Ragebait: Why Everything You See On the Internet is AI-Generated Fakes

People click on things that enrage them, which ensures more enraging content.

When we lived near Ithaca, NY, we saw a lot of green Subarus with bumper stickers saying (among a lot of other things), "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention!"  I talked about this before and came to the conclusion that if you are outraged all the time, you are easy pickin's for our commerce culture.  While you get outraged over things, you don't actually change them.  Meanwhile, they pick your pocket.  

It is like people complaining about inflation, as they idle their SUV in line at the McDonald's drive-thru.  All the facebook postings in the world are not going to change anything until you stop consuming.  And according to some articles (thanks, reader!), this in fact, may finally be happening, as people run out of money and credit.

But I digress.

A lot of the content of the Internet is AI-generated and you may not realize it.  While people debate about the possible impacts of AI on the future, the future quietly arrived (yes, it took me by surprise, too).  I illustrated before how a simple ChatGTP prompt can create a pretty realistic-sounding blog posting (to the uninitiated, anyway) or a very realistic Reddit posting.

And rage-baiting is the name of the game.  AITA (Am I The Asshole?) stories about cheating husbands, in-laws ruining weddings, ungrateful children, or narcissistic parents are all designed to get you upset and get you to click.  And when you click, your blood pressure goes up and you become anxious.  Or maybe you click just to see how stupid the story is. Either way, they get clicks, eyeballs, and "engagement."  Reddit is about to "drop" their IPO - no doubt the content will go 100% AI after that.

AI-created rage bait is more slowly spreading to YouTube.  AI videos are still somewhat primitive and easy to spot. No problem, though, as there are a host of "influencers" out there, willing to make fake videos to enrage you.  Ever wonder why everyone hates "influencers"?  It is by design.  It is the old Howard Stern "You'll never guess what he said today!" outrage.  They don't listen because they like him, but because they want to be outraged.

It ain't hard to find an older relative to play the part of "Karen" and go off on camera.  In almost every case, you have to wonder why the cameraman is filming in the first place - watching paint dry, perhaps?  Or even if "Karen" is real, they never show what happened before the video started.  Many of these idiots will actually set out to annoy someone to get a reaction and then film it. We all suffer as a result.  It is "Candid Camera" gone off the rails.

People learn intuitively, what works and what doesn't.  When I monetized my blog many years ago (for a whopping $2000 in one year) I learned that anything I wrote about Hillary or Trump was cash in the bank.  Major American news outlets have learned the same thing.  Controversy sells, whether it is people curious as to what the controversy is all about, or people rooting for one side or another.  It doesn't matter either way - a click is a click. So, online "influencers" learn - explicitly or intuitively - that being an asshat to everyone sells clicks and puts money in their pocket.  An online "personality" who plays nice, sinks to the bottom of the Internet septic tank.  Go controversial or go home.

It is akin to how quickly the poor figure out how to benefit from welfare programs.  People who barely passed the 8th grade can recite, from memory, United States Code sections dealing with public benefits programs - and tell you all the qualifying criteria and what forms to fill out, where to file them and when to expect your first check or benefits card.  When it comes to survival, people learn fast.

Similarly, the homeless quickly learn what works and what doesn't, in terms of begging strategies, free handouts, good places to sleep without being disturbed, where to get drugs, and so on and so forth.  It amazes me that I can cross a continent and see a homeless guy on each coast with the identically worded sign.  A Madison Avenue marketer armed with a dozen focus groups could not do better.  People do what they need to do to survive and quickly figure out and share these tips.

With the Internet, however, it seems this intuitive learning process has discovered a dark side of humanity - that what we will likely click on is stuff that makes us angry, depressed, and anxious.  Few, if any, click on the "heartwarming story" or if they do, it is only to leave a snarky comment.  Speaking of which, the comments sections on most of these sites are the worst part of it.  People leave the most mean-spirited comments, safe behind their wall of Internet anonymity  They do not profit from this, other than in terms of attention-getting.  And like others listed above, they quickly learn what gets them the most attention - saying the most horrible things.

Again, with AI and foreign influencers (which includes our own CIA, which was recently "outed" as running an influence campaign in China - act shocked, I know) the entire process is being bootstrapped literally at the speed of light.  Programming a "bot" to prompt ChatGPT (or other AI site) to create rage-bait postings isn't hard to do, and you could literally generate thousands of such postings per hour, drowning out any enlightening comment or indeed, any human-generated content.

