Clickbait stories predated the internet.
One way to get people to click on a story or buy a newspaper is to print an outrage story. You want to get people all riled up so they have something to talk about around the water cooler at work the next day. And nothing sparks outrage like a "HOA Nazis" story about some poor schmuck who ran afoul (no pun intended) of his Homeowners Association after he innocently and deliberately violated the rules over a ten year period - rules he agreed to when he bought the place. I mean, what's the world coming to when you can't fly a football-field-sized American flag outside your townhouse? I mean, after all the guy is a veteran or sort of is one. He likes veterans, anyway.
It is akin to the lawnmower refusnik stories that the WaPo likes to publish periodically. Joe Freedom Fighter is fighting for the right to bring down property values in his neighborhood! Meanwhile, the writers for the Washington Post retreat to their secluded gated communities where lawns are kept immaculate by an army of illegal immigrants.
Slow news day? Just regurgitate some outrage story. It gets clicks! Besides, all the insurrection stuff is BORING!
And this has been going on years before the Internet. The Internet makes it worse, because the headline has to be that much more outrageous to get people to click. All news is clickbait news, today.
The latest "outrage du jour" is a WaPo article telling a tale of woe of innocent people who just like to throw a few bread crumbs at the ducks - and now they're going to lose their house because of a vindictive homeowner's association! Boo! Hiss! HOA's suck! Why do they have to enforce all those rules we agreed upon when we bought the place? Get out the torches and pitchforks! Storm the castle! Kill the monster! After all, you've read the headline, what else is there to know?
Well, a lot more. Someone posted this riposte online:
There is way, way more to this story. I live in the neighborhood. Pretty close to this lady actually. It’s a nightmare.
They aren’t being sued for $250k. It’s a click bait, terrible headline. When filing a petition, lawyers are required state in all petitions what they are seeking monetary relief of $250k or less because that is what triggers the Discovery Plan Level. That’s all that number is, it is not the amount of damages being sought. The suit is not seeking any money other than attorneys fees. The relief sought is specifically outlined as, “Plaintiff request that the court award it a temporary and permanent injunction requiring Defendants to cease from feeding wildlife, including but not limited to ducks or other fowl, within the community.” They are also seeking to enforce the lien that every HOA has against a home and that the HOA may foreclose on the home if the Defendants don’t abide by the court’s injunction.
This has been going on for years. The homeowners refused to address the issue. It’s not some overnight thing.
I like how the article shows her with like 4 ducks. The problem is far more than 4 ducks. Try 50+
This shitshow (it is actually creating a LITERAL shitshow) caused by this lady has impacted the people that live around her. There’s duck crap everywhere. The ducks have destroyed neighbors yards and front porches. Some ducks have been killed due to the sheer amount that congregate in the road. People have been attacked by the ducks. Homeowners had tried to address this with her themselves and she’s not exactly been nice about it.
They have been told repeatedly, for years to stop. Even by game wardens but have refused. They decided to call the HOAs bluff and got burned.
There will be a huge block party when these dipshits move.
I can sympathize. When we bought our condos in Florida, there was a nice couple who was renting one of the units down the way. They had all these bowls and trays to feed wild ducks - the kind with the giant knobs on their beaks (geese I guess?). There were only a few ducks, but there was duck shit everywhere and any time you went to that end of the building, you were attacked by honking ducks who would peck you with their rock-hard bills (usually in the nuts, too!). The couple finally moved away and they made me promise we would keep feeding the ducks. I lied. And the ducks were gone in a matter of days. Turns out, food was what they wanted it, and without it, they left.
I learned the hard way that putting food out for animals can backfire. You try to feed a few birds and
you end up with dozens of squirrels - and raccoons and possums and deer, and yes, even rats. You take the feeders down and
bam! they all disappear. Even a bowl of fresh water is a tempting delicacy for wild animals - and you can't blame them for that (there are no drinking fountains in the wild and licking dew off leaves gets old really fast).
