Binge watching! The pleasure...the pain!

We do it, it feels so good, and then we feel so guilty afterward. Right? 

After this post, in fact, I think I will log on to CBS All Access and watch several episodes of "Hawaii Five-0" I missed. Then there's the "Strange Angel" miniseries I started watching and need to get back to. Oh, and then there are the season 2 episodes of "Stranger Things" on Netflix and I already can't wait to see the new season of "Lucifer" when it premieres also on Netflix.

Yup, I can completely get addicted to bingeing TV and I admit it. 

So check out my quotes in this article about the psychology behind binge watching. It covers some interesting material, including mental health issues both in the real world and in the fictional world of all the binge-watched shows. For example, there do seem to be more and more shows where major characters contend with mental problems in ongoing storylines. As I comment in the article, this is commendable. It's good to help lift the stigma off of mental and emotional problems, to show major characters - often heroes and all sorts of admirable protagonists - being able to deal with mental problems and disorders and live productive lives. 

As for whether or not there are dangers in the binge watching trend, I am not entire convinced. The way in which entertainment and information is being consumed is merely changing right now, thanks to streaming technology. To immediately pathologize it, to turn it into the new moral panic of the evil dangers of entertainment, I believe, is unwarranted.

The Internet and paranoid thinking

This New York Times video is quite a good overview of the current phase online conspiracism is moving through in its ongoing evolution. As I have been writing before, the details of the conspiratorial claims are no longer really what scholars of the phenomenon need to focus on and engage with - all the silliness of the Pizzagate and Illuminati New World Order claims have no evidence whatsoever to back them up and they are really not worth the time to argue with - but the dynamics of cyberspace technology and audiences of the disaffected who create communities around the claims are really the most fascinating and troubling glimpses of 21st century culture. As this Times story points out, the core of conspiracism now is no longer to make specific claims about aliens, reptilian "elites," the Antichrist, the New World order or the Freemasons. The new phase of the conspiracy culture had evolved to a state where all consensus knowledge must be denied. The "ask questions" mantra of Alex Jones and all his imitators boils down to a call to reject the very concept of facts and all evidence-based rationality. The modern world of "alternative facts," indeed. The 21st century at its most disturbing.

Steph Curry got schooled

So earlier this week the Golden State Warriors' Steph Curry set off a little controversy when on a podcast he appeared to be maybe joking but not joking that he thought the moon landing never happened. Now whether he was kidding or not is hard to tell - let's hope really was kidding - but his comments did bring some furious criticism down on him. NASA even invited him to the Johnson Space Center in Houston to show him moon rocks and explain why the Apollo moon missions were all, in fact, real.

So now Steph clarified that he was absolutely kidding about being a moon "truther" and he never believed that the Apollo missions were a hoax. If anything, he said that his comments were a "silent protest" against how gullible people are and how quickly they fall for fake information just because they come from someone famous. Silent protest? Huh? Not sure I understand that one. But I hope he means it that this was but his clever wit at work, a big practical joke on the real moon truthers out there.

Although the best reaction to all this was just posted on my new favorite YouTube channel, "A Call for an Uprising." Check it out right here. In his customarily breathless monologue, the host of this show gave an exasperated, outraged explanation about what was REALLY behind the whole Steph Curry kerfufle. Steph, our anonymous host explained angrily, is actually a part of the Illuminati and the secret bloodlines that control the world - and orchestrated the moon landing hoax for some unspecified reason - and this stunt with the podcast was just a ploy by the Insiders, the Elites, the New World Order, and Them, to discredit belief in the moon conspiracy.

Now I still believe that whoever is behind this looney tunes "A Call for an Uprising" channel is pulling off his own massive con on tens to thousands (if his subscription count is to be believed) of people out of pure, simple, uncomplicated greed. Each posting, in fact, starts out with links to opportunities to donate money to the show. But the frightening thing is that there ARE tens of thousands of people out there who are gullible, simple minded, and alienated enough to believe all the bovine manure in these videos.

Or perhaps the shadowy operative behind "A Call for an Uprising" is merely carrying out a silent protest against the stupidity of the conspiracy culture.

Whaaat?? Getting marked by "The Beast" at the airport??

With another semester winding up, I will soon be taking a little break from corrupting the minds of the young and the innocent and getting away from it all for a little winter break. All that mind-corruption, you know, is quite hard work. As I'll be doing some flying - and I've been flying quite a bit over the past year and planning on more travel over the coming year - for the break, I'm just learning that airports around the country will soon be getting turned into the centers where the Beast, the Antichrist, and Satan will be marking travelers with the "sign" and moving us closer and closer to the enslavement of all of humanity.

You don't believe me, you say? Check it out right here. This YouTube video from the "Call for an Uprising" channel will explain the whole shocking plot, that is if you can sit through all 11 execrable minutes of it. I did, shaking my head a lot and not knowing if I should laugh or cry. One wants to laugh as the idiocy of this information, laugh at the fact that this channel - and many others like it - is a con job where some Alex Jones wannabe hustler in a basement somewhere is ranting about the end of the world and the Illuminati and Satanists, telling thousands of rubes and delusionals what they want to hear, and said rubes are eating it up and believing every word of it. And then you want to cry because there are thousands of rubes and delusionals actually out there who actually believe in this and they can't understand what kind of a swindle "A Call for an Uprising" is.

