Mayweather-McGregor: We just got sucker punched

There's a sucker born every minute, and maybe half of them are fight fans. Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor are well aware of this, which is why they're both laughing all the way to the bank.

Now, I'm a fight fan, but I'm not a sucker: I didn’t watch the Mayweather-McGregor fiasco for the simple reason that I had no interest in paying $100 to line either man’s pockets. McGregor's a loudmouth, and Mayweather has a history of domestic violence. And they have this in common: They're both con artists.

Now that the fight is over, some commentators are saying it was a decent fight and worth the money.

I didn’t watch, but I beg to differ.

These commentators apparently are reacting to the fight exceeding expectations. But consider: When you expect to be served stale Spam, an undercooked hot dog can taste downright delicious, and that’s what these to combatants were – undercooked hot dogs.

The result just confirms how bad they both really are.

Mayweather, a 40-year-old ex-champ inactive for the past two years, knocked McGregor out (technically) in the 10th round. This tells us two things:

1. McGregor had to be pretty lousy to get knocked out by a defensive specialist who hadn’t KO’d anybody in seven – count ’em, seven – years.

2. Mayweather’s skills must have eroded markedly to let a novice like McGregor win a single round, let alone land more punches than Manny Pacquiao tagged him with a couple of years back.

This fight wasn’t for any titles. It had a single raison d'être: Making an over-the-hill has-been and a never-was greenhorn both look a lot better than they really are by pitting them against each other. And in doing so, suckering the American public into paying mega-millions to watch it. That's it.

Mayweather, who even tried to bet $400,000 on himself, retired (again) a rich man. McGregor made so much money he never needs to enter the ring again, either.

Thanks to us. We’re so damned gullible.

Well, not me. Remember, I didn’t buy into this malarkey. The fact that I predicted this would happen doesn’t make me a genius – almost everyone with half a brain cell forecast the same outcome. But it does mean I don’t have to wash the stale Spam out of my mouth with a gallon of liquid bleach.

And it also means I’m not $100 poorer.

The 30 worst songs in the modern history of popular music

Stephen H. Provost is the author of Pop Goes the Metal: Hard Rock, Hairspray, Hooks & Hits, chronicling the evolution of pop metal from its roots in the 1960s through its heyday as “hair metal” in the 1980s and beyond. It’s available on Amazon.

“If you can’t say something good, don’t say anything at all.” That’s generally good advice, but I’m about to violate it. I consider it my duty as a music lover to provide fair warning about a handful of songs I think are so bad they should never have been committed to vinyl, compact disc or any other auditory medium. Some ear worms, to be blunt, just aren’t ear-worthy.

All of the songs on this list made the charts (many of them went to number one), so chances are I’ll be offending some folks with my picks. Just remember not to take any of this personally: It’s all a matter of taste. And if radio DJs can come up with their top 30s (or 40s), I can pick my bottom 30.

So here they are, the members of Stephen’s auditory Hall of Shame, starting off with a little number that earned a Grammy for Sweet Baby James.

30

Handy Man by James Taylor (No. 4 in 1977)

I like James Taylor. I really do. I’ve even seen him in concert. It helps a little that he didn’t actually write this song, which repeats the nonsensical comma-comma-comma line far too many times. Couldn’t he have just finished this song off with a period and spared us to the egotistical prattle about fixing broken hearts? I’ll use Liquid Plumr instead.

29

Wonderwall by Oasis (No. 8 in 1995)

Oasis was lauded as the heir to the Beatles in the UK., but it was their only top 40 single in the U.S. But just what the hell is a Wonderwall, anyway? The song never explains it.  Maybe it has something to do with the 1968 film of that name, for which George Harrison composed his first solo album, “Wonderwall Music.” But if you’re looking for an explanation in that musical collection, you won’t find one: It’s all instrumental … at which point you’ve probably stopped caring what it means anyway.

The Captain & Tennille, 1976

28

Muskrat Love by Captain & Tenille (No. 4 in 1976)

This is the song that gave the jitterbug a bad name. (You couldn't possibly do the jitterbug to music like this, anyway.) If Love Will Keep Us Together hadn’t dominated the charts a year earlier, Muskrat Love wouldn’t have made a dent, except maybe on Sesame Street, where it belonged. It would have made the perfect B-side to Rubber Duckie.

