Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Stop Handing the Idiots Microphones

So I've been toying around with new and exciting ways to increase the viewership on my blog. Anti-Trump stuff seems to be popular, even more so than when people ask questions to get me talking about sex if not quite as much as when I've developed cancer. It's not a CRAZY number of hits... 2,000 is a really stinking good result for me, so nothing truly viral just yet, but I think I've found a way to to make that happen.

So I have decided, sometime in the next week or so while I am still on Paternity leave, to say something extraordinarily racist, sexist, or otherwise bigoted. I'll write it in the blog, maybe I'll post a video about it, as well as leaving a few quick shares here and there on social media.

Now at first, I know this will just make my usual readership confused and angry. Likely some who liked my approach to Christianity will feel betrayed. But the real good will be when someone goes beyond disappointment into true anger.

They'll share it, outraged, and demanding others share in their outrage. Most won't but some will, scattering the message further and further until it gets picked up by some rights group that publicly denounces me, all the more loudly for the obvious hypocrisy between the new direction and earlier posts. (Bonus, it increases hits on earlier posts, leading to comparison pieces and "where did he go wrong" interest stories! See Phelps, Fred.)

Eventually, on some slow news day or a HEAVY news day in some way relevant to my chosen form of bigotry, some reporter will seek me out, asking me to share some context for my statement. Presented with what someone like me always seeks, a platform, I double down on my statement, further antagonizing the world and pushing the clicks machine.

Around this time, some other outlet sympathetic to the views I have adopted in this fit of mercenary hatred will share me, complaining that others are seeking to suppress me. At that point I'll put up a GOFUNDME for aid, and likely pay for my daughter's College if I invest wisely afterwards as thousands rally to protect my right to be an asshole.

Where things go from here depends. Maybe I get a regular spot commenting on a hate based website, eventually dissolving into the furniture, or maybe things go further, statement after statement hitting the publics offence button hard and continuing to drive hits, links, and shares, which in so doing finance my life (as by this time I am probably no longer welcome in my Christian denomination anymore, but obviously no one will report on that.)

Meanwhile, around the world, people of the group I have attacked are given one more reason to believe that everyone of faith hates them... because when someone preaches tolerance, it doesn't move news stories, but when the most insignificant pastor in the world starts preaching hate, the world can't hand him a microphone fast enough.

I'm not here to claim that these people's influence is negligible... that would be an insult to all who have been hurt by preachers like these over and over again. We who oppose them within the Christian faith do need to work to be louder, as loud as we can, so that the message that Christianity is a faith of fear and hatred can at least be actually challenged in the public eye.

But that is hard... really, really hard, when the media trips over itself to boost one side of the signal while neglecting the other. So for the love of all that is Holy... could we PLEASE stop handing these idiots microphones?

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