Prostitution without Pay

Posted on September 3, 2002 in Folly Watch IRC/Chat

I am beginning to think that the rumors of disinformation professionals who work the InterNet in exchange for free ISP access might be true. Consider this whopper of an explanation given for the death of elderly people during heat waves that I overheard on Dalnet #politics:

[13:09] <Maineiac> LaDiva: overexposure.. most elderly keep their homes too warm.

The real story is that elderly people lose their ability to effectively regulate temperatures. Another chatter spoke of her ninety-year old mother wrapping herself in blankets during a Florida summer. But the root of the problem, all agree, is that elderly people in our nation just can’t afford to run their air conditioners. The hundreds who die each summer aren’t running their heaters: they’re cutting costs by not using their air conditioners. It isn’t stupidity: it’s poverty that drives the numbers.

What is worse is that after being told how boneheaded his answer was, the guy continued to defend it! After telling him that the intelligent response to having such illogic challenged was to simply admit the error and drop it, I set him to /ignore.

Can anyone really hold such explanations so precious? I hold out hope that there is a bankroll behind all this. But can everyone I meet who espouses this stuff really be nothing but an employee of a dark purpose? I doubt it. We live in an age where we are encouraged to eschew anything that might question the votes we cast or the distribution of wealth. To keep our dream alive, we give free lip service to the material culture that forever picks our pockets.

Not being paid for this stuff is like buying a shirt with Coca-Cola written across the front. Such a market exists. Consider all the conservatives who live in trailer parks, dreaming of the day when they will be rich. Most will die in those parks. And they will go on voting against their interests in the hope that the stock market will never crash and the dollars they’ve planted in flower pots will sprout into money trees.