Prelude in three parts…I believe there is a point to be made…but, bear with me.
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“On Halloween morning, 1938, Orson Welles awoke to find himself the most talked about man in America. The night before, Welles and his Mercury Theatre on the Air had performed a radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, converting the 40-year-old novel into fake news bulletins describing a Martian invasion of New Jersey. Some listeners mistook those bulletins for the real thing, and their anxious phone calls to police, newspaper offices, and radio stations convinced many journalists that the show had caused nationwide hysteria.” (https://www.smithsonianmag.com, 2015)1
Can we even begin to imagine how that event affected anyone within the relatively small broadcast area? Much of the population didn’t have televisions in houses or in every room, definitely not in the palm of your hand; the radio was it.
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“The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American supernatural horror film written, directed, and edited by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez. One of the most successful independent films of all time, it is a “found footage” mockumentary in which three students (Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard) hike into the Black Hills near Burkittsville, Maryland to shoot a documentary about a local myth known as the Blair Witch.” (https://en.wikipedia.org – The_Blair_Witch_Project)2
The release of the film was accompanied by a website that appeared to show actual history, photos and timelines to corroborate the films plot and lend it more credibility.
I worked with a friend who showed the website to me after he saw the movie. To him, it was real and at first glance to me; it was too. But I took several minutes to dig deeper, because that is who I am, and later showed him what he had missed. There was a moment of skepticism on his face, then a bit of embarrassment before accepting it.
To be fair, it was the first time I was really exposed to this type of promotion for a film and like I said, it “hooked” me too; but it was not real.
It also taught me to treat each search, each internet experience with a healthy dose of skepticism – to think past what I read in the moment.
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In April of 2010, I was writing on my personal blog. The bad stories I wrote would also post to Facebook, allowing people to comment and giving my ego a boost. Most were ridiculous and light…but…one of those posts (story at the end of this writing), much darker, triggered responses that I never imagined.
I was at a high school softball game, watching my daughter play, when a school resource officer and a county sheriff asked me to step out of the stands. They began by asking if they could look inside my car. I explained that I drove a truck, they asked if they could look inside. I asked why, and they brought up the story. I explained that it was fiction, told them I would not be censored for writing pure fiction, and tried to go back to my seat. The sheriff instead led me to my house to be questioned.
While leading me into my house, they asked if I had ever caught birds in a cage. Crazy to me at the time. I would learn – as the police searched the house and read writings I kept in a notebook – that someone had called the police over the Facebook post.
The next day, my neighbors informed me that before I arrived, a SWAT team had circled my house in full gear, armed with assault rifles looking in the windows.
But that is the power of the internet on an uneducated and uninformed audience.
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Thanks for making it this far…now to my point…in a rambling and possibly incoherent voice…
I tell my grandkids that I am older than the internet, they say older than dirt…I am not dirt old.
I am old enough that I did not spend my childhood on the internet or posting on social media every day; which I am thankful for, because I may have been unemployable the way I lived in my 20s. It wasn’t there for me or many who are still living.
If you take a breath and think about it, the internet has been created and exploded uncontrolled in many of our lives; with no education to those of us who preceded the boom…and most since. It has been growing unregulated, unrestrained with access to so much info; so much good and so much bad info; taking on a life of its own.
Anyway, now we throw in CG and AI created movies, videos, streaming services; content everywhere by virtually anyone. We are inundated with it on social media sites, web sites, TV; images that look too real, words that might be true, data pulled from nowhere or assembled with complete bias as its intent. All of this is fed to us in little “blurbs” without any context, without any pre-knowledge of the subjects and often with less than honorable intentions; and at times by people who make of living just saying whatever.
We are told not to listen to the main stream media by far left and right sources. Without considering the intent of the voices saying that, many have turned to websites or podcasts or YouTube or 4chan or any of the limitless choices that push a steady stream of whatever you want to hear.
These are often people feeding even more disinformation about main stream media, the other podcasts, or legitimate data sites…and they do it for profit. I mean if I want to believe that the government is trying to take away my toilet – there is a voice that will tell me that; if I want to hear they are eating cats and dogs or doing gender surgery at school, those voices exist. If you want someone to agree that aliens are controlling the government, just type it in a search; and don’t forget to hit “like”.
It has become too easy to forgo any accountability for our actions and words behind the keyboard or mic. I mean if you see someone stealing from your grandparents, or kicking your kids; we are up in arms; but let some podcaster or YouTube personality say something that is so ludicrous as “lizard people in control of humans” and people punch the like button and say “hell yeah, let’s stop that!!”. Some meme created by some influencer to get interactions becomes an uncontrollable reality. Legitimately question this type of “garbage” and they scream “but my free speech”.
