You Have No Idea Whats Going Online

All right, I found a new Twitter feed to follow if you like seeing images of, you know,

America how it once was. But actually, America how it still is in many parts of the country. This one is called

Appalachian Aesthetics, Appalachian Aesthetics. And this is an example of the kind of content you will see.

I love this stuff. This, this, for some reason, this picture is so appealing to me.

Don't really know how to explain it, but I do enjoy it. I never lived in Appalachia, Appalachia.

My mom lives in West Virginia now, but I drive through it and stuff, but, but I don't know.

I just, I just always have, this kind of reminds me of New England a little bit too, to be honest. So maybe that's what it is. I don't know.

But I like this stuff. I like this stuff. So Appalachian Aesthetics, give it a follow on Twitter.

Twitter kind of stinks these days. I got to be honest, I, I think it sucks. It's that ever since Elon took over, it's actually much worse.

I don't know why. Maybe the algorithm, maybe I'm just addicted to the algorithm. I don't know. But I don't really do much on Twitter these days anymore.

Let's actually talk about something else. I was following, well,

I was, I was reading some, some posts from L. L is a noted conspiracy theorist, banned account with a profane name, according to the

New York Times, a harmful misinformation actor, according to Twitch, a fringe blog, of course, according to Rachel Maddow.

And, you know, she talks about a lot of various things. She does a lot of Internet research and she has a podcast. I've never watched the podcast, to be honest, but her feeds on Gab and she's actually on Twitter again, because I think she got banned a long time ago.

Her feeds are always pretty interesting. So definitely recommend a follow there. She had mentioned a few times that if you want to get a more clear window into exactly what the elites are up to, like what they, what they really talk about, you got to go on LinkedIn because LinkedIn, they're much more open about their, their stuff.

And I agree. LinkedIn is a disaster. I use LinkedIn every single day for my job.

It's a very good database for me to start a lot of my research when I'm looking for particular candidates or potential clients and things like that.

It's a very good starting point. So I use LinkedIn very often, but it is a cesspool.

There is, there is no question about that. LinkedIn is a complete cesspool. You know, lately

I've been seeing a lot of, you know, I got laid off type posts, right? And there's a few different patterns in all of these posts.

You know, some of the posts on LinkedIn, they'll say something like, you know, I was impacted by the layoff.

It's a very particular turn of phrase, impacted by the layoffs. And it's a kind of an awkward turn of phrase too.

It's led many people to believe that they've, they've signed a certain agreement in order to get the severance package, which a lot of these companies are offering pretty generous severance packages, or at least the big tech companies are.

And so they have to either say nothing or say something like I was impacted. And it's a very passive sort of thing.

It doesn't really describe what happened. You got fired. You know, you got let go. You got discarded in many ways.

And I think, to be honest, I think that these layoffs were done via an algorithm. I don't think that it was like a decision that a human beings made.

I think that a computer program decided who was going to be laid off and who was not. And that's very impersonal.

It's very cold. And even the way they've done it is very cold. You know, a lot of people, according to LinkedIn, of course, a lot of people, either they got an email that told them they were being let go, or they just couldn't log into their during in the middle of the day.

You know, they started their day, they tried to log in, they couldn't. And that's how they found out they were laid off. And you know, obviously, that's that's pretty cold, you know, that you spent 10 years at a company and then one day you can't log in because you got fired.

That's kind of messed up. Now, of course, the severance package definitely makes up for that if you get one, because the thing is, there's a lot of people, companies laying off that aren't

Google, that aren't Microsoft, that aren't Amazon, that aren't these companies. And they're not getting quite as generous a severance package.

And so, you know, a lot of a lot of people are kind of in a tough spot right now, I think.

And one thing I've noticed is that a lot of recruiters are being let go. A lot of diversity, equity and inclusion recruiters are being let go.

And I mean, obviously, I've I know why that that is, of course, they don't. They're they're thinking that these companies are not committed to the mission, which, of course, they probably aren't, because it's not really part of their money making mission.

But in any case, a lot of stuff is happening. Right. And what

I wanted to say today is that, you know, you really have no idea what's going on at any given time.

You don't have any clue what's going on on any at any given time online anyway, because here's the thing, like what you see presented online is so often the complete polar opposite of what the truth is.

You've seen that picture. I think it was on The New Yorker or something like that of like a social media influencer.

