The spouse and I don’t use smart phones or mobile devices. We have a dedicated cell phone each. That’s it. Although the spouse has been involved in the design of these systems for a long time; he, like myself, considers mobile devices to be toys for the distracted. White noise.
When I’m out and about, I’m away from my email. Nobody can text me. I don’t text (although it’s useful, I am told, in an emergency because the signal is available). You have to want to engage with something.
I have no interest in acquiring a mobile operating system. (Of course I use a cell phone, a computer, etc.) However, it’s hard to explain to people that you’re uninterested in staring at, fixating on, of fiddling with a small device that yields little useful data.
Now it looks like those who cut out superfluous noise might not be as deficient as I feared:
I’ve just received an interview request from an august and large publication, but have not yet replied to the leading questions sent, for precisely the reasons AltRightist Vox Day enunciates, in “Controlled opposition or media indiscipline?”
Instead, I began a dialogue by crafting my meme, my message, entirely unrelated to the leading questions asked of me. If the publication picks up on my narrative and runs with it; I’ll partake. If they run with their own storyline; I won’t.
Still, Day’s comments about Richard Spencer’s mischief-making—excesses, as Paul Gottfried calls them—are illuminating. “Heilgate at National Policy Institute” is Vox’s twitter title for the blog post:
… You don’t play the media, the media plays you. Yes, Trump can play them. Yes, Milo can play them. But I’m not either of those unique talents and neither are you. [Personally, I’m not interested in being a media circus animal; but yes, Milo is very smart with the moron media.] I learned my lesson the hard way … I can’t count the number of times a reporter has said he “just wants to give me the opportunity to tell my side of the story”. It’s a trap. The way to get out your message is to patiently build your own platform, because he whom the media builds up is he whom the media can take down at will. … The media always has a narrative it is attempting to sell. Don’t help them sell it! …
How does evidence against something, become evidence for that very same something?
Plain evidence against the good health of Hillary Clinton has become, with the aid of the malfunctioning media, evidence for her stamina. “She has the constitution of a boar,” said a defender on Fox New, following Mrs. Clinton’s very pubic collapse at the 2016, 9/11 memorial.
“She powered through it all,” parroted the rest.
“Pneumonia blows over like the flu” was the consensus on MSNBC, as they collected affidavit after affidavit from their reporters to swear to how humid, crowded and uncomfortable it was for Hillary on that fateful, New-York day.
“Probably nothing,” said that no-good neurologist Sanjay Gupta, at CNN, mere hours before the news of Clinton’s pneumonia broke.
How does a display of faltering health from Hillary become a reason to doubt the stamina of a man, Donald Trump, who’s like The Incredible Hulk?
Like magic, Trump materializes at multiple events a day, hops from Mexico to Louisiana, and seems to be having fun while at it. “Give me more,” his whole countenance seems to scream.
Then there’s the sexism angle (where, in the YouTube video that accompanies this short text, the writer is forced to reach for some “Dutch Courage”): How is it that we hold a female presidential candidate with pneumonia to a different standard than a male presidential candidate without pneumonia?