27

The Freshmen by the Verve Pipe (No. 5 in 1997)

The forced angst of the only hit by this Michigan band is bad enough without it being driven into your head like an ice pick by the oft-repeated, impossible-to-dislodge line “We were merely freshmen.”

26

American Pie by Madonna (No. 29 in 2000)

This was a great song when Don McLean did it. Madonna synthesized, sterilized and lobotomized it by leaving out most of the verses. It should have been retitled American Stale Slice. And it’s not even the worst Madonna song on this list.

Dan Wilson of Semisonic

25

Closing Time by Semisonic (No. 11 in 1998)

The opening line, which is also the title, is even more annoying than “We were merely freshmen.” A little math will demonstrate why this song is so annoying: It has, in all, 32 lines, nine of which merely repeat the title and 12 of which are either “I know who I want to take me home” or “Take me home.” That leaves just 11 lines that say anything else at all ... and even these don't say very much. This vapid piece of drivel makes Eddie Money’s Take Me Home Tonight sound positively inspired.

24

Every Morning by Sugar Ray (No. 3 in 1999)

This song starts out with the singer talking about using the “halo” hanging from the corner of his girlfriend’s bed for his own one-night stand. If that’s not disgusting enough for you, the melody will push you over the edge. There's nothing angelic about this one at all. It’s pure hell … but it’s still not as bad as another song by the same band, which managed to crack the top five.

23

Mr. Roboto by Styx (No. 3 in 1983)

This piece of wannabe rock operatic fluff from the album Kilroy Was Here is an affront to everyone from Robbie to R2D2. No wonder guitarist-vocalist Tommy Shaw quit the band after the release of the Kilroy. The seemingly endless repetition of the Japanese phrase “domo arigato” probably pushed him past the brink, thank you very much.

22

Like a Virgin by Madonna (No. 1 in 1984)

There’s got to be some reason an artist named Madonna would record a song with this title, but I don’t really care. Weird Al Yankovic’s parody “Like a Surgeon” is infinitely more fun – and it’s his lyric that comes to mind whenever the music to this tune invades my ears. Madonna's original requires a hefty dose of general anesthesia.

21

Michael Jackson

Bad by Michael Jackson (No. 1 in 1987)

About the best thing to be said about this song is that it more than lives up to its name. Atrocious would have been more appropriate, but it just doesn’t roll off the tongue. 

20

 Playground in My Mind by Clint Holmes (No. 2 in 1973)

Maybe your name is Michael, and perhaps you have a nickel. Maybe it's even shiny and new. But whatever its condition, have pity on yourself and do not use it to buy a copy of this song. In compiling this list, I chose this over the terminally maudlin “Seasons In the Sun,” which came out around the same time. That should tell you something.

19

The Pina Colada Song by Rupert Holmes (No. 1 in 1979)

Rupert Holmes is no relation to Clint Holmes, but he put out a similarly bad piece of music that became the last No. 1 song of the ’70s. Its actual title is “Escape,” which is what you’ll want to do if they start playing this on the radio. It’s an affront to the Journey album of the same name, which includes the endlessly overplayed “Don’t Stop Believin’” – a song that, nonetheless, would be a welcome relief after hearing this one.

The Bee Gees, 1977

18

Fanny (Be Tender With My Love) by the Bee Gees (No. 12 in 1975)

This gets my vote as the Bee Gees’ worst song of their disco period ... and it isn't even disco. Think about that for a moment. In the opinion of this author, whose teenage motto was "death to disco," this song is actually worse than Night Fever, The Hustle and Hot Stuff. (But not as bad as Ring My Bell, which appears later on this list.) Believe it or not, the Bee Gees were far better in their first incarnation, when they were turning out sappy syrup like Words and I Started a Joke. Everything after that was just jive talkin'. Moral of the story: Be tender with your ears and avoid this one.

17

You Light Up My Life by Debby Boone (No. 1 in 1977)

This was written as a love song. The singer, however, considered it a devotional song to God. I suppose a pyromaniac would find yet another interpretation, and if someone had set fire to the sheet music for this saccharine serenade and used it as kindling on a cold winter night, the world might have been a brighter place. 

16

We Are the World by USA for Africa (No. 1 in 1985)

How do you guarantee a No. 1 chart position for a tune? Assemble dozens of best-selling musical artists and dedicate the money earned from sales of said tune to a high-profile charity. You don’t even have to write a decent piece of music. Here’s proof.

