fwdintodarkness-blog

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Turtles Against Global Warming

Close your eyes and imagine for a moment that you are unwavering in your belief that climate change is a myth, and you are okay with the events that are unfolding currently.  This is your immovable object smushed up against the brick wall of evidence proving you decisively wrong, so how do you go about denying the undeniable?  

Blame the brown-skinned people, of course! 

From November 2010, I present the dumbest straw-man argument against climate change evidence I’ve ever seen: 

WORLD SHAME COAST! HUMANITY’S DISGRACE! HOW DARE THOSE HEARTLESS FOREIGNERS PILLAGE NATURE FOR PROFIT?! 

*googles turtle egg poaching in Costa Rica* Yup, this really is a problem. Leave it to the elites to try to convince us we're doing something wrong when it’s actually the minorities’ fault. Now if only my taxes were lower I might be inclined to throw a bit of money at the plight of these poor turtles, but alas...*forwards email* best I can do. You’re welcome, planet. 

(Here’s the second dumbest argument against evidence of climate change I’ve ever seen, in case you are wondering)

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"Friends” Day

We’ve all received some variation of the horribly composed but inoffensive forward that is supposed to inspire a warm fuzzy feeling. This one from July 2012 fits that bill pretty well until it takes an unexpectedly jarring turn: 

Actually this all feels about right coming from Nana. 

Sue, whoever and wherever you are, take your dumb platitudes about being “tough” and “strong” and use them to lift your own damn self up. No Friends Day card for you, you pushy narcissist. Jeez...

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A Reading from the Book of Obama

When the word “Obama” was (is) spoken at Nana and Papa’s house, it was said in an accusatory tone and was followed by a guttural “yeck!” or “bluhhhh”. While it is a fact universally acknowledged that 44′s presidency was a frenzied Chicken Little episode for many conservatives, it can be hard to understand the mechanics of their fear and revulsion unless you regularly had to endure talk of it. Lord knows my siblings and I endured.  

I recall an instance when Nana griped about how unhappy she was with Obama’s handling of the wars and the fact that we were still over there. Surprised by her desire for peace and excited at the prospect of agreeing on something for once, I asked her why that was. “Because,” she said, “Obama has missiles that can go through all their underground tunnels and find the terrorists and blow them up but he refuses to use them because he sympathizes with them!” I believe I replied with something like “I’m not sure that’s true…” but didn’t argue it any further. What was the point?

I think today’s email, from August of ‘09, really characterizes the brick wall that I often felt like I was banging my head against. If you can make it through to the end there are some funny, shitty CGI gifs in store for you at least! 

This...is weirdly adorable. 

Oh god, Joe the Plumber. Forgot about that idiot.

“beat our weapons into free cars for the people”

The capital gains tax that never happened (at least not in that way) as the reason for the housing crisis is quite creative!

Oh GAWD, the ACORN thing. Forgot about that, too. 

Bilingual signs: trumpets of the apocalypse

I am so sorry for putting you all through this. 

You all presumably have working brains so I’m not going to go over the logical flaws in this magnum opus. Again, what’s the point? Look, I’ve got friends who are on the fiscally conservative side and whose political beliefs piss me off. We talk about it and sometimes things get heated. I complained about these email blasts to them constantly back in the day and we always had a good laugh over how incredibly stupid they were. 

...and, here we are eight years later learning that a meme of Jesus arm wrestling the devil might have helped sway the election. GODDAMMIT. 

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A Christian walks into a bar...bershop

One of Nana’s favorite varieties of email detritus was the confusing allegory that ends with an “a-ha!” moment. Sometimes they are classic stories that have been tweaked to illustrate a political point, sometimes they are lessons in moral conservatism, and sometimes they drop metaphors that are supposed to blow your mind. 

Today’s story, from May of ‘09, falls into that last category. If you’re a fan of superfluous pictures of flowers you are in for a real treat with this one. 

Comin’ in hot with one of the most fraught philosophical questions in human history. Go on...

WHAT IN THE 

But wait what did the barber say?!

Putting aside for a moment the utter bizarreness of the barber-as-God metaphor, let’s try to unpack the lessons this wise anecdote has imparted:  

1. If people like that long-haired man suffering through life on the streets exist then so must a loving, merciful God who...allows that suffering...because...huh. This is getting a bit meta.   

2. All of your misery is your own fault because you don’t believe hard enough. 

3. God is a narcissistic jerk. 

This was one of the few emails from Nana I actually opened back when I got it, and at the time I found it hilarious. It’s still so-bad-it’s-funny, but the cruel worldview it hints at, that we are each morally responsible for all of the bad things that happen to us, is not. And now we live in a world where a major conservative publication feels emboldened enough to express that worldview outright. 

...I don’t have anything snarky to say for the finisher today. Reading that bleak ass article just sapped the cheekiness out of me. Go get #blessed, David French. 

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In Which Butts Are Not Funny

Occasionally Nana would send me (what she considered to be) a real knee-slapper, devoid of any sociopolitical heaviness. These made up maybe 5% of the total volume of emails, followed in increasing order by fun facts, prayer chains, poorly conceived allegorical stories, jokes about how dumb and wicked the Obamas were, and regular ol’ rants about how dumb and wicked the Obamas were. 

I don’t wish that there had been more of these lighthearted laffs, though. While mostly harmless, stupid gimmicks like these are still quite offensive to comedy, to human intelligence, to my dignity. Consider the following, received in March of ‘09:

Thank GOD this isn’t a chain letter (?), because I did indeed decline to e-moon five people. Or any people. 