There is precedent for this, as I noted before.  My first experience with the Internet back in the 1980s, was with usenet discussion groups online, which were reached using an ASCII-text terminal interface.  It was mostly computer nerds exchanging opinions about which Star Trek character was their favorite or whatever other drivel.  Advertisements were frowned upon and shouted down.  But over time, they overwhelmed many newsgroups, which essentially shut down as real users fled to private websites and the newsgroup left behind became 100% SPAM.

Moderation (having a human "moderator" monitor all postings) is one option, but is problematic in its own right.  Since most of these sites make so little money, there is no way to pay a moderator.  As a result, most are volunteers who get tired of the flame wars rather quickly.  Keeping up with a firehose of SPAM is nearly impossible, particularly when it is aimed at your group 24 hours a day.  Some moderators get a little power-hungry too, and censor or ban users who they simply don't like or have opinions contrary to their own.  It is a real mess.

The use of real names (as opposed to made-up user names) was thought to be a panacea and Facebook went this route.  Sadly, it turns out that a lot of people have no problem putting their real name to odious or stupid opinions, such as embracing Nazism or promoting flat-earth or anti-vaxxer beliefs.  Checkmate, fact-checkers!  Of course, in some cases this has resulted in people being "outed" as bigots or racists and thus losing jobs or friends.  And this lead to the fictional "cancel culture" nonsense - predicated on the notion that no matter how odious you are, you are entitled to a job, friends, or even a spouse (the latter according to the incel subgroup).  Everyone has rights except you and I, it seems.

Again, controversy sells, and oftentimes, what starts out as ragebait or even a joke, ends up being taken seriously by some folks.  The whole "incel" thing, for example, I think started as a joke, but people ended up self-identifying with it.  Flat-earth, I think, is the same deal - perhaps "chemtrails" as well.  The whole "birds aren't real" thing has yet to be taken seriously, but I think that is only because the creators of it have gone out of their way to make it clear they are mocking conspiracy theories with it.  But crypto-currency?  Probably a joke that went too far.  Dogecoin literally started as a joke but now is being hyped by the "richest man in the world."

And grifting falls right in with this.  By hyping a "coin" or stock or whatever, online, you can be sure that some idiots will buy it, which in turn will drive up the price which in turn will make you rich, if you bought that stock for cheap (or an option) before you hyped it.  This sort of shit used to be illegal, but on the Internet, it is hard to track down anonymous accounts, particularly those from overseas.

The image above was made using an AI program with the prompt, "Show a picture of an African boy with a car he made out of plastic bottles" or something similar.  It was posted (and re-posted and shared and forwarded endlessly) along with a heartwarming ChatGPT "story" behind it, lauding the resourcefulness and creativity of this poor African child who made something from nothing.  Of course, it never happened.  It is all fake.

People clicked on the story to leave outraged comments about AI-generated content, which in turn, pushed up the click-rates and site engagement.  Mission accomplished.  And here I am, further raising awareness of it.  You can't win at this game - it is rigged.  The only real solution is to spend less time online, less time on social media, less time clicking on click-bait links.  It is harder to do that than it is to quit an opioid addiction, I think.  And hundreds of millions of Americas are hooked - billions, worldwide.

Doom-scrolling the smart phone has replaced the cigarette-break as the number one destroyer of productivity, worldwide.  A smoker might take five or ten minutes on a smoke break.  An Internet addict can spend hours - a whole workday, in fact - falling down the rabbit-hole.

And try to take away their phones, as we once did in schools.  People will howl and likely resort to violence before they give up their electronic drug.

Not before, of course, they make a rage-bait posting about it!

What's Wrong With The Dollar Store? Or Irish Spring Soap? (Leftist Elitism)

Irish spring soap is three-for-a-dollar-and-a-quarter.  We call it "soap" not "product."  But no, it doesn't repel spiders!

I recently saw a thing online where workers at a Dollar General store all quit at once. They were upset about pay and working conditions, but the straw that broke the camel's back was that the company would not let them donate foods that were near their expiry, or products no longer carried, to local charities.  The company insisted these items be put in the dumpster.

Here's a hint:  If you are the general manager of a Dollar General and are about to throw away bags of food and items that are "still good" - then call the local charity and hint that some stuff is about to be left outside and - wink-wink - it is going to be "thrown away." But I bet they have cameras to discourage this sort of thing.

There are liability issues with expired foods and when you throw away "perfectly good" merchandise, people take it back and "return" it for cash or store credit.  So often, "corporate" insists that these items be smashed or otherwise destroyed.