15

Lovin’ You by Minnie Ripperton (No. 1 in 1974)

I wasn’t a morning person when this came out, so the gimmick of having songbirds chirping incessantly for 3-plus minutes did not endear me to Ms. Ripperton’s biggest hit. Neither did the la-la-la-la-la refrain that made her sound like a drunk hippie. These days, I have to wake up early, but I still don’t like this tune. Call me silly, but I prefer my songbirds in trees, not on vinyl.

Paul and Linda McCartney in 1976

14

Let ’Em In by Wings (No. 3 in 1976)

Paul McCartney is perhaps the pre-eminent example of a musical genius who also has an incredible knack for writing crappy music. Let ’Em In is Exhibit A. The song consists entirely of a narrator telling someone to let various people in at the front door. The effect is only slightly less grating than Mrs. Wolowitz yelling, “Howard! Get the door!” on The Big Bang Theory. Think of this half-baked musical concoction as John Lennon’s Give Peace a Chance, minus the message.

13

Love Shack by B-52s (No. 3 in 1989)

This was supposed to be a fun party song, which I suppose is why everybody still wants to sing it during karaoke night at the bar nearly 30 years later. Trust me, it gets old real fast: That tin roof rusted a long time ago. (And please, no questions about why I spent so much time hanging out in karaoke bars. That’s beside the point.)

12

Cherry Pie by Warrant (No. 10 in 1990)

This song may have single-handedly killed the hair metal era, for which many people are probably grateful. But it still deserves a place on this list, if only for the ridiculous lyric “swingin’ in the living room, swingin’ in the kitchen; most folks don’t ’cause they're too busy bitchin’.” Huh? That almost makes ob-la-di, ob-la-da sound literate.

11

 Afternoon Delight by Starland Vocal Band (No. 1 in 1976)

The song’s music sounds like it belongs in a summer camp singalong. Its lyrics are, well, more than a little suggestive. Those two things simply shouldn’t go together.

10

Having My Baby by Paul Anka (No. 1 in 1974)

The only good thing about this song is that you’ll never hear a deadbeat dad singing it. The only good thing. This song will send you running from the maternity ward to the emergency room ... if it doesn’t render you comatose first. It’s so bad that you have to wonder why it only made No. 10 on this list. Until you see what finished ahead of it, that is. Read on.

9

Mickey by Toni Basil (No. 1 in 1982)

Toni Basil has a reputation as one of the best choreographers around, which explains why this song’s video casts her as a cheerleader. MTV played it in such heavy rotation it was impossible to avoid it – which is precisely what I want to do whenever I hear it. Maybe Basil should have listened to the Bee Gees before recording this. They would have given her some good advice: “You should be dancing.” Not singing.

Phil Collins

8

 Sussudio by Phil Collins (No. 1 in 1985)

It’s unclear whether Sussudio is a woman’s name or a word that she’s supposed to say. Why should she say it? Mr. Collins never bothers to explain. Of course, he's no stranger to nonsensical lyrics. We’re never told, for example, what exactly is “coming in the air tonight” or why we should “hold on.” We ask in vain what “paperlate” might mean. And if “abacab isn’t anywhere” why should we go searching for it? We’re better off just leaving it behind to keep Sussudio company while we go find something worthwhile to occupy our eardrums for a while.

7

Ring My Bell by Anita Ward (No. 1 in 1979)

This song about talking on the telephone was reportedly written for an 11-year-old to sing. It sounds like it. But Anita Ward managed to make it sound sexually suggestive, which would be impressive if it weren't so disturbing. The singer also makes the word "bell" sound as though it's got three syllables, which should count for something. But it doesn't.

6

Spill the Wine by Eric Burdon and War (No. 3 in 1970)

This song is supposedly a sexual allegory, which, when you visualize it, makes you feel like you’re watching a bad porn film. (The song was actually used in the soundtrack to Boogie Nights, a movie about a fictional porn star.) I didn’t know what the lyrics meant until I looked them up ... which made me wish I hadn’t, because I like the song even less now. If there’s one thing I like less than unintelligible lyrics, it’s graphically obscene lyrics. Plus, I like wine.*

Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray

5

Fly by Sugar Ray (No. 1 in 1997)

The lyrics to this one are even more nonsensical than Phil Collins’ stuff. The line “Twenty-five years old, my mother God rest her soul,” seems to have been lifted from the maudlin but at least coherent 1972 hit Alone Again, Naturally. Its inclusion here makes about as much sense as inserting a line from Monster Mash  into The Battle Hymn of the Republic. To make matters worse, the melody is just as irritating as the lyrics. The fact that this band's two biggest hits both made this list is all you need to know. 