And like, she's like, you know, she's like dressed up nicely from here up. She's got her makeup on.

She's like smiling and stuff. But the picture is an image of her entire room. And like she's like not wearing pants and her room is a mess.

She's got pill bottles over here because she's depressed. She's got empty liquor bottles over here because, you know, she drinks all the time.

And it's just a disaster. But from here up, what you see on the camera, that's totally put together.

So often what you see is the complete polar opposite. Let me give you an example. I know a lot of companies and I know a lot of CEOs and I know a lot of businessmen.

And I see what they promote online and the kinds of things that they promote online. In fact, there's one company that comes to mind.

I will not name this company. But one company that comes to mind that in January laid off a third of their company.

So over a hundred people, let's just, let's just call it that. I think it's, I think it's over a hundred people, but if not, it's close.

They let in, in January, the, one of the first things they did was lay off a third of their company. In December, in December, mid -December, we're talking like maybe right before Christmas, so a couple of weeks prior, they had a post on, on, on, online on LinkedIn about how great they had done that year.

How great they had done. They had improved their, their revenues. They were, they were so grateful to all of their employees that had such a tremendous impact on it.

They're, they're, they're growing. They're, they're growing their payroll. Everything was looking up. And it's like, if you looked at December 15th, the post that they put online, it's like, man, this company is growing.

They're, they're hiring. I can't wait to see what they do next year. They're going to probably double in size.

Again, the revenues are all headed in the right direction. They're going to be hiring, you know, all this stuff.

Right. And not two weeks later, they let go of a third of their company because they didn't hit the revenue number or whatever it was.

Right. And you got to figure two weeks prior, they already knew that they were going to be doing this.

And yet they posted anyway about how great everything was going. Now I'm not saying that's wrong or right.

I'm not saying that that was the wrong thing to do. But what I'm saying is that you as the observer, you don't know what's going on.

You see the post about how great everything is and you don't have a clue. You need to keep that in mind.

I think, especially as you consume internet content, I think that, that I started looking into a theory called the dead internet theory.

Have you heard of the dead internet theory? It is very, very interesting. I don't know. I just started looking into it, so I don't really know what to believe about it.

But the dead internet theory basically says that like over half or either now or in some point in the future, more than half of the content that you see is completely fake.

In other words, the people that comment on your videos, the people that watch your videos, the people that engage with your videos, your blog posts are written, all this, it's all computer generated.

There's a lot of fake people out there. There's a lot of fake content out there. And when I say fake, I mean, not created by a person, right?

Like an article, not written by a person written by a computer, um, and things like that. And so people are getting these, these signals all based on a fantasy that was somebody created in a computer program.

It's almost like a matrix. Like you've seen the movie, the matrix where everyone's kind of plugged into the matrix.

It's not quite as hardcore as that, but it's similar because it has you engage and occupied and spending your time and money and attention and all that on things that aren't real.

They don't exist in reality, right? There was, I guess, a social media influencer that had, you know, millions of followers.

And it came out that she was actually not real. She wasn't even a person. She was computer generated, like things like that.

And, and, and the dead internet theory says that they've got you all kind of wrapped up and at each other's throats with this fantasy world that they've created.

It's like the matrix except it's not as hardcore. It's just, um, it's layered kind of into reality, right?

So when you engage with that article that makes you so upset about the libs doing this or that, that could be computer generated.

It could be completely fabricated situation and you aren't any the wiser. You can't figure out whether it's true or not.

And it's a moneymaking scheme primarily. Um, but also it's, it robs you of a lot of your energy, right?

It saps you of energy and things like that. And I, you know, I've often wondered this too. It's like, you know, when you see like one of your enemies, you know, it's often, it's like, they're like, it's almost like they were created in a lab, right?

Like everything is perfect about them. Like you think about Alexandria Ocasio -Cortez, right? Like her whole backstory and her whole personality and even her appearance, everything is so perfectly on the nose lib that it's like, it was almost like she was created to annoy you as much as possible.

Even the way her voice sounds, it's annoying as all get out. And it's like, she's just too perfect.

You know, Nancy Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi was the third most powerful person in the entire world, not too long ago.

Right. And you look at her and she's, you're like, how can that be? Cause you look at her and she's doesn't appear powerful.

She doesn't look like she should have anyone respecting her whatsoever. And just like, it gets you all like upset, you know, on the inside.