The evil side of me suggests that maybe if these food items are donated to the local food bank then customers would no longer have to buy them, which would crimp sales at Dollar General and thus keep more items on the shelf longer, which means more stuff given to charity.  The same people getting free food at the food bank are the same people shopping at Dollar General.  They would figure out pretty quickly that free is better than paying.  Poor people aren't as dumb as they look!

But kudos to the workers - and manager - of that store for not just quitting over their own self-interest, but because they also wanted to help those less fortunate than themselves. 

And that's pretty unfortunate, to be less fortunate than someone working at Dollar General.

There has been a lot of negative press about "Dollar Stores" which in many rural areas are the only stores around.  Some items are no real bargains there, although the Dollar Tree has some good bargains, but like anything else, you have to be astute.  Dollar General is something I have less experience with - maybe a few visits in my lifetime.  But I did find some bargains there, of course.

Note:  Dollar Tree famously bought out Family Dollar, which is a shitty version of Dollar General.  It turned out to be a huge mistake, as Family Dollar is hemorrhaging cash and bringing down Dollar Tree in the process.  They are slated to close 1,000 stores, mostly Family Dollar stores (and 30 Trees).  As "The Tree" moves to multiple pricing strategies, it makes less sense to have both brands, particularly as they are often in the same shopping plaza or even the same building.

With all the stuff cheaply made in China, it is possible to do fairly well in this country if you are "poor."  In fact, that is a problem with the "made in America" crowd.  Stuff "made in America" by union workers is staggeringly expensive.  I wrote before about how my Dad - a fairly well-off executive, could not "afford" a Coleman steel-belted cooler ($99) or a Weber kettle ($99) or a color TV ($500) in 1970.  Those prices are about the same today, but factoring in inflation since 1970, the first two would be worth $786 today (!!) and the latter $3400.  Bear in mind you can get a television far better than the 25" tube TV my Dad eventually bought, for about $200 or less, at Walmart.

So cheap shit from China makes living in America easier.  Throw in food stamps, Obamaphone,  Section-8 housing, Obamacare, and so forth, and well, a "poor" person in America is doing pretty well by world standards.  Or even American standards.  Increasing wages or enacting tariffs sound like a great ideas, until you realize it means everything gets a lot more expensive, and you end up running in place, if not falling behind.  Look at a photo of a house in the 1950's and see how stark and minimalist it is - it was not just a design theme, but a necessity.  Hoarders didn't exist back then as no one could afford to hoard.

But I get it.  Working at these places sucks.  I try to be super-nice to the poor folks on their feet all day, ringing up people's crap.  Just doing the job is bad enough, but you see some customers treating the staff like they are slaves.  No, Karen, the customer is not always right!

But in the absence of any other retail store, these kind of stores serve a need.  I shop at "The Tree" at least a few times a month to get some basic cleaning supplies and other things. I am not too proud to save money!

Others, well, they are elitist.  And it should come as no surprise that a British guy living in a big city, can afford to look down on us plebes for shopping at Dollar General instead of Whole Foods.  By the way, what is it with political comedians from Britain coming over here and telling us what for? I mean, shouldn't they be back home saving their country from Brexit?  Or maybe Brexit was why they left.  Out of the frying pan and into the fire!  Welcome to the United States of Trump, dictator for life.  Yes, he promised to do this.  Good thing he's old!  I wonder who would succeed him?  Kim Jong Trump?

Of course, Mr. Oliver confuses Dollar General with The Dollar Store - and they are two entirely different things - or at least were.  Dollar General is a mini-market basically, with various price points.  Dollar Tree was a store where everything was a dollar.  You never heard the words "Price Check!" at Dollar Tree!  But now, due to inflation, it is dollar-and-a-quarter tree, and they now sell select items for $5 as well.  But there is a difference, and of course, John Oliver would never set foot in either place - but an intern probably did, on his behalf.

One of the things Mr. Oliver ragged on was "Irish Spring" soap. When I was a kid, this was the bomb. 🎶 "With a bar of Irish Spring in your hand, it's like taking a shower in Ireland!" 🎶 And "Manly, yes! But I like it toooo!"  It was the go-to soap back in the 1970s, or should I say, "personal body bar."  But as an obsolete brand, it is sold cheaply, three-for-a-buck (and a quarter) along with other soaps as well.  In his "parody" video, Oliver suggests that they sell a tiny, tiny bar of soap for a dollar, instead of three for $1.25.  Talk about out-of-touch!

