OK, Doomer: How to stop the scroll and take control



You are drowning in doom.

Everything only seems to go one way. The news always validates what you already suspect. It’s the same thing every day. It all just gets worse and worse.

If life were truly terrible, you would have no desire to spend every waking hour brooding over depressing predictions about how everything is only going to get worse.

You open your phone and you scroll just so you can get mad. The truth is that you don’t want to see any glimmer of hope.

You mad?

You want to be mad, you want to be sad, you want to know how bad everything is. You want the hard stuff. The dark stuff. The worse it gets, the better it is. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel.

Good. You are addicted. It’s making you miserable, but you are hooked. You can’t stop. You are like the strung-out crackhead at the safe injection site, but instead of a dilapidated room and glazed-over eyes, it’s you hunched over your iPhone on your couch next to the air conditioner.

Doomerism is addicting.

Mainlining apocalypse

It’s a modern drug of the internet. It’s like falling down a hole over and over again. You fall down and then you fall some more. And then you kind of want to see how far it goes, so you start running as fast as you can down into the black abyss.

You seek out more and more obscure accounts and sources. You want to feel like apocalypse is right around the corner. You want to know all the bad stuff first so you can say “told you so” when your nightmare (secretly a fantasy) becomes reality.

You want to get as depressed as you can about the state of the world. There is no future. That’s what you say. You are happiest when you are sad. That’s your dirty little secret, but you will never say it. You can’t. You have to pretend like you are dooming for the sake of the greater good.

You don’t ever want to fix it. You don’t want any solutions. In fact, seeing solutions ticks you off, so you scroll right past those. Deep down, you want to hear over and over again that everything is hopeless.

It’s dark. It’s twisted. And it could only exist in a time like ours. Relative material abundance, decent medical care, and a fairly predictable life when compared to most other times in history. These are the conditions for doomerism.

If life were truly terrible, you would have no desire to spend every waking hour brooding over depressing predictions about how everything is only going to get worse. No. You would be hoping for any kind of lifeboat. Any kind of hope.

Doomerism is a kind of LARP product of the internet and abundance-induced boredom.

Terminally online

A key to doomerism is the abstract nature of the engine. Doomerism is almost always primarily based on, and derived from, news or social media. The real thrust is almost never found in real, tangible life.

The primary drivers tend to be far away, abstract, or found primarily in the digital realm. The farther one moves from the actual world and into the digital, the deeper into the realm of doomerism one wanders.

Every doomer is terminally online. Of course, it’s very possible to be depressed offline. There are, tragically, far too many souls lost in the dark labyrinth of depression.

But this is not doomerism. Every doomer, without question, is addicted to the discourse, social media, or the news cycle. These abstract digital forces take up the majority of the doomer’s daily concern. Life and living have all but evaporated for the doomer. All that remains is discourse addiction and dooming.

The cure for doomerism

While doomerism is a serious affliction, it can be cured. The first step to treating doomerism is reclaiming your agency and reasserting control over your personal domain.

The news cycle, discourse, or latest and greatest rage-bait are worthless in your personal world. They don’t help you cultivate your culture; they don’t positively impact your personal growth or your quality of life in any meaningful way.

All they do is distract you from taking control in your personal domain. They draw more and more of your attention into the domain where you are helpless while you give up any hope of impacting the domain where you are most able.

Vital realism

Of course this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take an interest in world affairs or politics. Of course not. But you must put these things in the right place. You must realize that overly obsessive doom and gloom are like a cancer of the spirit. Even if the doomed analysis was correct, it doesn’t help in any positive way. It is worthless.

To overcome doomerism, you must return to the actual and the personal. You must learn to accept the things you cannot change and realize that all the pointlessly depressing discourse is like a drug wanting to drag you down into the toilet bowl.

It might feel like it is gravely important and you need to know it, but it really isn’t and you really don’t. Think for a moment about all the extremely depressing bits of info you have learned, worried over, and then forgotten. How much of your life did you lose?

We only have so much energy to expend. We can only spin so many plates at one time. If we focus every last drop of our hearts and souls on that which we are not a part of, we become spectators in our own lives. Watching carefully. Depressed about the outcome. Analyzing what could have been done differently after the fact. Dooming.

The solution to doomerism is not naive Polyannaism but vital realism. It’s allocating your effort and emotion to the domains where your action is most profoundly felt.

The world will not change because of doomerism. The world is indifferent to the doomer. It will change if we make positive change where we we stand. Cultivate our culture, live the values we believe, and make a positive impact on the world around us.

Oregon’s Voting Portal Appears To Let Anyone Cast An Overseas Voter’s Ballot With Just His Name And Birthday

Fraudsters may be able to cast ballots of Oregon voters who are overseas (and potentially those who are domestic) using an online loophole.