It is like these idiots who think it is "funny" to
feed a seagull a french fry at a restaurant, and when you ask them to stop, they say, "fuck you, buddy, it's my french fry!" You go inside because you know how this is going to play out. Five minutes later, the restaurant is inundated with dozens of gulls and people are running and spilling more food in the process, which attracts more gulls (and maybe a hungry raccoon living under the deck). If you want to have real fun, bar the door so they can't get in - it's like a re-make of Alfred Hitchcock's
The Birds. Serves those fuckers right -
I did, after all, warn them.
But getting back to topic, the goal of the media is to get you to click. And to do this, they lie to you to make things seem worse than they are. So the headline in the above article implies that a few breadcrumbs results in foreclosure, when in fact these folks have been accumulating fines for years and nailing themselves to the cross. All they had to do was stop doing something, and it isn't that hard to not feed ducks. It is likely that the HOA will attach a lien to the property and when these folks sell, they will lose a portion of the equity in their home due to their own malfeasance.
People think they can go to the media and shame the HOA into capitulating - and in some cases they do, particularly after HOA board members start getting death threats from across the nation. That is no way to live and that is not civilization. In most cases, though, the HOA prevails. The WaPo loves to do stories about Reston, Virginia, where they have a strict HOA code. You can't paint your front door unless it is an approved color. Your home has to be kept to a certain appearance standard - which is why people buy homes there, as it doesn't look like a slum.
But every year, some idiot paints his door purple and the runs off to the Washington Post with his tale of outrage when the HOA fines him $110 after sending several written and verbal warnings over the period of a year. What's more, the schmuck admits he knew of the rules (hard not to, in a place like that) but felt they didn't apply to him.
It's a fucking tempest in a teapot not a national story worthy of the Washington Post. But it's right up there, on page 2, next to an article about the MyPillowGuy committing treason. Yea, they are pretty much equivalent events.
But you see, the billionaires of the world, like Jeff Bezos, want you to contently nibble on your media kibble. They want you to read these stories and be outraged - not outraged at the richest people in the world treating their employees like shit - but rather outraged
at the local Condo board or HOA board, which is basically
your neighbors and friends. Divide and conquer. The enemy isn't the guy stealing from your paycheck or your 401(k) - it is your neighbors and co-workers!
Meanwhile, Bezos, Musk, and Zuckerberg are laughing their ass off (and let's face it, Facebook is basically
nothing but outrage stories). This is how they
distract us and keep us busy fighting each other, because, let's face it, if Americans were truly united against
their real enemies, the powers-that-be would be in a world of woe.
"I could hire half the working class to kill the other half" --Jay Gould
Sadly, this isn't going to change anytime soon. People are idiots and act against their own self-interest. Right now, "climate protesters" are blocking freeways and slashing people's tires to protest global warming.
A more surefire way to turn people against their cause, I cannot conceive. This has to be financed by the Koch brothers - no environmental activist would be so stupid as to play into their hands, right? It's right up there with "PETA" -
whose antics have set back the animal rights movement by decades, as they paint animal rights as being something only kooky people would believe in.
Speaking of right, sames shit different day. Fox News is programming an entire generation to not just disagree with their neighbor's political views, but to hate them, assault them, and (coming soon to a theater near you!) kill them.
Outrage stories thus are not a mere oddity or source of humorous water-cooler chat at work, they are a very dangerous way to program people's minds and get them distracted from the real outrages (such as they are) in life. And history has shown, time and time again, that the vast majority of people fall for this gag, again and again - often with terrible results. You vilify the Jews to get Germans distracted from their real problems. The end result is mass-murder.
The good news is, it is easy to spot these stories.
After reading one, do you feel outraged? If so, step back, think about
the other side of the story and maybe your outrage isn't justified or needed.
Odds are, you are being played. Don't fall into that trap!
