"Married to the Fist That Feeds Us."

Essay - 00006

The meme farm media effect, small bite sized, quick social quips of baseless theoreticals has officially won the collective bargaining agreement with American Values. Throw out the days of reporting a situation, idea, or policy and meeting those with critical thinking and rational debate. Ring in the new reality of an A.D.H.D. riddled, hyper fast paced, knee jerk social reactionist, devoid of any fact or effort of independent thought. Hell, why let a little truth get in the way of a good mental fucking.

It’s pretty obvious when this started and who the loudest voice in the room was that constantly and consistently, for over a decade, beat this idea into the psyche of America. And it worked like a charm. America became the abused lover, backhanded slaps in the face of intelligence and facts, all while claiming that he loves us, and we just couldn’t get enough. But the hat says we’ll be great again right??? Choke us daddy Trump. HARDER. It’s easier to stay out of jail, when she never presses charges. Even better when she hands over her phone and lets him take control of the bank account. As it turns out, we’re kinky like that. We’ll happily throw away logic and self respect, our own morals and values, at the promise that Daddy knows best and he’s of course going to take care of us. Small little bite-sized Reels and out of context TikTok edits have become our new love language. We’ve turned the White House into a Wife Beater sales floor, complete with a WWE CEO. When the real news has Hulk Hogan pedaling votes, how are we ever supposed know what news is Fake?

The media, as it were presented and sold to us by our own “social” versions, became realities worst enemy according to some. Facts and truth, respect and regard, all the things that an abused spouse’s friends and family try to tell her become the enemy of the abuser. America’s pride is buried somewhere under the black eyes, right where a guy like Trump needs it to stay. “Make America Great Again” rings an awful lot like “You’ll never do better than me.”, and we ate that shit up… well, less than half of us did anyway. What caught me off guard, and frankly shouldn’t have, is how many respectable people were willing and enthusiastically ready to become the punching bag.

12% of men in 2024 claim to have no best friend. Loneliness is a great tool for propaganda. In 2017 when I left the Service Industry for good to become 100% self employed I saw my rolodex of friends evaporate more than half almost overnight. I hung onto bartending far longer than I needed to, because I craved the community it provided, and I wasn’t yet fully engulfed in a relationship with my phone. I was an insider, until I wasn’t. And once I wasn’t, I was out… ‘Community’ can be tough like that. A word we like to use in marketing to fluff up whatever brand or product, so often bullshit in the marketing sense, yet effective. Buy these supplements and become apart of the Gut Health COMMUNITY, you’ll never be lonely again and you’ll shit gold while you doom scroll every morning on the toilet. MAGA, as a brand understands this. MAGA also understands there’s a giant gap in people, primarily men in the US that have gone further and further from any sense of community. The more you lose your community, the more you’re willing to look for a new one. And guess where that new community lives? I’m guessing you're looking at it right now, I’m guessing it’s in your hand 10 hours a day, and I’m guessing your highly addicted to it. I know I am. Need a friend? The Motherships here for you, Apple put that best buddy in your pocket. And therein lies the problem. We used to have friends and conversation. The media was a source of information, the opinions of which were discussed in person. Now the friends have been replaced by scrolling, and the war waged on reporting is intentional. Daddy Trump knows that if he can keep us lonely and questioning the value of truth and fact, he’s welcome to keep skull fucking the Constitution all he wants. Where I differ, and what surprised me most, was how many lonely men willingly enjoyed a good mental skull fucking from Daddy in this country.

It was hard as hell to leave the Service Industry, and still is, I miss it everyday. I’m so fortunate to have amazing friends, and even though I lost access to that social club after leaving that industry, I’m one of the luckier ones that has a core group of lifelong best friends. So how does this translate to media??? Media is broad, it’s become reformed and reframed in such a short period of time, on such an unbelievable scale it’s impossible to measure the effects. A similar trajectory to loneliness. For many years I tamed my public thoughts on account of a client I valued, and once I was freed of that teeter totter of “Should I say this?”, I got to thinking. Something we would all benefit from. We all walk around with supercomputers in our back pockets, access to endless information, and like all good things, we ruined it. Instead of using them to get smarter, we were forced an algorithm, force fed a trust-no-one mentality, and led to believe that “Doing your own research.” meant trying to find an alternative to fact. And it worked.

I woke up the morning after the election, pissed off, and so grossly disappointed in the weak-minded abused half of this country. I was shocked that so many of my respectable friends and family chose to sell their values and turn their backs on their morals because they bought into the idea that a few billionaires and a bankrupt-impeached-sex offender-felon would somehow save them from Trans kids and this invisible murderous wave of gang members (ironically all carrying guns they voted to protect) that I’m still waiting to see show up on my south Minneapolis doorstep. As I looked at my phone the morning of November 6th, the very first virtual serving of the new reality of community I was fed, was from a guy I consider a dear friend. A man I’ve known and respected and looked to since I was in high school. In a joyous post he celebrated victory by claiming that now it was time for to “Come together, unity, and to be civil”, and of course he sighted “Community”. Perhaps my attitude was sour that morning and I just missed all the parts of the decade long, endless Trump campaign where he was so inspiring and civil to the virtues of unity and values that make the American spirit so great… but I doubt it. I have ears and can read. So perhaps my response to his post was dramatic? But again, I doubt it, I have ears and can read, and have done so for the last ten years. So I fired off and called out the hypocrisy of bullshit in that hollow call for community and civility. I was told I was the one being negative, which was accurate. However, I have ears and can read. Civility and the tactics of a Trump administration are the scientific result of oil and water. So naturally I was confused how such a respectable man, a successful man, and even a mentor in a sense could mistaken such a kindergarten level scientific result we all understand so clearly, so wrong? The sheer gall of calling for unity and civility, while supporting and cheering for the most clear and obvious candidate of the polar opposite of those virtues, was like claiming to be a climate change activist while burning tires to cook a shark fin. The mental gymnastics it takes to claim decency, then vote blatantly against it, is something I fortunately do not possess.