Clinton calls for continued demonization of Trump and jailing of Americans over 'propaganda'



Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton appeared on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show" Monday, encouraging fellow travelers to continue with the anti-Trump rhetoric that set the stage for two assassination attempts and recommending the prosecution of American citizens over so-called undesirable speech.

After Maddow concern-mongered without interruption for over a minute, Clinton suggested that the mainstream media's failure to "cover Trump the way that they should" has "threatened the physical safety of so many people."

Clinton was not referring to President Donald Trump, who was targeted for assassination the previous day, but rather the illegal aliens he has criticized.

'I don't understand why it's so difficult for the press to have a consistent narrative.'

Clinton intimated that dissenting views are the problem — that the press should adopt a single narrative moving forward.

"I don't understand why it's so difficult for the press to have a consistent narrative about how dangerous Trump is," said Clinton, a proponent of the Russian collusion hoax and an advocate for punishing standout journalists who faithfully fulfilled their duty.

It's unclear how much more conformity it would take to satisfy Clinton. After all, the mainstream media has consistently attacked Trump and portrayed him in a negative light over the past eight years.

Blaze News previously reported that Pew Research showed 20% of stories in the press about Obama in his first 60 days in office were negative and 42% were positive. In Biden's first 60 days, 19% of the stories were negative; 27% were positive. In Trump's first 60 days, 62% of the stories about his presidency were negative and only 5% were positive.

A Harvard University study found that 80% of the press coverage of Trump during his first 100 days was negative.

The Media Research Center revealed last month that on CBS, NBC, and ABC, Kamala Harris was painted in a favorable light in 84% of the networks' coverage, whereas Trump was depicted negatively in 89% of their coverage, reported the New York Sun.

The coverage has not only been consistently negative but hyperbolic. The mainstream media has dutifully worked in concert with Democrats to characterize Trump as a would-be dictator or a reincarnation of Hitler.

Having apparently not learned anything from the actions of Thomas Matthew Crooks and Ryan Routh — or perhaps just enough — Clinton stressed that Americans should be "outraged by what [Trump] represents," adding that he is a "very dangerous man."

After recycling Democrats' well-worn Project 2025 falsehood and joining Maddow in once again resurrecting fears about Russian election interference, Clinton suggested that Americans engaged in what she believes constitutes foreign-sponsored "propaganda" should be "civilly or even in some cases criminally charged."

'Something makes me feel like she might be talking about some friends of mine.'

According to Clinton, clamping down on the constitutionally protected speech of Americans accused of advancing Russian talking points would "be a better deterrence because the Russians are unlikely, except in a very few cases, to ever stand trial in the United States."

Responding to Clinton's comments, Blaze Media co-founder and nationally syndicated radio host Glenn Beck said Tuesday, "Something makes me feel like she might be talking about some friends of mine. I don't know. But that seems like dangerous talk and a slippery slope."

Clinton alluded to the suggestion by some Republicans in Congress that their colleagues had parroted Russian propaganda on the House floor. She appears to be referring to Ohio Republican Rep. Mike Turner's assertion to CNN earlier this year that "there are members of Congress today who still incorrectly say that this conflict between Russia and Ukraine is over NATO, which of course it is not."

Turner, who was reportedly advancing an accusation made earlier by Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas), added, "To the extent that this propaganda takes hold, it makes it more difficult for us to really see this as an authoritarian versus democracy battle, which is what it is."

Americans who would dare exercise their constitutional rights to suggest that NATO expansionism was a motivating factor behind Russia's invasion would apparently be ripe for prosecution if Clinton got her way.

Clinton has been pushing for a clampdown on speech she finds undesirable for a while.

In 2021, Clinton told the Guardian, "The technology platforms are so much more powerful than any organ of the so-called mainstream press, and I do think that there has to be not just an American reckoning but a global reckoning with the disinformation, with the monopolistic power and control, with the lack of accountability that the platforms currently enjoy."

"In particular Facebook, which has the worst track record for enabling mistruths, misinformation, extremism, conspiracy, for goodness' sake, even genocide in Myanmar against the Rohingya," continued Clinton. "So governments are going to have to decide right now that the platforms have to be held to some kind of standard, and it's tricky."

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The stupidity of online discourse



There’s an online game I find myself playing way too much of, and I hate it. I would love to never play this game again, but its existence is a consequence of the deep structure of social media, so if I’m going to argue about things on the internet, then playing it is unavoidable.