Then he went on a rant on how much he hates that soap.  Well, I am sure he never use soap but instead, product, on his skin - bottles of lotions and ointments and cleaning agents, each costing $29.99 or more, probably far more.  He lives in a different world that the rest of us, and talks down to us peasants as to how ignorant we are not to buy designer soaps.

Some of us don't have a choice.  Some of us choose not to consume for the sake of consumption.  I've been down that road before.  My husband ran a gourmet food store and spent his entire paycheck - and them some - on items they sold.  That was with a 40% employee discount.  $5 roll of paper towels, anyone?  We were "whole paycheck" long before "whole foods" existed.  It was stupid and we stopped - because we don't make tens of thousands of dollars (hundreds?) for doing one episode of lame comedy.

The Little Old Ladies (LoL's) here on the island swear by Irish Spring soap as keeping away spiders.  Buy some bars for cheap and throw them around the house and it will smell like spring in Ireland and - no spiders!  Well, as the photo above, taken yesterday at the "shed" where we store the trailer clearly shows, the spiders are not deterred, and in fact, built a web from the bar we left there.

I take these old bars with me when camping and use them in the communal shower, leaving them behind.  It is not a bad soap and I am not too proud to use it, even if it was previously used as spider deterrent.

Could I "afford" to spend thousands a year on "product"?  Well, we do spend some on some skin cleansers and moisturizers that our dermatologist recommended.  CeraVe, for example, and AmLactin, for example, the latter of which seems not to moisturize so much as to burn off the outer layer of dermis.  Mark still uses Trader Joe's teatree shampoo, convincing himself that he still has hair on his head.  It is a mild delusion that I let him indulge in. No gain in pointing out the obvious.

But getting back to the point, rants against discount stores and cheap soaps come across as elitist and out-of-touch, which is easy to do when you are a highly-paid comedian who never lived in rural America or worked a minimum-wage job.  You are making fun of the poor, Mr. Oliver.  How is that going to make them align with your political views?

Or is this the sort of trash-talk that makes the poor vote for Trump?   I mean, Trump is out of touch, too, but he doesn't poke fun at poor people, he merely rips them off.

I'm Offended! (Everyone Is!)

Being easily offended by just about everything is the latest status symbol.

Recently, a far-left "literary magazine" that no one ever heard of, imploded when the entire editorial staff resigned in protest.  Why?  Well, the same staff approved for publication a rather innocuous article by an Israeli woman about what the terrorist attack by Hamas was like.

Oh, I said terrorist attack.  My bad.  You are probably offended.  Hamas is as sweet and innocent as the Girl Scouts of America.  Although, those girls will knee-cap you if you order a case of thin mints and then later refuse to pay up!

The far-left decries censorship, yet the editors of what is now presumably a defunct online "magazine" deleted the "offending" article before they left.  By all accounts, the article was hardly incendiary or advocating for retribution or violence.  Some said it was actually just boring (I concur).  That new-age writing style of meandering toward a topic with, "My grandma always taught me to make sure my shoes were tied....." for 500 words before getting on to an unrelated topic (mea culpa!).

Of course, the irony here is layered. First, these "editors" approved the article and are only now resigning because other people have decried the article. Second, by censoring the article, they are engaging in the same sort of literary fascism that Republicans do - it is little more than electronic book-burning.  Third, what are they afraid of, ideas?  And fourth and most importantly, by destroying their own magazine, they have simply given more fuel to the far-right.

That's akin to saying you are against Trump, so to protest him, you won't vote at all.  Sounds stupid, but people have actually gone this route.  Some even promise to vote for Trump in protest!   Or are these just trolls from Russia?

Of course, the right is just as culpable.  Republicans "clutch their pearls" and act all offended when someone calls them out on their gibberish.  "How dare you!" they say, "abusing my feelings with facts!  I have my own alternative facts and they must be respected!"  Meanwhile, the same person will savage his political opponent with the worst language imaginable.  But that's OK, because they're "owning the libs!"

Religious types engage in this nonsense all the time.  Each religion claims to be the "one true religion" but if you disagree with this (because you believe in a different God) then not only are you a blasphemer (who should be stoned to death) but they are offended by your blasphemy and they must be coddled and nurtured.  "There, there, it's going to be OK.  We killed the blasphemer just like you wanted!"  The real victim here was his feelings.

Pretty much, though, this "I take offense" crap is Police Tape roping off indefensible ideas.  When all else fails, resort to Patriotism.  If that fails, start weeping and say you are a victim of those mean old bullies who hurt your feelings!  Wah!

I say this as someone who was bullied as a kid, and mocked, bullied and abused ever since.  Funny thing, though, when I complained to grown-ups, they didn't want to hear about it.  Nobody does, it seems.  The world is a cruel place sometimes.