I looked to another person who had been wildly engaged in my political posts, another man I have known a very long time. And while we’ve likely never agreed on much politically or religiously, we’ve always been just fine in the real world. Unfortunately the real world is a virtual place now, and we’re all headed further and further down this road. Throughout the election this person would comment endlessly on my posts. There were long rebuttals to opinions and facts, deep dives into conspiracy and unsolicited DM’s. Most of it I never read. I just can’t take someone seriously who claims the mainstream media is rigged to oppress us, then endlessly share’s meme’s of TikTok wannabe Right Wing political pundits. I looked to his profile one afternoon after being DM’d a long winded rant about Nancy Pelosi & some obscure Right Wing website article, or something to that effect I honestly didn’t read it… I noticed what the saddest result of this Social Decoding, or more accurately Social Dissolution is. As I scrolled down past endless posts of reshared political meme’s, I was shocked at how much this thought process and obsession had claimed this man’s life. Years worth of manufactured anger and political virtue signaling replaced any sense of family or joy. For three straight years this man’s social virtual output on Instagram become nothing but reshares of Right Wing edits. But in this person’s mind it was important to signal to the community that they had outsmarted the “system” by demonstrating how far down the rabbit hole they’d been led. It was far more important to publicly signal that they knew the real cause of George Floyd’s death than it was to wish their daughter a happy birthday. So when I asked myself how the fuck did we get here??? I saw my answer on their virtual wall, and my god is that a depressing place to visit. This wasn’t politics, it was a diagnosis.

We’re fed what we engage online. It comes as no surprise to me that depression and loneliness is rising at crippling rates. There was a collective war waged on traditional media for personal and political gains, and for market position by the vessels that feed us the news, and it worked. It’s no coincidence that a guy like Trump doesn’t want you to watch the news, or even worse, believe it. Because then we have to actually acknowledge what we did to ourselves. Attacking fact and manipulating confusion, stoking mistrust is how we end up married to the fist that feeds us. I watched another friend unravel from respectable, likable, and even widely agreeable into a endless stream of pointless attempts to be somehow right about something, seemingly anything. 3 to 5 posts a day digging through wild avenues of what-about-isms, and insane comparisons of irrelevant nonsense to try to signal to the world he was above it all, he was smarter than the machine…. unsurprisingly he lost all audience, virtual friendships, and clearly the two things he was craving so much of, respect & attention. A sad scroll through his Facebook revealed a never ending conversation of anger, talking to a virtual wall with an audience of one. The belief that if we dig far enough into the bowels of the internet we can find the truth, is as dangerous as trusting your yoga instructor in Costa Rica to cure your brain tumor. Even scarier is the thought that we now pedestalize these “Social Decoders” with more revere than we do our own critical thinking. When Rogan becomes your source for information on vaccines, it’s no wonder Trump can be your beacon of family values. It doesn’t make any sense, and it’s not supposed to. If it made any sense it wouldn’t be entertaining, and entertainment is one antidote to loneliness.

Is it all bad though? A friend of mine, a Trump supporter, and I got into an argument. I questioned how he could know everything we do about Trump, support him, and still attempt to maintain that he lives with a clear moral conscious? How do explain Trump to a child, his history, his words, his brand of leadership? If you wouldn’t let him coach your kids little league team, how can you actively appoint him to the most delicate and powerful role in the world? This is a person I’ve known since childhood, a friend, a respected friend. We both heated up in conversation and went our virtual separate ways. A couple weeks later I was in his city and we met for a beer. He was still the same guy I love and respect, and I hopefully the same to him. We talked as friends, left the politics out of it as we all often do in person, and had a great conversation. You would never know we had an ugly disagreement just days before. It ended with us both exchanging very thoughtful gifts that neither of us expected. Two men, friends, who vehemently disagree not necessarily politically, but about one man in particular were able to share a beer and leave better for it. For that reason I’m hopeful.

Fake News isn’t reporting the facts through accredited institutions, it’s every one of us becoming our own version of Dan Rather. My friend retorted in our argument that he was sick of “Career Politicians”. That made me think, as opposed to what??? Politics IS a career. It’s a hard one too that takes an extreme amount of knowledge and patience, that threatens your private life at every turn, and holds your every decision accountable. I’ve sat through many Minneapolis Park Board meetings with non career elected citizens, and trust me, they don’t get shit done. The last thing on Earth I’d ever want to see is a politician that isn’t in it at the career level. And that goes for media too. Tim Pool is no Dan Rather, he’s literally described as an “American Commentator”. Which is to say, no different than the opinion essay you’re reading right now. But this is where so many of us find our media and our news now, through the lens of the least qualified amongst us. I offer you no news here, I offer you an opinion, and there IS a difference. The adults in the room need to be intelligent enough to sift through the opinion of it all, and find the facts. The Career Politicians need to be accountable for the quite boring and thankless job they have, not the entertainers we’ve become so accustomed to. Yes, I’d like my New York Times like I like my elected officials, career, factual, and boring as fuck.

So here we are. Psychologically abused into believing the facts are fake, that America needs a savior, and that we all should “do our own research”, or in other words decide what’s real for us. Daddy’s gonna fix it all, the black eye is temporary. The TDS my friends, is not hating our collective abuser, it’s continuing to love him.

-Mark Rivard