MAANDA should be emblazoned on my hat. This is what the hopefully dwindling supporters of a similar sounding acronym are really saying, briefly re-energised by certain re-election announcements.
The other morning I suddenly began thinking about Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World after not having thought about that book in a long while. I did try reading it once, but I don’t think I ever finished or ready it very closely. All I remember is the sentiment one character had, a woman, thinking it was weird that a woman would want to have a natural childbirth, now that there was the technology to just grow them in vats essentially. I’m sure I am not remembering that correctly, I’ll need to go and revisit the novel, er, um or audiobook.
I haven’t done that yet, but what I did do was go directly to YouTube and plug in Aldous Huxley and watched this interview by the timeless Mike Wallace:
I was actually thinking about David Foster Wallace even before watching this and was thinking there must be some connection from Brave New World to Infinite Jest. Having gone through Infinite Jest one time in my head via audiobook, I do think about it, and subsequently it’s late author from time to time.
After watching the Huxley interview, just for fun, I plugged Mike David Foster Wallace into the YouTube search to see what would come up. An amazingly long radio interview from 1996. This guy did not believe in the short form of anything, did he? I watched, or rather listened to, the video up until about here:
I don’t think there was a reference to Huxley there, but I promise another one is coming up. I did enjoy DF Wallace talking about John Barth’s story here:
Which I would like to go and look at and actually read, mainly these days I listen to audiobooks but for some reason I feel like reading this one. Looks to be up my alley, you might say. Maybe there is an audiobook version? Oh look, some open educational resources:
So I got bored with listening to the David Foster Wallace interview and switched to something a little more fun and contemporary. Honestly, it was YouTube that suggested it, but based on my regular watching of the Daily Show, I always find the reporting of Jared Kleeper entertaining.
And there it is, the connection has been made from Aldous Huxley, through Hunter S. Thompson which morphs into a recent popular dystopic trends. A warped meme, derived from fiction causing real mental illness. It’s not the technology that is a bad thing, but the network effect is involved here. The way information spreads and the motivation behind those who spread it. Which from my point of view are just trolls preying on the naive.
Why do trolls troll? I’m not sure I want to know or care. Go read the Wikipedia article about it:
To be sure there is just an entertainment element to it, they are having their version of fun. There is also profit and political motivation behind it.
Trolls are going to troll, beware and steer clear of them.
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