4

 Who Let the Dogs Out? by Baha Men (No. 40 in 2000)

I’m a sports fan. My alma mater’s mascot is a bulldog. That alone should tell you why I hate this song so much, but it would still be near the top (bottom) of my list, regardless. The dogs should never have been let out, and this song should never have been released.

3

 Jump Around by House of Pain (No. 3 in 1992)

For some reason, this song became insanely popular at shoot-arounds prior to high school basketball games. It would have been harmless enough had the band not decided to include a sound that can only be compared to horse whinnying in agony after falling down and breaking its leg. Over and over and over again. It’s enough to make your ears bleed. Someone please put this tune out of its misery.

2

Do Ya Think I’m Sexy by Rod Stewart (No. 1 in 1979)

There was a time when Rod Stewart put out some great, or at least near-great music. Every Picture Tells a Story. Stay With Me. I Know I’m Losing You. This was not that time. This was the disco era, and this particular song was Stewart’s supposed attempt to spoof the disco culture. The only problem is that it was too convincing, which made Stewart seem like a preening egomaniac. Come to think of it …

Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, 2011

1

My Humps by Black Eyed Peas (No. 3 in 2005)

Many of the songs on this list became more annoying because I heard them repeatedly on the radio. I seldom heard “My Humps,” which alone is testament to why it’s so earsplittingly godawful. The lyrics are disgusting and the music is, quite possibly, just as bad. I’ve heard it maybe two or three times in my life, which is 100 times too many. Only a deaf camel could like “My Humps,” and being neither a camel nor deaf, I can’t recommend it. In fact, I’d walk a mile to get away from it.

Dishonorable mentions:

Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice and any other song that “samples” original material from a more talented previous artist. In fact, the only reason this didn’t make the list is that the song it sampled was so damned good: Robert Van Winkle (Ice’s real name) “borrowed” from Queen+David Bowie’s Under Pressure. Freddie Mercury. David Bowie. Robert Van Winkle. To revisit the Sesame Street theme raised briefly earlier, “one of these things just doesn’t belong.”

Any duet featuring Paul McCartney in the early 1980s (Say Say Say and The Girl is Mine with Michael Jackson; Ebony and Ivory with Stevie Wonder). I told you McCartney could be bad.

Songs included in movie soundtracks about ocean disasters, specifically The Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion from Titanic in 1997 and The Morning After, Maureen McGovern’s theme song to The Poseidon Adventure in 1973. (Despite the title, it has nothing to do with sex.) Both hit No. 1, and neither is quite bad enough by itself to include on this list. But together, they go to show that a singer’s loose lips really can sink ships.

I Can Help by Billy Swan could easily replace Handy Man on this list. Both are songs about some conceited jerk waxing philosophical about how he’s God’s gift to women. This list just wasn’t big enough for two songs with a sexual messiah complex.

Late addition:

After I compiled this list, a few readers mentioned Wildfire by Michael Martin Murphy, which I'd mercifully forgotten. This song about the ghost of a girl who died searching for her escaped horse (the Wildfire of the song) reached No. 2 in 1975 and was played so often that year that I began to dread the next time it would come on the radio. This is perhaps the best example of why "story songs" shouldn't be played in heavy rotation: Listeners get sick of hearing the same story over and over again ... especially when it's as depressing as this one. See also: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot.

* No, I’m not going to tell you what it means. Google it.

Is Twitter's downfall imminent? I sure hope so.

Twitter lost 2 million monthly U.S. users in the latest quarter – 3 percent of its total.

I’m not exactly doing cartwheels over this, primarily because, at my age, attempting such would be downright dangerous. It did, however, make me smile.

There are things you do because you want to, and there are others you do because you have to.

For me, Twitter has always fallen into the second category. I pretty much have to have some presence there because I’m part of the communications business. Journalist. Author. If you’re in either game these days, you need all the exposure you can get.

But Twitter is, to me, what eating my veggies was to my 7-year-old self. It’s something I do while holding my noise to avoid the bitter taste, because I’ve been told, “You must do this because it’s good for you.” Needless to say, that imperative makes it all the more unpalatable.