Or, maybe not.  What I realized was that high school was a scant four years of my life and not the centerpiece of it.  As I wrote before, the "bully" in my high school never left our home town and drove his car through the barely frozen ice on the lake and died.  Suicide?  Drunk?  Just plain stoo-pid?  Yup, and I have no compunction about mocking him now that he is dead.  At least he isn't around to hear it, as I was when he bullied me.

But maybe also I have a strong personality.  I am saddened when I read about these youngsters who kill themselves over nothing. "Little Timmy was bullied on Facebook!  Every day he would go on Facebook to read all the horrible things people said about him!"  Get the fuck off Facebook, Timmy!  Get the fuck off Facebook, everyone!  And all social media, for that matter - it is like voluntarily going back to high school.  Just plain stoo-pid!

Nowhere is this "I'm offended" argument (if you can call it that) is raised more than with regard to this "transgender" thing.  Now, transgender people have been around a long time - long before Ed Wood, even.  And there have been transsexuals, transvestites, cross-dressers, drag queens, and a host of various combinations of all of the above - and no, they are not all the same thing.

The issue has been simmering for some time. There was Bruce Jenner who shocked the world by transitioning (an athlete? Who knew, right? /s) Maybe it started raising awareness with the Bradly Manning thing (Oh my! I deadnamed him! That's like being murdered!). Private Manning violated his oath and sold secrets to an online agent who was a pawn of Russia. Manning made themselves into a cause célèbre even after everyone stopped caring.  Similarly, we stopped caring about Jenner when "she" came out as an anti-trans Trump Republican who ran someone over.  Great poster-children for the trans movement.

But for some reason this has become a "hot button" issue in the last couple of years.  And like the "immigration" issue, it is not a organic thing, but an orchestrated action by certain political groups to make this an issue.  The far-right wants to paint this as a "battle for the soul of America!" while the Left, stupidly, as always, says, "Well, I guess we have to do the opposite of whatever the Right is doing!"

Maybe it is because treatments are more readily available - and paid for by Obamacare and thus taxpayer's money.  Even prisoners in jail are getting these very, very expensive treatments and surgeries - on the logic that they are "life-saving" because people threaten to kill themselves if they don't get them.

This is taking the "I'm Offended!" rubric to its logical conclusion.  And some have done just that.  A mentally imbalanced US Serviceman sets himself on fire (fatally) to protest Israel's invasion of the Gaza strip.  He was not a Muslim, or Palestinian or even Jewish.  A cause from a far-off land was enough for him to self-immolate.  His reward?  Many hard-line Muslims point out that since he was a non-believer, they hope he goes to Hell - and that he will, since suicide is Haram.  Take note, all you would-be suicide bombers!  No 22 Virgins for you!

We can't have a discussion about anything without someone being offended.  We can't counter bad ideas with good ones, only take offense.  With the trans thing, I think there are legitimate topics for debate.  Is having trans athletes competing with girls fair?  The facts seems to say no.  But the only counter-argument seems to be "I'm offended!"  Should expensive treatments and surgeries be paid for by the government or private insurance?  Or is this elective surgery that should be paid for by the patient? Should children be allowed to have these procedures? discuss.  But we can't - because someone claims that raising the issue is "transphobic."

I said it before and I'll say it again, when you drive opinions underground, they will fester and explode.  They won't go away, they will just seem to.  And we will see this come January of next year, when the "dress rehearsal" of January 6th is repeated, this time, for real.  I hope to have moved out of the country by then.  Because, quite frankly, the Democrats seem to be doing little else other than crossing their fingers and hoping for the best. As Democrats tend to do.

Meanwhile, the GOP is making hay with these "social issues" and mocking Democrats as "special snowflakes" because they will quit at the drop of a hat if they feel offended.  Political Correctness is a handgun that always backfires.  Ask Al Franken about that - although he was a bit of a pompous douchebag (and I should know, right?).  I am not afraid to laugh at my own ridiculousness.

So this "I'm offended" trend tends to simply divide-and-conquer the opposition, which Republicans need to do as they are, in reality, a minority party.  They stay in power through gerrymandering, the electoral college, and the use of social issues to divide the Left and galvanize the Right.  And they use Social Media to convince people that these are their own opinions that that came up with organically.

