. soul to replace the one they lost when they betrayed the founding principles of the nation. I also suggested that they have made their tyrannical friends in China very happy. 

Apple can be awfully stubborn. Last August the wildly popular Fortnite game decided to try to cut Apple out of their in-game purchase money by using an independent system. Apple promptly bumped their app off the store as well. Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, promptly released a parody of the famous Apple 1984 commercial, showing Apple to be the tyrant it now is. Epic is suing Apple, and also Google, but they have Facebook on their side. In the meantime, the Epic app is still off the store.

Parler has got to sue its opponents on Constitutional grounds and hurry. If they don't, they will be destroyed before they've even begun. If they give in to pressure, they will be nothing but Twitter Junior, and who needs that? 

Like it or not, Parler is a test case going forward for whether our tech oligarchs will get to decide who can say what in this modern era. I hope they give it to their opponents good and hard and fast, or we'll be living under a censorship as fully as any Chinese mainlander does. Fortunately, it sounds like Parler is planning on a fight, and God bless them if they are.  

In an era where our speech is considered violence and their violence is considered speech, we have no choice but to fight this battle. Personally, I'm too old to learn Newspeak and I'm not going to now.

UPDATE! As noted in Comments, Amazon has thrown Parler off its AWS, so the app and the Web sire are not working. Pardon my francais, but this is a shit thing to do by any measure, and I can only pray for a Republican blitz in 2022 that will lead to a Congress that will start busting these trusts to bits in a way that would make Teddy Roosevelt flinch.

Your vote is important to us.

 

Character?

[NB: This was an entry I had written for the old, defunct Blog.com blog five or more years ago. I came across it on my hard drive and didn't know why I'd saved a copy. But I think it still holds up.]

While reading an article about social media and the oversharing generation behind mine, I thought about how many of the youngsters will come to regret their youthful exuberance, having written too much about themselves in public, and the impact it had on careers and relationships.

And I thought about their possible response to that proposition, as the kind of thing I would have thought in my youth: This is who I am, we’re different from you old guys, I find this right and proper and so I will never have to change my opinion, etc.

The ability to take up big gestures and poses is important for the youth, even over frivolous things. And although they won’t believe it, their opinions about these things may change, and possibly a sickly regret will sink in—even shame. The problem is the important things they stand for also may be revised.

It’s not a problem because they change their minds about taste or politics or best practices or even ethics or religion; any thinking person is entitled and expected to be able to do so. The permanent record of the Internet makes it harder to change direction; no one wants to look like a waffler. And yet that can be overcome if one finds that truth has dispelled his illusions (or, it should be said, vice versa).

The real problem is when they abandon principles because of frustrated expectations.

When you’re young you think you’ll do great things and be thought of highly by many, and so you may be willing to pay a high price for some decisions, certain you’ll be proved right in the end. The career passed by for love of something unremunerative; the marriage straight out of high school; the protest movement or general strike or even act of violence; even the rebellion against those closest to you have the romantic tinge that whispers of future justification. It may reflect great depths of character to do some of these things, or at least appear to.

(You may note I left joining the military off the list; for one, it’s something of unquestionable nobility, so I do not dispute that; for another thing, it brings with it all the rewards of discipline and honor that I hope make it an unregrettable decision.)

But when the great gesture does not work out? When the acting career derails, the protest is ignored, the marriage sags into misery, and no one around really cares? Is it like the tattoo that one gets more out of emotion than reason and comes to regret? The harmony of romanticism ends, and the dream dies hard, and (here’s the rub) takes the character down with it.

Or was it even character?

How many young people would choose to do something grand if no one would ever know about it? There’s always a sense of playing to the audience. The old definition of character remains: doing the right thing when no one is watching. If your dream fails and you turn bitter, cynical, even angry, then it’s hard to say it was character at all. Just youthful ego. It’s like being someone who is bound to fight for justice, then taking a hard punch, and, while on the ground, wondering if justice is all that important after all. (Which is why a good punch is always helpful for developing humility. People without any humility are, as a rule of thumb, jerks.) You may decide that, although you were right all along, the world has treated you badly and so you deserve whatever you can swipe from it. So there, world!

But what about old-timers who survive success or failure or both and retain a good outlook and a desire to do things right? They have character, and it is solid. Those people can be counted upon to do right.

So young people must be distrusted until they prove that their character outlasts their romanticism. You can’t trust the character of someone who’s never taken a punch.

Never trust anyone under forty. As for people forty and over, you can tell which ones are bastards—the angry people and the people who have never had to endure failure at all—and distribute your trust accordingly.

Fazed.

We had a scare over at the Great Lileks's site, when it seemed like the host might be planning to change the comments format from Disqus to Facebook.

Now, I dislike the stupid Disqus ads that follow the commentary around, with clickbait like "Find Your Old Boyfriends' Secrets!" and "You'll Never Believe What Amy Winehouse Looks Like Now!" But the general consensus at Lileks.com was that we're just not Facebook people, or those who are use their real names on Facebook rather than a nom de Disqus so they can share pictures of the kids there with relatives.