Veggies have grown on me but, unfortunately, Twitter hasn’t.

I’m not alone in my disdain for Twitter, even among writers and journalists, some of whom have dumped the platform altogether. For these folks, it’s just not worth it:

Last year, a fellow journalist, New York Times deputy Washington editor Jonathan Weisman, quit Twitter because he got sick of dealing with anti-Semitic attacks on the platform. It had become, in his words, “a cesspit of hate.”

Lindy West, an author and columnist, also bowed out, declaring Twitter to be “unusable for anyone but trolls, robots and dictators.” She concluded her piece in The Guardian with the words, “Keep the friends. Ditch the mall.”

CNN’s Aislyn Camerota realized she was “hanging out with people who find satisfaction spewing vitriol, people who spread racism, misogyny and anti-Semitism.”

The medium frames the message

Should we blame the messenger?

As Marshall McLuhan once said, “The medium is the message” (or “mess age,” as he sometimes quipped). I’m not sure I’d go that far, but the medium certainly frames the message, and Twitter’s 140-character format does just that … in a such a way as to discourage people from thinking. Or analyzing. Or conducting any kind of in-depth dialogue.

Why does Twitter attract the kind of people who ultimately alienated Weisman, West and Camerota? Maybe because it encourages hit-and-run attacks rather than reasoned discourse. Sound-bite politics does the same thing – and is, unsurprisingly, dominated by similar attacks. If you don’t like negative campaigning, you probably won’t care for Twitter, either, because Twitter is all about campaigning.

The platform is dominated by celebrities and wannabrities (along with their fans and sycophants), who are there to promote their name or their brand. Donald J. Trump, celebrity turned politician, is the ultimate creature of the nexus between politics and celebrity that Twitter has become.

Trump’s ubiquitous presence on – and reliance upon – Twitter has confirmed my opinions of both: of Trump as a simpleton who’s deluded himself into thinking he can tackle complex policy issues in 140 characters, and of Twitter as the platform that empowers him (and people like him) to do perpetuate such delusions.

High anxiety

This isn’t to say everyone who uses Twitter is a simpleton or a troll. My point is that the platform’s format attracts such folks, and like many others, I’m not comfortable in the kind of environment that creates.

As someone who’s generally unimpressed by celebrity, that doesn’t appeal to me. Besides that, there’s research that indicates using a large number of social media platforms just isn’t good for you. A study published Dec. 10 in Computers in Human Behavior found that people who used the risk of depression and anxiety in those who used the largest number of platforms was more than three times that of people used two or fewer.

That’s the last thing I need. At last count, I was active on Facebook (my primary platform), Instagram, Twitter and my blog. If I were asked to drop one, it would be a no-brainer to eliminate the one that seemed the most superficial, the least user friendly, the least interesting and the most, well, just plain mean.

That would be Twitter, folks. Where anxiety-inducing trolls and bullies are perhaps most prevalent.

Maybe other people are coming to the same conclusion, and perhaps that’s why Twitter’s user base – never remotely close to Facebook’s in the best of times – is starting to shrink. Maybe another part of it is Trump fatigue. Either way, I’m hoping users are sending a message by abandoning ship: It’s long past time for Twitter to change, and fundamentally, or die.

What do liberals and conservatives hear when they argue?

My father taught me a good debater is able to argue both sides of a point, and I discovered on my own that it’s a lot more fun to do it with a little (or a lot) of sarcasm throw in.

So, I’m going to be tweaking both liberals and conservatives with this post, but there’s a serious point behind it: We don’t tend to realize how we come across to other people, especially in political conversations. While you’re making those deeply considered arguments for your deeply held beliefs on social media, it’s quite likely that those on the other side of the issue are hearing something entirely different.

What are they hearing?

Maybe something a little like this:

What conservatives might hear when liberals get on their soapbox ... 

1. Men are bad – They’re a bunch of clueless oafs who use their entrenched gender-based privilege to push people around. Besides they’re only interested in sex and beer and football. (What about women who like those things, too? Shhhh. We’re conveniently ignoring that).

2. Pro athletes are bad – We should be paying teachers that much! Screw supply and demand. Besides, the fine arts are the only acceptable form of entertainment. NASCAR? UFC? Boxing? They all gotta go!