So we see radical leftists arguing Biden is "too old" and threatening to "not vote" or even vote for Trump in protest. No problem, bud!  I'll save you a seat on the train to Auschwitz!  Once there, you can debate these issues with centrist Democrats, on the way to the gas chamber.  And if you think I am being dramatic, this is explicitly what Republicans say they are planning for. But hey, Political Correctness and your "feelings" are far more important.  So says the Russian Internet Research Agency. The Chinese Communist Party concurs, Comrade!

I am writing this at a gay campground in Florida. Tonight is drag bingo night and I usually win something, if not just a box of cookies.  Drag queens are not usually transgender, although I have met a few. What drag queens have, however, is a sense of humor.  Most make jokes about themselves (and everyone else).  Particularly if you are a 300-lb drag queen, it is hard to take yourself too seriously.  The best thing to do is laugh about yourself and if others laugh at you, laugh even harder.  Because bullies only win if you let them think you are offended - they will keep attacking you because your offense is like a salve to their own sense of low-self-esteem.  Laughter is the only Kryptonite to bullies.

A reader chastises me (I'm Offended!) for making snarky remarks about some "trans" people who, bless their hearts, simply look like men in dresses. Sorry, but I have to call it as I see it.  Maybe they feel like a woman inside but everyone else seems to know on the outside (except "straight" Republican men who are readily confused or intrigued).  I was at the bar the other night and there was this adorable trans girl at the end of the bar and I just wanted to give her a big hug.  How did I know she was trans and not simply a Lesbian or a straight girl? I dunno.  You can just tell, I guess.  Maybe it was her penis.

Oh, no!  I did it again!

Stop being offended and live!  Being offended is to be manipulated.

I Don't Understand Wanting Your Ex Back

Every year, some idiot kills his ex-wife or ex-girlfriend or even their kids, because "she won't take me back!"  This is idiotic.

Every so often you read something online or in the paper and realize that there are a lot of people in the world not like us and in fact, so different as to be another species entirely.  And of this group are the "pining for the ex to come back" kind of people, who are usually men.  I fail to understand this mentality at all.

Over the decades, I have dated six women and three men.  I ended up spending the last 36 years with the last person I met.  The others?  Nice folks, for the most part, but for one reason or another it was not meant to be and pining for something that clearly wasn't going to work was pointless.  We dated, went "steady" and eventually broke up.  Usually it was because we had different goals in life, or one of us had to move away and maintaining a long-distance relationship is difficult.  But regardless of the reason, I never sat around whining about how "unfair" it was that "my ex left me" maybe because in my instances, our breakup was mutual, not one-sided.

Tim (not his real name) is a guy I grew up with who, I now realize, had some serious mental health issues.  He smoked a lot of pot and dated this girl Samantha, who was sort of an Earth-Goddess Mother to him - mostly Mother, I am afraid.  She had it all - a car, a job, and sex.  So Tim loved hanging out with her, as he could always borrow her car, borrow some money, and get laid.  Why Samantha went along with this for years, I do not know.  Maybe she thought that once Tim graduated from college, he would settle down, get a job, and they could raise a family.

Sadly, Tim's mental health deteriorated over time.  He became obsessed with left-wing politics (sort of a reverse-MAGA for his time) and had trouble getting and keeping a job.  Samantha saw the writing on the wall and settled down with a nice man who had a small bakery and they made roly-poly babies together and lived happily ever after.

Tim lost his mind - or what was left of it - at this point. He would bore his friends for hours (between bong hits) about how "unfair" Samantha had been to him.  She should take him back!  Why is she dating some jerk who owns a bakery?  Materialistic bitch!  But she should take him back!

How odd.  They tell you how awful their "ex" was and how much they hate their "ex."  But why won't she take me back?  Cognitive dissonance is strong with this one!

Rather that move on and find someone else - or use this as a moment for introspection and growth - Tim just derailed himself for half-a-decade with this self-pitying nonsense.

As the video above illustrates, this whole "break up" genre has been around a long time.  In fact, there is a song named that.  Teenage angst about "breaking up is hard to do" is bookended by "50 ways to leave your lover."  Breaking up isn't some weird anomaly, but something that will happen to you several times in life, particularly when you are young. Get overit.

Ann Landers (or was it her sister?) once said, in response to a "broken heart" letter from a teenager, that dating exists to allow you to try out different people and see what works and what doesn't.  Maybe lightning will strike and you will marry your "High School Sweetheart" but the odds favor you dating several people before you find someone you want to settle down with.  And no, there is not a "perfect mate" for you, waiting in this world.  You will have to settle for someone who, oddly enough, has ideas of their own.