I call this game, “Where Is the Discourse?” It goes something like this:

  1. Alice opens with a few examples of an argument (or point of view, or sentiment, or whatever) that she doesn’t think much of and would like to refute.
  2. Bob counters that nobody who matters is making that argument and that Alice’s examples are cherry-picked (or “nutpicked” to use the old “blogosphere” term from the mid-2000s).
  3. Alice responds to Bob by highlighting the credentials of the people behind a few of her examples. Maybe they have large social media followings or notable institutional affiliations. Or maybe the person is a total rando, but the tweet or screen-cap or Forbes article with the person's byline on it has tons of shares.
  4. Bob then works his way through Alice’s response by picking apart, in detail, the qualifications and standing of each of the people she has put forth.
  5. (Optional step): Alice rebuts Bob with a defense of each individual’s standing as a qualified participant in the Discourse, and both parties drift further into the weeds of credentials, metrics, and bona fides.

By the time they get to move #4 in this game, the debate has shifted entirely from a fight over the merits of the argument Alice sought to refute to a squabble over whether or not this specific list of individuals is representative of any larger group, movement, or way of thinking.

In other words, Alice and Bob are now fighting over the location of the Discourse. Where is it? Who is and is not a participant in it? Which bylines, institutional affiliations, follower counts, or engagement metrics qualify an individual as a bona fide participant in the Discourse?

Back in the bad old days of media monopolies, everyone knew where the Discourse was. If you had a local monopoly on one or more scarce channels of distribution — a slice of the electromagnetic spectrum, newsstand, library shelf space, or print facilities plus a fleet of delivery vehicles — then you were definitionally a site of the Discourse and could gatekeep who participated and who did not.

But now that everyone with smartphone access has the ability to publish text, images, sound, and video instantly for the entire planet to see, our society has collectively lost track of the location of the Discourse in the space of about a decade and a half. No new discursive Schelling point has emerged to replace the now-dead radio, TV, and print monopolies. We are adrift.

Perhaps the most corrosive effect of “Where Is the Discourse?” on our collective intellectual life is the way it reduces even the loftiest issues down to petty fights over credentials.

I’m reminded of the adage, “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” The discourse game, then, is a powerful mechanism for turning every discussion of ideas into a discussion of people, thereby shrinking the mind of each player by two sizes.

Americans across the country are experiencing drops in cell service, in some cases hindering 911 calls



Tens of thousands of Americans awoke Thursday morning to discover their cell phones were bereft of signal. In addition to being unable to touch base with friends, families, and coworkers, some users apparently were unable to hail 911.

While those affected by the cascading cellular service outages appear to be predominantly AT&T customers, clients of other service providers are reportedly experiencing issues.

Around 3 a.m., there was a spike in reports of AT&T outages on the website Downdetector. As of 9:02 a.m. ET, there were over 73,000 reporters of customers experiencing service issues.

While Verizon, T-Mobile and other providers similarly saw spikes, Downdetector indicated they were orders of magnitude smaller. Verizon and T-Mobile maintain that their networks were unaffected and operating normally.

A spokesman for T-Mobile told CBS News, "Downdetector is likely reflecting challenges our customers were having attempting to connect to users on other networks."

"Some customers experienced issues this morning when calling or texting with customers served by another carrier," Verizon said in a statement obtained by the New York Times. "We are continuing to monitor the situation."

While AT&T has confirmed that it is experiencing rampant outages, it failed to provide an explanation for why the failure occurred in the first place, reported CNN.

"Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. We are working urgently to restore service to them," the company said in a statement. "We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored."

A spokesman for the company indicated further that AT&T's first responder network nevertheless remains operational.

The outages prompted some speculation online about possibly wicked causes, such as an electromagnetic pulse strike or a cyberattack; however, an industry source who spoke to CNN under the condition of anonymity suggested the issue is likely linked to a process known as peering, whereby cellphone services pass off calls from one network to the next.

CNN noted that the company was experiencing sporadic outages earlier this week, including a drop in 911 service in various southeastern states.

Blaze News reached out to AT&T for comment on the extent and cause of the outages as well as a projected timeline on a remedy but did not immediately receive a reply.

Various municipalities and local authorities across the country have confirmed the outages, in some cases highlighting corresponding difficulties reaching first responders by phone.

The City of Upper Arlington in Ohio noted that outages were affecting fire alarms, such that first responders "may not be notified of an activation." The city advised residents to follow up alarms with a 911 call "for the foreseeable future."

The San Francisco Fire Department noted that while the San Francisco 911 center was still operational, 911 calls had reportedly been impacted for some customers.

Various other official channels, including the X accounts for the City of Little Rock, Arkansas, the Rockville City Police Department of Maryland, and Orlando Police Department in Florida noted similar difficulties. A common recommendation: Use family or friends as proxies for 911 calls or call from a landline.

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