An Old Man Looked Directly at an Eclipse. His Reason for Doing it Will Change You Forever

If there's one thing I learned when I was twelve, it's that you shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet.

It was a simpler animal back then and it usually wasn't the main source for news or a place to check facts. The idea that most people who used computers with any regularity were bespeckled nerds who lived in their mothers' basements. And while this notion has survived with a small segment of the 71 year old man-child demographic, it is deemed by most to be false. Everyone is connected now.

And with everyone connected, there is so much information available that it is overwhelming. There's no way to consume it all, let alone give it the critical analysis it likely deserves. Part of that critical analysis involves fact checking, and fact checking involves work. And it can be boring and tedious. So it doesn't happen as often as it should.

And so we make our lives easier by going with sources we think we can trust and we let them do the work for us. Sometimes this is good, but sometimes it's bad. And when it gets really bad is when the people who don't fact check (or just manufacture stories with no factual content) convince the naive that they are trust worthy.

Want to Lose Wrinkles? Use This Crazy Tip Every Day.

Clickbait. It's everywhere. And, like telemarketing, I am still amazed that it works on some people.

Clickbait is so prevalent that there are entire websites dedicated to lampooning it. And yet it seems to slip into every little crevasse and navigation sidebar with advertising space. And while it's easy to spot, I've come to the realization that we are now a nation run by clickbait.

Our Commander-in-Chief, a declining huckster mired in the depths of dementia, is exactly the kind of person that falls for this nonsense all the time. Combine that with his insatiable lust for attention and you get something particularly nasty. He's like clickbait come to life, but with the power to inform how we live. (And, depending on how the dick-measuring contest with North Korea or his healthcare repeal efforts go, he has the power to inform how we die, too.)

It is in this environment that the sun has decided to hide from us behind the moon.

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So what the fuck am I going on about here anyway? What does the eclipse have to do with our cultural decline or the gullibility of the public? Well, nothing really. Or at least not something I'm in any place to comment on.

But it is now that the forces of Wayne Diego (Nic Ouzo, Joe Reefer, and myself) are back in the same place. Watch out, world!