Sadly, that last sentence is lost on the incel crowd, who, according to a recent survey, have more interest in buying a sex-bot than in having a real relationship with a real person.  And they wonder why they are "involuntary" celibates!  Who in their right mind self-identifies with such a group of losers?

But beyond incel stalkers, there are folks who, for some reason, entertain fantasies of getting together with their "ex".  And indeed, sometimes it does happen - people break up and then realize they still have feelings for one another and get back together.  But that is the exception, not the rule, and it is a better bet to just move on, particularly after you receive that restraining order.

I just don't get it. Someone says they don't want to be with you, move on.  Figure out what went wrong and learn from it.  Stop dating people who are not a good match for you.  So many men want the "hot girlfriend" but don't think about more mundane relationship baggage.  Looks are not everything, in fact, they are nothing really, as everyone loses their "looks" over time, and if you are really in love, well, your spouse is the most beautiful thing in the world, even as you age 40 years or more since you met.

It makes me sad when I read about folks who are unhappy because they pine for an "ex."  But then again, they are bringing this unhappiness upon themselves.  They are living in a prison cage of their own making - holding the key to their liberty in their hands, yet stubbornly refusing to use it.  Hard to feel sorry for people like that.

Ghost Subscriptions, Revisited

When you don't keep track of your money, you run out of it very quickly.

"Money is the root of all evil!" someone said to me once, misquoting the Bible.  Timothy says the love of money is the root of all evil, not money itself.  Obsess about money and you will likely be miserable and make others miserable as well.  Funny how "miser" and "miserable" have the same root!

But that doesn't mean ignoring money is the answer, either.  It is a powerful tool and even a weapon (ask Russia about sanctions!) and can hurt you badly, if handled carelessly.  I make the analogy to guns - useful in some cases, dangerous all the time unless handled very, very carefully.  When you handle firearms like they did on the Rust set, people die.

By the way, how did a live round end up on the set?  I've read countless articles about this, but none come right out and lay blame for it.  The Armorer is shown in one photo with a tray of rounds, one of which is clearly a live round.  Others claim that striking guild workers "borrowed" the weapons to go shooting at beer cans in the desert.  Whatever the reason, it was sloppy, and when you get sloppy with guns, people get hurt or die.

The same is true with money. Every day, it seems, some fool kills themselves over money - failing to take Timothy's advice about the love of money and at the same time being careless with it.

I fell into the careless trap for most of my life.  My Dad spent money freely and then freaked out at the end of the month when the bills came due.  He had no idea how much he was spending and on what.  He thought a wallet full of credit cards (at least 20, I am not kidding!  Every store and gas station had their own card) was a sign of success.  It was a sign of sloppiness.

When I started my own business, I realized quickly how ignorant I was about money.  There were some painful lessons involved.  I bought a copy of Quickbooks and took an adult education class on how to use it.  We balanced the books every day and accounted for every penny and from then on, there were no more painful lessons.

This isn't to say this is a panacea for all personal or business problems. You can account for every penny and still go bankrupt.  The difference is, if you are not sloppy with money you can see the bad things coming and either prepare for them or avoid them entirely.  One reason I decided to work from home and be a solo practitioner was that once I put everything on Quickbooks, I realized the people I was hiring were costing me money and not making me more money.  So rather than ride that all the way down, I made changes and avoided disaster.

But my personal finances were still in disarray.  I was making all the payments so everything was Kosher, right?  But an unexpected tax bill put me behind the 8-ball and I realized I had to start treating my life as a business if was to pay off this hefty ($40,000) capital gains bill.

And I realized, once I started tracking expenses, that I was spending a little in a lot of ways, that added up to a lot of money. There was no one single thing that was tanking my budget, but a death of a thousand cuts.

I had always been suspicious of subscription services, since my first experience with a local cable company back in the 1980s. $30 a month may not seem like a lot, but when you are only making $17,000 a year, it adds up - to $360 a year!  Doesn't sound like a lot until you realize it is a big chunk of your disposable income. Those "little things" cumulatively cost a lot - by design.  And marketers and business-people know they can sell you an expensive product or service based on a low monthly price, rather than showing you the overall cost.  It is why car leasing is so popular - it isn't a good deal, just one than seems attractive.

A reader sends me this link to a Guardian article about "accidental" subscriptions - free-trial memberships and such that are easy to sign up for, but nearly impossible to cancel.  Online services and gym memberships are two of the biggest offenders.  And many people keep paying these fees for months or even years (or in the case of AoL, decades) telling themselves "I'll get around to cancelling that next month!  It's only a few dollars!"  And that's why they make it so hard to cancel - they know a certain percentage of people will simply give up, at least for the time being.