ASSICONS you say? Hmmmm. Assicons. Ass icons. I wonder if the Papyrus font was chosen because the special characters work particularly well for illustrating butts? Might be some accidental humor in there after all. 

Lastly: there is something deeply unsettling about my grandmother sending me a message containing a crude representation of a gaping butthole that's "been around”. Maybe your grandma can crack dirty jokes with you and it’s really cute because she’s old or whatever, but I come from a family where "genitalia” is considered a curse word. Mega cringeshiver at that particular Assicon.  

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Gunnin’ for your guns

The below email made its way to me from Nana in July of 2009, regarding a bill introduced to Congress in January of the same year. At this time, the United States had yet to experience the mass shootings at the Aurora Theater, Sandy Hook, San Bernardino, Pulse nightclub, and of course, the recent horror in Las Vegas. We had already been through the Luby’s massacre and Columbine, among many others. 

Beware of *secret* bills that are “long and lengthy” 

A quick visit to Snopes shows that the measures they listed are mostly true, aside from the parts about submitting to mental evaluations and compliance inspections whenever the government feels like it (the latter of which would only have applied to commercial distributors). I think it’s also worth highlighting the tragic incident that catalyzed the Blair Holt bill: 

On 10 May 2007, 16-year-old Chicago honor student Blair Holt was riding a bus home from school when another teenager began firing a handgun in a gang-related attack. When Holt moved to shield a girl on the bus from the spray of bullets, he was himself hit in the abdomen and died.

At Blair Holt’s funeral, Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois (representing the state’s First Congressional district) promised to honor Holt’s memory by introducing a strong gun tracking bill in Congress.

It’s my opinion that this bill was actually a pretty moderate approach to gun control, and that the panic over it being a ruse for Obama's evil plan for “complete confiscation” is an overreaction. To me, the proposed law just seems like a method of reducing the amount of bad guys with guns. Maybe if we reread the measures in a way that explicitly states what is being regulated, it will seem more rational? 

Of course, this line of reasoning isn’t new and to my knowledge has never inspired a change of heart among any assault rifle-clutching Freedom Patriots. Their line of reasoning often centers around the aspect of federal monitoring and control, which would make it easier to confiscate their prized metal babes in the event of an actual ban. But, in light of the ever-escalating levels of horrific bloodshed we’ve seen since this bill was introduced, isn’t attempting to stop the needless, perpetual killing of innocent people worth that risk? Hasn’t their hardline rhetoric been softened at all by 59 festival-goers being slaughtered, to allow for at least SOME measure of uniform firearm oversight?    

Apparently not.        

___________

Addendum: Recently I watched an old episode of the highly underrated (but incredibly weird, don’t say I didn’t warn you) Adult Swim show Squidbillies, which took a darkly hilarious approach to gun logic. Obviously most gun control opponents are not vicious, ignorant hicks like the characters in the show but I’ll be damned if it didn't remind me of some of Nana's arguments. It’s an exaggerated, absurdist spectacle that doesn’t provide any nuance or insight into anything, but check it out if you’re in the mood for some vaguely uncanny silliness. 

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“racism at its worst”

Mystery internet person, I don’t even know what to say about this either. I don’t think there’s much that really needs saying. 

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January 2nd, 2009

It started innocently enough on that day; a chain email forwarded from Nana with the subject line, “World’s tallest snowman - you’ll be amazed!!”.�� It was a quaint news article segmented by a truly silly amount of pictures of the promised frozen behemoth. 

BETHEL , Maine (AP) - The world's tallest snowman is no man. The "snowwoman" towering over this village features eyelashes created from discarded skis and bright red lips made from painted car tires. She wears a giant red hat and a 100-foot-long scarf, and her blond tresses are made from rope. She gets a little bling from a snowflake pendant that's 6 feet long. 

[Seriously, there are like fifteen more shots just like these in there] 

A few days later came a collection of dumb blonde jokes, then a story about a MIRACLE that proves GOD is in CONTROL, then a Dr. Phil quiz, and so on and so forth with increasing frequency. By early March I was getting multiple emails per day, and it was at about this time that words like taxes and Obama started showing up in the subject lines. No surprise there, really. After reading a few of these stinging indictments of Michelle Obama’s secret hatred for America, I began ignoring them and probably opened fewer than 5% of the 705 junk emails I would receive from her over the course of three-and-a-half years. 

Indeed, between January 2nd, 2009 and July 19th, 2012 I received over seven-hundred of these stupid things in my inbox. Recently, I remembered their existence and clicked around through a bunch of them out of curiosity. To my disgust they sounded eerily familiar, like a PG rated, wackily-formatted window into the gruesome birth of Breitbart:  

“A little something to start your day!!”

I’ve got a few questions for you, too, ye olde sacred guardian of history. How on earth are you able to cope with the “inconvenience” of seeing others get racially profiled? Would you like to have a look at this graph showing the demographics of American mass murderers? HAVE the American people completely lost their minds?????

Obviously it’s rather pointless to be hurling these questions out into the ether five years later rather than directly confronting my grandparents about their racist beliefs (which I did a whole lot of back then, just not in response to the emails I wasn’t reading). But there is something nauseatingly ironic about that last question’s appearance in this email, the answer to which, less than half a decade later, is a definitive “yes”. And that is due in part to the rise and normalization of trash like this. 

So, if you’re feeling masochistic like me and you want to dissect the fake news larvae that helped spawn the post-truth period we’ve arrived at, follow me into a land full of various cascading typefaces, baffling usages of punctuation and capitalization, and sparkly animated gifs. 

And oh, there will be gifs. Mark my words...