3. Faith is bad – Unless it’s faith in myself. (Hey, stop reminding me of how many times I’ve screwed things up, OK? It takes a village, don’t ya know!)

4. Other liberals are bad – Unless they agree with everything on the accepted liberal “Litmus Test Checklist of Acceptable Knee-Jerk Responses.” What’s that? You say liberalism is about thinking for yourself? Puleeez! That’s so 1960s.

5. This chemical is bad – There’s a 0.03 percent greater chance of contracting (insert fatal condition here) if one consumes 200 gallons of it a day. This must be stopped at all costs!

6. Humans are bad – We’re destroying the environment! (But please give us free health care so we can live longer and make it worse.)

7. Success is bad – If you have too much money, it either means you cheated to get it, inherited it from someone who did, or that you’re hoarding it and not giving it to the less fortunate people who deserve it more than a cheapskate like you!

8. White people are bad – Because skin color defines us, don’t ya know. Wait a minute ...

9. Cars are bad – Unless they’re electric. Everyone should ride a bike to work, even if your office is sixty miles away! Or telecommute, even if you work loading goods onto containers in a warehouse. Don’t you know you’re part of the problem? That diesel truck you’re loading is destroying us all!

10. The Electoral College is bad – Because it’s unfair? Get real. No one cares about that. Because we lost! Twice!

What liberals might hear when conservatives get on their high horse... 

1. Immigrants are bad – They take all those dirt-cheap jobs that should go to Americans so the corporate honchos can keep all the money!

2. Government is bad – But elect us anyway! Because it's good for us (we want those speaking engagement fees, do-nothing corporate board seats and seven-figure deal for our memoir)!

3. Taxes are bad – Unless they’re used for the military. Who needs roads, health care, education? You’re on your own with that shit.

4. The arts are bad – Most of that shit was either made by people on LSD, about to commit suicide or trying to brainwash you to give to the DNC. Ever notice how LSD and DNC kinda rhyme? You can’t tell me that’s a coincidence!

5. Science is bad – Especially if it disagrees with my interpretation of my scripture, which just happens to support my financial agenda. Isn’t it nice how that works out?

6. Universities are bad – They fill our young people’s heads with all sorts of perverse ideas about evolution and equality (communism!) and diversity. Egads! There’s a reason they call it liberal arts. (Makes the sign of the cross).

7. Gun control is bad – Because the NRA said so. The gun manufacturers need to sell more guns, and we’re in their pockets (but we can’t admit that).

8. The media are bad – Biased! Fake! Trust only Fox News and Drudge and Rush and Hannity. They’re not biased! No, not at all!

9. Same-sex marriage is bad – Don’t get us wrong. We still believe government should stay out of everything, but sex is different. It’s only in the most private, intimate setting that government has a place! You have to admit that makes sense!

10. Poverty is bad – It means you didn’t try hard enough! It’s all your fault! You want a living wage? So sorry. You want to survive, you gotta play the game, baby. You’re the one who worships Darwin, right? Well, maybe you oughta take a page out of his book. It’s all about survival of the fattest … er… fittest.

And the one they both agree on: a distaste for the First Amendment:

Free speech is bad (conservative version) – We can’t let J.K. Rowling, Mark Twain and John Stewart corrupt our youth now, can we? “Harry Potter” almost ended civilization as we know it: They used that witchcraft to elect that guy from Kenya! We can’t let that happen again!

Free speech is bad (liberal version) – We can’t let anyone offend our delicate sensibilities, now, can we? We need safe spaces to protect our little ears from your bad, bad words.

Now I’m sure there will be some people on both sides who don’t like that I’ve said any of this – which just reinforces my last point about free speech.

Besides, you’re not supposed to like it.

Are debaters these days still able to argue both sides of an issue? Or have we become so addicted to political defensiveness that our debate preparations consist solely of buttressing our own POV – with both reasonable points and kitchen-sink-dumping fallacies?

People on both sides of such “dialogues” are at fault, whether they’re arrogantly pushing their views on others or refusing to listen when presentations are calm and rational. We need to start talking to each other again, rather than spouting talking points and then raising objections before we’ve even heard what the other side has to say.

We might just learn something … if we’re not too busy coming off as such know-it-alls!

The Internet is our Matrix, and it's killing us

“You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

— Morpheus to Neo in "The Matrix"

The Matrix has you.

Whether you know it or not – and if we stick with the film’s analogy, there’s a good chance you don’t, you’re in the process of becoming dependent upon a form of virtual reality that could just drive you nuts.

