What I Do… Scares Me, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #395 | @MDWorld

May 29, 2015 Victor El-Khouri 4 Comments

I’ve been working at a popular culture website for the better part of the past decade, www.comicmix.com. That’s way past my usual sell-by date, but I’ve stayed around for a couple of reasons. I am privileged to labor alongside some very, very talented people – I know everybody says that, but the work speaks for itself. Their names speak for themselves.

Similarly, I have been privileged to work alongside some very, very gifted Internet wizards, and I’ve learned an enormous amount of important stuff – at the most vital time to obtain such knowledge. Pretty cool, right?

Well, it is. But despite that, I’m scared shitless. I see what people post; not here, not at ComicMix, but at other sites. You might have noticed I drift towards political comment. This is a field that, traditionally, has attracted the more extreme elements in our society (ahem). But a lot of what I read on our social media – a phrase that has become an oxymoron – is very unsettling to say the least.

To say the most: I do not like sharing this planet with some of those people. The response online to cultural issues is even worse. Mad Max is part of a massive well-financed feminist conspiracy with the sole purpose of emasculating men? Dave Letterman should have been put to death long ago? If you dislike country music you are a jihadist? Barack Obama has destroyed America? Hello? Are you listening, Dr. Freud?

When Twitter first came about my wife and I had no doubt it would succeed, at least for about as long as anything succeeds out in the ether. At times, Linda and I had been known to be rather cynical. Everything that has happened with Twitter since then has justified that cynicism. I hate it when that happens.

Twitter attracts a massive sounder of swine who are incapable of evolving to the level where they can relieve their most heartfelt frustrations through masturbation. You can never trust anything you read on Twitter, and you have to wonder — maybe even worry — that people who spend so much time tweeting are people incapable of embracing even the most rudimentary aspects of our shared human experience. They aren’t smart enough to be voyeurs.

Twitter is the world’s greatest source of hatred. Tweeters prattle on about things about which they know nothing. They refuse to grasp the simple understanding that they are not entitled to their opinion. They only have a right to an informed opinion.

I think my use of the term “ether” is appropriate, although perhaps dated. Ether is an anesthetic. It’s a powerful solvent. It’s a refrigerant. It’s used in the manufacture of smokeless gunpowder. It’s an excellent way for drug entrepreneurs to kill themselves when freebasing or making crack. Ether is as unpredictable as it is very, very dangerous. When, in 1961, liberal Democratic activist and FCC commissioner Newton Minow referred to television as a “vast wasteland” that falls short in its responsibility to the public, he might as well have been referring to today’s so-called social media.

However… if, when I when I started in on our human experience, you said to yourself “I don’t have time for that because I’m too busy Tweeting…” then maybe there’s hope yet.

Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking rock, blues and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com and on the iNetRadio app, www.iNetRadio.com, as part of “Hit Oldies” channel even though his show is way too ass-kicking to be thought of as either “hit” or “oldies.” Weird Sounds first airs Sundays at 7:00 PM Eastern and is rebroadcast three times during the week – check www.getthepointradio.com above for times and on-demand streaming information. Gold also joins MDW’s Michael Davis and Martha Thomases as a weekly columnist at www.comicmix.com where he’s incessantly pontificating on matters of four-color. And please be advised: Mike maintains the movie rights to every death threat he receives.