As you'll see in the video if you check it out, they take the issue of planned face-recognition software at airports - something that does raise some legitimate privacy concerns - and turn it into a farce by predicting that it's the first step in some kind of a New World Order fascist takeover, and insinuating that terrorist attacks like 9/11 were "false flag" conspiracies. And so on and so forth. Again, at the core of this story is a valid issue, although, as much of a Libertarian as I am, I don't believe that heightened airport security is leading us to a fascist state. You see, the thing is that I prefer to be a live Libertarian who might be slowed down a little bit at the airport, rather a dead one, blown out of the sky by some ISIS psycho who wanted to reserve his spot in paradise. Yet the best way to completely tune the issue out is by having these conspiracist idiots start spouting their New World Order fantasies about it.

And, of course, this massive global conspiracy that will soon implant Satanic microchips in Americans is somehow allowing their evil plots to be exposed on YouTube by "A Call for an Uprising." Yeah, sure.

Book sale!

For about the price of a medium cup of coffee at Starbuck's, you can get the electronic version of my novel, CONFIRMATION: INVESTIGATIONS OF THE UNEXPLAINED at the World Castle Bookstore. Check out this link to my publisher's bookstore page! Because there's nothing like treating yourself to the gift of a book!

The California fires: It was aliens!!

Not to say "I told you so," but...I told you so. In the preface to my book, Conspiracy Films: A Tour of Dark Places in the American Conscious," I predicted that no matter what major world event - especially something bad - hits the headlines, within hours the Internet would be flooded with conspiracy theories about how the real cause of the event is some evil, sinister plot by a hidden cabal of super villains. The mainstream media, of course, are in on it all and are "keeping everyone asleep."

So the latest calamity we have been watching on the news over the past several weeks, the massive wildfires that swept through California, is now being blamed on a grand conspiracy of the "New World Order," the "globalists," the "internationalists," the Rothschild banking organization, the military, the CIA, and the Illuminati. Check out this Mercury New article about the latest in the conspiracy theorizing about the fires. But for the most cringe-inducing part of the whole article, read the feedback from all the conspiracy believers. Not to give anything away, but the comments make for a very strong argument for why laws for the involuntary hospitalization for mental illness need to be toughened. What scares me more than the idiocy of the conspiracy theories is the fact that the people who wrote the comments after that article are out there walking around on our streets.

Of course, I'm not surprised that the California fires inspired conspiracy theories. I'm surprised, though, by the high absurdity of it all. As the Mercury News article explains, the mainstream of the fire-conspiracy-believers is convinced that the fires were caused by military-controlled laser weapons fired either from space or from aircraft. I, quite foolishly and naively, thought the conspiracy web pages and YouTube videos would be claiming that "mysterious" figures have been running around in the California wilderness setting fires. Conspiracists, though, are proving to be infinitely more creative than I am, apparently. Laser weapons are much cooler and scarier than merely guys sneaking around in the brush and setting fires. Even the rhetoric of the conspiracists is full of high-tech-sounding jargon like "DEW," or "directed energy weapons" and "geoengineering." Could have come out of a real slick technothriller!

Then, according to this article, other subcultures of the fire-conspiracists are certain that space aliens caused the fires. And I'm not kidding either. Check out the article!

Spreading this nonsense, of course, are the usual suspects. Believers in the "Pizzagate" and "false flag" mass shooting conspiracies are on the bandwagon. Alex Jones' Infowars website has numerous videos espousing the theory. Because, you know, Jones is still alive. These sociopathic New World Order conspirators who are willing to launch a ray gun attack on California, murdering dozens of people so far, have not yet figured out how to kill off Jones and keep him from spreading the "truth."

Another scuzzy little web page that has gone all in on the fire conspiracy is the "State of the Nation: Alternative News, Analysis, and Commentary" page. Aside from their very long list of Satanic pizza gate conspiracy links, the fires now have jumped to the top of their agenda.

All of this would be laughable, were it not for the fact that people had lost their lives in these fires. Others had their homes, their livelihoods wiped out. For bottom-feeding lowlife like the people behind "State of the Nation" and Alex Jones, it's another perfect opportunity to profit off the grief of others.

Mystery at the museum solved...

I’ve been catching up on episodes of one of my favorite Travel Channel shows, “Mysteries at the Museum,” and I was definitely not disappointed by their JFK assassination special. So we’re finally getting more of these mystery-solving type reality shows take the route of logical, evidence-based conclusions to supposedly “unsolved” mysteries, even though the more sensationalistic approach might probably get more attention and please the conspiracy crowd out there. The “Mysteries at the Museum” episode focused in on the major lynchpin arguments of conspiracy theorists and very elegantly debunked all of them. The conclusion on the end of the program was an unequivocal “no” to conspiracy. Very well done, in my opinion. Endorsing convoluted, unproven conspiracy fantasies might be the easier route to take when it comes to the Kennedy assassination. Standing by the truth, however, is the right thing to do.