So, here’s your red pill.

If you’re reading this, you’re online, which means you’re hooked up to our 21st century approximation of the Matrix, a mechanism that has supplanted our traditional sources of … you name it: shopping, news, entertainment, information. You get the idea.

You’re more likely to find a newspaper – minus the paper – on your computer screen than on your front doorstep these days. You find movie times online now, too, along with the movies themselves. Netflix, anyone? YouTube? Who needs a TV weatherperson when you’ve got weather.com? And who needs a book when you can download the text to your Kindle?

Despite pockets of resistance, the Internet has become so pervasive that it’s starting to look like Standard Oil at the turn of the 20th century. That company became so powerful, and society so dependent upon it, that the Supreme Court ruled it was a monopoly and broke it up into 34 separate companies.

We can’t do that with the Internet, which unlike Standard Oil, isn’t a single company. And it doesn’t work exactly the way a monopoly does. Unlike a traditional monopoly, hasn’t limited our options, it’s broadened them exponentially, providing access to more streams of information and entertainment than ever before.

Growing dependence

I love that about the Internet, and a lot of other people do, too, which is why it’s become so successful.

Yet in doing so, it’s also become nearly indispensable, and there’s the rub. Even as it has broadened the number of options at our fingertips, it’s narrowed our means of accessing them. The more brick-and-mortar stores close, the more we’re reliant on Amazon and its brethren. The more newspapers shift their focus online, the more we have to shift our focus there, too. The more “streaming” video becomes a thing, the more we rely on it for our entertainment. And so it goes, right on down the line.

National security experts long ago started worrying about our growing dependence on the Internet. Back in the days when MySpace was still a thing, they began warning that even warfare would shift from traditional battlefields to online cyber-skirmishes involving black hats, white hats and a whole new form of espionage.

Turns out they were right. Russian interference in our political process is merely the most blatant example of a problem that’s been simmering for a long time involving hackers on the one hand and security experts on the other, each trying to stay one step ahead of the other.

This involves continual – and rapid – change, something human beings aren’t always comfortable with.

Information overload

Yes, change is good, but constant rapid change puts people in a continual state of anxiety, slaves to a fight-or-flight response that feels like it’s always on the verge of kicking in.

Ever wonder why so many people resist moving away from fossil fuels and toward alternative forms of energy? It’s not because they like pollution or want climate change. It’s not even just about jobs or industries, although that’s a part of it. Fundamentally, it’s about security. We develop habits and, no matter how much we strive to embrace innovation, there’s a part of us that resists it for no other reason than “we’ve always done it this way.”

More to the point, we know how to do it this way.

There’s a tendency to dismiss resistance to change as backward or ignorant, but there’s far more to it than that. It’s a natural human defense against the kind of upheaval we’ve experienced as we’ve become more and more dependent upon the Internet – where rapid change is the rule rather than the exception.

We’ve moved out of the information age and into the age of information overload. I’m not just talking about the proliferation of choices the Internet has offered us. Those are, after all, still choices. There might be millions or even billions of websites out there, but we tend to find those we like and stick to them (insulating ourselves in the process from opinions that don’t gibe with our own, but that’s another story).

Not-so-brave new world

Still, we don’t always have a choice to shield ourselves from information overload, or the anxiety it causes.

One simple example: The demand that we continually change (and remember) multiple passwords as a means of shielding ourselves from identity theft, computer viruses, etc. It’s not like the old days, when you taught your child to remember his home phone number, which never changed unless you moved to a different city.

That’s stressful, and it’s just the beginning.

Add to that the stress of staying on top of internet marketing techniques, whether you work for a major company or are in business for yourself. Google, Facebook and so forth are continually tweaking their algorithms, so marketers have no choice but to respond. A generation or two ago, you took out an ad in the newspaper, on radio or TV, then measured the results in terms of how many shoppers turned our and how big a sales boost you got. Simple cause and effect.

Now, you aren’t limited to those three marketing options, which are largely secondary anyway. Online, you have to market your product via Facebook. And Twitter. And Instagram. And Snapchat. And Pinterest. And LinkedIn. And Amazon. And Goodreads. And on and on and on. Each of these platforms has different rules, different systems to learn and different ways of maximizing page views.

(As an author active in promoting my work on all those platforms except for Snapchat, I know what I'm talking about.)