In my work as an engineer, internet searches became critical for information. Our company made an effort to keep us safe from viruses and phishing e-mails with education and samples to “catch” us; not so much from false information. Most users do not even receive that level of training on information sources.
Only the experiences of my life (the stories above) taught me to be careful, to not to fall prey to “the garbage” or the Blair witches. That is all I had to rely on because there is no “how to know what is real” class being taught…well except in Finland it seems. They have recognized a need, as our country should also; please watch this segment. (Sunday Morning CBS, October 2024)3
Y’all; just because it can be written, it can be said or even seen, doesn’t make it real or true. You need to understand that Blair Witches and Wars of the World exist all over the place, but they are not real no matter how it seems.
Think!
Think enough to research…to look two posts back on a blog, two posts forward…or just read other sources for news and determine (as best you can in this environment) if what you just posted or read is even true. If you cannot verify it to some degree from multiple sources, from left/right/msm…it probably can be ignored instead of reposted.
Think before you just pick up a meme or some story and share it everywhere. I recently saw an older friend, who I know would never have any intentions of hurting people, apologizing to everyone on Facebook for reposting some words that hurt a lot of her friends. In that moment, that second it took to post it, she injured people over something that was not real.
THINK enough to question if a dad sitting at his daughter’s softball game, who you know doesn’t even own a car – who you trust to drive your kids to tournaments, had really
been discovered with a dead body in the trunk. You may be hurting people with bad information. You might even be destroying families.
We must do what we can to educate those still capable of hearing, those willing to apologize for the harm…and call out those who hurt our most vulnerable for profit or power with mis or dis information. Is it censorship to stop people from hurting people or a societal responsibility? My opinion is the latter…
I believe we all have that responsibility, not only as Americans but as humans; to look after each other…to care for each other, to protect each other. We need to start asking, instead of bashing folks, if people really know what is real.
Practicing a little moral fortitude (google it if you need to) can go a long way. We owe it to each other to care for those who are susceptible to the witches and the Wars of the Worlds.
A. Brad Schwartz
2. Blair witch project
https://web.archive.org/web/20210402102423/https://www.blairwitch.com/project/main.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blair_Witch_Project
3. CBS Sunday Morning Segment https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1076698147246949
Story that had my house searched.
Tomorrow, my life will be the front page news. I made a very big mistake that will leave everyone who knows me questioning my sanity, their relationship with me.
I am sorry.
I never meant to end up in this situation, nor do I imagine my parents ever wishing their son to become the person you will learn about.
If I could set back the clock, only a few seconds…I wish that were possible. Never have I wanted to pretend a day never happened or erase it.
I know when the fascination started.
It was winter and the neighbors had a bird cage sitting behind their house. I took it and tied a piece of string to a stick and propped up the cage. Then I sprinkled bird seed under it and climbed behind the house to wait.
It was a cold winter, I was 12, and it didn’t take long before a small bird had fallen into the trap. I ran out and carefully slid the bottom of the cage in place and took them both under the house.
I spent the next hour terrorizing the small thing until I was bored with the activity. Then I reached in the cage and took it into my hand and crushed it. I remember the look in its eyes, the fear. But I mostly remember the power I felt; the extreme power.
Anyway, if I had left a few seconds sooner, that car would have never hit me. The police would have never come, found her purse, her driver’s license or the shoe. They would have never opened the trunk to find her.
Guys, I am sorry. I am still the person you knew. I am still the little league volunteer, the PTO member…the father of my daughter and a nice man.
I know that by the time you finish reading the story, or hear it on the news you will forget all of that. You will see the monster that tortured and killed for the sake of pleasure.
I should have stuck to animals, the homeless derelicts that crowd the cities. But the fear of an innocent, the look in their eyes…the cries, oh the beautiful cries of a woman as she begs and pleads for you to stop hurting her.
Well, please don’t take this out on my daughter. She is the sweetest kid and will need you guys to care for her. To remind her that she is going to be ok. Please.
NOTE: I apologize to anyone this bad story that had my house searched offends. It was me writing extreme horror…shocking horror. My intent was/is not to hurt anyone, I was just trying to make it “real”…but it seemed relevant to explain where we have come as a society…someone who knew me believed this could be me, enough to leave a daughter crying in left field as her dad was taken away to be questioned. Just because they read it on the internet.
Topwater Moon 