How can this be? How can this be my overlord? You think about, you think about the, all the trainees that are in positions of power and authority, and you're like, how can we be ruled by this?

It's almost like someone did it, put them in that position just to put us in a state of anger, despair, and all of that kind of stuff.

And I've often wondered, I wonder if they actually do do that. If they pick certain people because they know their appearance and their whole backstory and their whole, their, their track record is just going to flummox you.

You're going to be so confused as how is this person rise to the top? And it's going to be, you're going to be despairing because it's like, if this person's ruling over me, what can

I do? Right. The truth is you don't know what the heck is going on. You mean, you know, it was

Barack Obama, Manchurian candidate. Who knows? Who knows? Maybe, probably. Yes. Who knows? And so the point is you don't know what's going on online half the time.

Right. But that's okay. Because this is the thing people will fall into despair. Like, well, I guess nothing's real.

You know what I mean? It's like that. It's like, that's not true. It's not that nothing's real. It's the, it's just that the things that are real, the things that you know about the people that you know, you know them.

You, in fact, you probably spend time with them. You know what I mean? Or you talk to them on the phone or you, you know, you have your zoom calls with them and stuff like that.

Those are the people that you should be putting the lion's share of your time into.

Not only because you know, they're real, but, but also because they're the ones that matter the most, right?

Your, your local community, your local church. This is the church is just, it's like the last bastion of like reality, right?

Because we know when we go to church and we see the faces of our friends and our, our brothers and sisters and, you know, our elders, our deacons, you know, things like that, or we, we, we see their faces.

We know what they're about. We know their pain. We know their, their, their, their joys.

And we can celebrate that with them together. It's our families. Your kids are real, right?

You know, your kids are real. Your wife is real. You know, your wife is real. And so that's where the lion's share of your energy and time and focus should be.

Providing for them, spending time on them, building for them, right?

If all of your time and energy is spent in the internet, you need to come to terms with the fact that that might not be real.

And you know, here's the thing. I wondered myself, it's like, how do I know, like my videos right now, they get like 3000 views, maybe a good video.

We'll get, you know, 6 ,000 views, something like that. What if I found out that 95 % of those were fake?

In other words, and I'm not saying you're fake, obviously you're real. But it's without question that there are farms that farm views, right?

They'll watch your video for a few seconds and all of that and leave a comment.

At least a lot of times it's a weird comment, but it's not real. It's not a real view. Would my content be different if I knew that maybe,

I don't know, 300 people were watching it, 300 real people instead of 3000, you know, would my content be different?

Would my life be, would I spend my time differently? I don't know how to answer that question, but I think the answer is yes.

I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Very interesting stuff here. Very interesting stuff.

Indeed. What is presented online is so often not the truth, not the reality.

And we've got to consider that when we're engaging with people. That's why I think I find, I'm always happy when

I meet somebody that I know from online, like I met Joel Webben, right? I'm going to be on Joel Webben's show again soon.

And Joel was a great guy and he was the same guy that he is online.

At least that's how it appeared to me. And his family was wonderful. He has a real wife, he has real children and it's great, you know, and we spent some time with them and that was wonderful.

John Harris, same thing. And then so many of you that aren't content creators, you know, you've come up to me, you've introduced yourself to me and we've had, you know, short or long conversations and it's been fun, you know, and that's real and that's the kind of thing that I'm willing to spend time on.

And so, you know, I think, you know, if it was like my audience is really 10 % of what it seems to be and it's you guys, a lot still do the videos, right?

Would they be different? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. But the point is that evaluate your own life, right?

Because what they feed you, what the algorithms feed you, what you get all upset about, you know, the latest controversy between, you know,

Crowder and Ben Shapiro and all that kind of stuff. All of that is, is put, it's given to you for a reason.

And I don't think that the reason is because that's the important thing. You know what I mean? I'm, I'm, call me crazy, call me crazy, but I don't think that the reason they give it to you is because that's something valuable to spend your time on.

Um, I don't know. I mean, maybe, maybe, maybe not. I'm not really sure even what this video is about, but it's just, I've been thinking about this because of that, that one company that I know was, was touting their success and then getting rid of a third of their company.

And the same thing with these big tech companies and all of that. It's just, it's, it's, it's amazing to me.

It's amazing to me how these things go down. In any case, I hope you found this video helpful.