Once you’ve mastered those rules, you’ve got to test them by figuring out where those clicks are coming from, along with the demographics of real and potential customers.

You’ve got to use the proper metadata and keywords. Then, once you’ve got all that in place, you’ll need to measure the performance of text vs. images vs. videos at attracting a user’s attention within a milieu of never-ending options. Are users staying engaged? Are they returning? You’ve got to measure those things, too.

We’re not built that way

Suddenly, you’re light years away from a relying on folks to page through the Sunday paper at their leisure, providing solid customer service when they visit your establishment and hoping they’ll spread the word.

Pretty soon, nearly all your time is being taken up adapting to ever-changing systems, processing information and analyzing the results. Then starting all over, virtually from scratch, when some algorithm-writer changes the rules.

In an atmosphere where marketing is king, queen, prince and pauper, there’s little time left for actually creating the product you’re supposed to be selling in the first place. The process is king, and the product takes second place. Heck, just getting through the process is a challenge – one that often demands a greater degree of multitasking.

Despite what this word might suggest, our brains aren’t built to multitask. If they were, texting and driving would be no big deal.

"If you have a complicated task, it requires all your attention, and if you're trying to spread your attention over multiple tasks, it's not going to work," David Meyer, cognitive scientist at the University of Michigan, said in an article by Joe Robinson titled The Myth of Multitasking.

The fact is, we can’t think straight when we try to process too many things at once. Our memories suffer. Our ability to think creatively – which involves things like daydreaming, brainstorming and joyfully exploring the world around us – is stifled. We're actually 40 percent less productive.

We become stressed-out automatons, more prone to breaking down thanks to hypertension, fatigue and burnout. But we've fashioned a world for ourselves where we seem to have little choice. It's a world of diminishing product value, increasing health problems and rising frustration – a world where style hasn’t merely surpassed substance, it’s supplanted it.

Welcome to the assembly line. Welcome to the future.

The Matrix has us all.

“You ought to be setting aside large chunks of time where you just think. Einstein was not multitasking when he was dreaming up the special and general theories of relativity.”

— David Meyer, University of Michigan cognitive scientist

Overcoming prejudice is child's play; we adults can do it, too

I’m going to tell you a short personal story, one that my parents told me because I was too young to remember it – even though I was one of the central characters. Both my parents are gone now, and I wanted to preserve this story, not because it says anything about me, but because it says something about how we learn to hate and fear those who are different ... or not, if we've got good role models. 

When I was 3 years old, my father got a one-year job as a visiting professor of American politics in Sydney, Australia. On our way there, we stopped at a South Pacific island and were greeted by a bellhop at the hotel. He was a tall, bearded man with dark skin and a friendly smile. He was probably in his twenties or thirties.

I know this because I’ve seen a picture of him. In the photo, which is probably stored away in the attic somewhere, I'm standing next to the man, holding his hand. Dad enjoyed taking photos (a favored pastime he handed down to me), and he liked to show this one as part of his living room slide shows long before the era of PowerPoint and YouTube.

Anyway, the story, as my dad told it, went something like this:

We were checking into this hotel, and the aforementioned gentlemen asked to help us with our bags. I stared up at him and pointed, then turned to my parents and said, “He’s different.”

Mom and Dad were aghast. They thought sure I’d noticed the man’s dark skin and had made the kind of rude remark that children who “don’t know any better” tend to make.

But the next words out of my mouth immediately put everyone at ease: “He’s got hair on his face.”

What if I had remarked about the color of his skin? Is there really anything wrong with acknowledging our differences? I don’t think so … as long as we also acknowledge our common humanity.

Children who “don’t know any better” are too often taught to “know worse” by adults who use differences as an excuse to demean people who aren’t like them.

I’m thankful my parents weren’t like that.

A funny postscript to this story: My dad, the following year, grew a beard of his own. I later followed suit, not to be like dad, but the opposite – to be different. At 17, most other guys in my high school didn’t have one, and I liked the idea of having my own identity.

Identity is important. So is respect. I may not have known that yet when I was 3 years old, but my parents taught me that over the years.

We can celebrate our differences and our commonality at the same time. It isn't hard. A child can do it.

Author's note: Dad’s birthday is coming up this month, and it will be the first year I won’t be able to celebrate it with him. You’re still making a difference, Dad, even if you’re no longer here to see it.