Others, well, they never notice as they never go online and check their balances or charges and when the credit card bill comes due, they just pay the minimum amount and then forgetaboutit for another 30 days.  Usually folks like that end up in bankruptcy court - drained dry by bogus charges, at least in part.

I wrote about these "ghost subscriptions" before - when I saw an ad for an online service that, for a low monthly fee, would monitor your finances for ghost subscriptions and then try to cancel them.  A ghost subscription for ghost subscriptions!  It is like the MLM bounce-back companies that prey upon disgruntled MLM victims.  "Sure that last MLM you signed up for was a con, but this time it's the real deal!"  Dumb enough to do it once, why not again?

The easiest way to avoid this problem is just not to sign up in the first place.  Almost every subscription these days is predicated on a "free trial period" followed by your credit card being charged.  Some are pretty sneaky - putting up a one-click signup box that you can easily click by accident while trying to "X" it out.  Funny how that box "jumped" the moment you moved your mouse over it.  There are few, if any, of these subscription services that are worth anything.  Amazon Prime is worthless - you don't get your packages much faster than normal, and odds are, you are buying too much crap online already.

And no, the latest season of "Mandolorian" isn't worth paying a years' subscription fee for.  Maybe one month, but many streaming services are now toying with the idea of forcing subscribers to pay for an entire year, rather than by the month.  They hate people like me who sign up for one month and then cancel.  So far, they haven't made it hard to cancel.  So far.

I should note that so far Disney has been decent about cancelling.  I signed up for one month and then a few weeks later, cancelled online.  Not only was the process painless, but it kept the subscription active until the end of the original subscription period.  Given that Disney is losing money on the Disney+ streaming service, it is only a matter of time before some clever business major persuades them to "improve" their subscription model - right?

I saw online a fellow who said he had a hard time cancelling a service.  He got the idea of using a VPN to virtually relocate himself to California, where apparently there is a State law allowing for one-click cancelling (damn Socialists!  Always looking out for the little guy!  Trump would never do that!). Another was able to "move" his gym membership to California and then cancel it online, rather than being forced to drive 50 miles to his old gym to cancel in person.

And let me drive home that last snarky comment about Trump: Republicans have been doing everything in their power to shut down the consumer protection agency. If you think Trump is out to help "the little guy" you are seriously delusional.  Trump is out to support Trump.  Full stop.

Of course, the other thing to do is challenge the charge on your credit card and ask the credit card company to block all future charges.  This may work, it may not.  The company might come back with the "membership agreement" showing the charges are "legitimate" and thus should not be reversed. After all, they offered you services to a gym that is now three States away after you moved, right?  On the other hand, if a company gets a lot of charge-backs, the credit card companies might stop taking charges from them.  Then again, if they have millions in "legitimate" charges, well, money talks.

Another fellow was able to shut down the "retention specialist" by telling them he had moved overseas and no longer needed the gym membership.  Retention specialists are on a quota, so there is no point in pumping a dry hole, for them.  You shouldn't have to talk to one in the first place, however!

If you MUST have a subscription service, think about it carefully and read all the fine print about how to cancel if you don't like it. Mark the cancellation date on your calendar, as our reader suggests.  Never take verbal promises by salespeople as being true.  Yes, they will lie to your face and tell you it is easy to cancel, when in fact, it requires three lawyers and a certified letter.  Never fall for the "free trial" gambit - the "free trial" is a sure sign the service they are offering is shitty and also hard to cancel.  If a subscription service is worthwhile, they don't have to snooker people into it with "free trials".  The "Free Trial" is pretty much Police Tape marking off a potential crime scene.

Myself, it has been decades, if ever, since I ever had an issue with nonsense like this.  I have always avoided subscription services like the plague and have been skeptical of them since, well, when I was a kid and signed up for "Columbia Record House" - remember that?  But even that was easy to cancel with a phone call.  And quite frankly, they wanted me gone after I returned almost every record they sent me.  They would mail you records, unsolicited, and you had so many days to mail them back or be charged for them - it was a weird business model!  13 records for ten cents! - that was the "free trial" to get you hooked.  They hoped you'd paid for the later records at the regular retail price. My 100% return rate convinced them they had nothing to gain by keeping me on as a member.

But heck, I was a teenager back then. I have learned a few things since - I think.  And maybe also, I have a deep skepticism for business-people and marketers, perhaps influenced by my parents, who assumed nearly every transaction in life was a potential ripoff.

And you know what?  They were pretty much right about that.