You won't find your man Fred over on Facebook. I've been there before. But it's not the Facebook invasion of privacy or its general banality that keeps Frederick Key off the site. Google is probably a lot better at the invasion of privacy, and if you want to avoid banality you'll have to avoid the Internet entirely. And I have nothing against Facebook's endless supply of cat videos or relative's pictures; those are fine.

No, I think what puts me off most are the personal affirmations, which on the 'Net seem to fall into two types:

And then there's the demanding and needy appeal to social or political causes:

I don't know where these come from. They're clearly put together by people who are better at art and stealing pictures than I am. Then they are somehow scooped up by Facebook users and posted on their own pages.

Me, I'm more of a long-form guy. I'd rather write a short essay than repost something. So I don't need Facebook, and I'd rather not get involved in it.

And anyway, you can get all the cat videos you need from YouTube.

Super flakes.

Last month I reviewed the Batman cereal, tied in with the upcoming film Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice. It actually took me a while to find the Superman cereal so I could compare. Should have known Walmart would have it.

These are not the first battling breakfast cereals by any means. We all are aware of the endless war between Count Chocula and Franken Berry. But these Justice League cereals aren't even the first to pit a human against an alien. Those would be Quisp and Quake.

The difference here is that Quisp and Quake were identical cereals in different shapes, while Batman and Superman have different shapes and flavors. Batman has bat shapes with chocolate and strawberry, while Superman is "caramel crunch" in the shape of the S shield on his chest. (Which stands for Superman, never mind what lame Kryptonian excuse he makes.)

Superman certainly has the longest relationship with cereal of any superhero. Superman debuted in 1938, and according to Gary Grossman's classic book, Superman: Serial to Cereal, the Superman radio show premiered just two years later:

The radio show brought together two longtime business partners, Superman and Kellogg's. It was a profitable relationship that lasted until 1957, when production on the television series ended. For years, Superman and the breakfast foods were inseparable. Characters from the cast peddled Corn Flakes moments after being saved from an almost certain demise.

On radio, Jimmy Olsen chimed:
   

Hep Hep Kellogg's Pep

Keep in Tune

Keep in Shape

With Kellogg's Pep

What's the Superman cereal like? Sure enough, it tastes like caramel, but not an in-your-face burnt caramel. Mild and pleasant, and not tooth-achingly sweet. Caramel seems to be important once again; witness Hershey's new dedication to Milton's original candy, and the new Pop-Tart flavor Chocolatey Caramel. Superman is right on that bandwagon.

Which is better? Although I didn't have any Batman cereal left to do a head-to-head test, I am able to say that I personally prefer the Superman cereal. The strawberry-chocolate combo is not one I swoon for, but I've always loved caramel, and I think that gave Supes the edge. Just a personal preference, not a judgment.

But who had the best review? A friend brought to my attention a remark from Facebook by one Rudy Vucelich, who reviewed the cereals and said, "My local grocery store didn't have any of the Superman cereal left. Also, the Batman cereal has a bitter, chemical taste to it. The Superman is much more delicious. Guess that's settled then..."

To which his comrade, Brian Pittman, replied, "Batman's cereal is just bitter because his PARENTS ARE DEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAD!!!"

Almost made me want to join Facebook.

Repost, reschmost.

In the writing game, you occasionally you get e-mails like these:

Dear Fred: Why aren't you on Facebook? We fans could keep up with your stupid life much more easily if you were on FB. You could write about your problems with work, and the dog, and every thing else no one cares about. So get on FB! P.S: Your books suck butt too.
Love, I. P. Daley

Well, Ms. Daley, you sure make it sound tempting! I have been on Facebook in the past, though, and found the experience less than rewarding. It seems like a forum in which high-strung people who cannot tolerate being jabbed like to run around poking people. Didn't seem to make a lot of sense to me.

But I think the thing that frustrated me the most were serial posts like these:

MY DAD'S THE BEST! REPOST IF YOUR DAD'S THE BEST! 

Kind of diminishes the award, doesn't it?

A BILLION BRONTOSAURUSES DIE EVERY DAY BECAUSE NO ONE CARES ENOUGH TO REPOST THIS

Sorry.

WRITE "AMEN" IF YOU SUPPORT THE RIGHTS OF DUMB PEOPLE

I'm too dumb to spell anem.

See what I mean? It's like people are always telling me to do things and if I don't do them I'm a bad person. In the early days of e-mail I used to get demands like that once in a while, with exhortations about the wonderful things that would happen if I spread this blessing to seven friends or the horrible curses that would befall me if I broke the chain. I never got that many chain e-mails, and I was happy to ignore them. But Facebook's news feed is like an endless list of chain e-mails, alternating with needy trolling for likes. It makes even the least demanding of my friends and acquaintances look like a wheedling salesman with low self-esteem.

So that's why you won't find Fred on Facebook. I haven't ruled out Twitter, but as you can see, I'm not capable of complaining in short form.