#how long have i not tumblrd?
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The Partisan Generation
This generation
It was the morning that his daughter airily declared the moon landing a fake news Jewish plot to let liberal scientists run the government that Lenton Ayre realised things had gone a bit far with this generation.
“and, you know its because gun control libtards in the Hollywood elite that we lost the Iraq war” she added, gazing into her eglasses at the endless stream of retweets, status updates and weather pattern like emojis swept over her “because, you know. There were WMD’s - that’s the truth. Only the cultural Marxists wanna cover it up. There’s like a whole thread on ReddChan about it and all the instagram influencers are saying…”
“honey, I just asked what you were gonna be studying in school today” he replied, cutting her off before she could do the whole ten minute screed on the snowflake liberals that then could segway into a whole monolog that took in every conspiracy theory from JFK to flat earth. Instead he would rather talk about their real education. As someone who was assiduous in his working habits and concerned for his children’s future he had of course taken them out of the local state school and put them into the Musk-Bezos academy that had opened in a refurbished mall just out of town. This was less a matter really of intellectual choice, more that since his own employer was a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary of Amazon he could either send his kids to the Inspire! Academy or he could find himself a new job.
That Lenton would not have minded quite so much, but all his rivals could only offer him the Netflix online-ed course for his two teenagers. That would hardly have been good fathering, he had figured. Although considering his two children’s current subjects of conversation he wondered if it might just have been better to join one of the local Trump Revival churches and get them home schooled. At least he wouldn’t have had to worry about exams, and they would have a willing audience to talk conspiracy theories with.
“Rani, dude. What is that libtard bullshit?” Ayre’s son retorted, his own smartglasses reflecting the latest news from the hardcore manosphere where he spent most of his time. Since he was wearing his ‘science is my superpower’ tshirt his sister was clearly in a trolling mood “you’ve been sucking down that stupid crap your latest gaywad lametoob boyband crush soyboy has been saying, right? Everyone knows that they’re just a front for Kremlin. Those pretty commie boys want to turn you Stacy’s into their harem so that honest patriots like me can’t get what we’re owed….”
“Kev, you can’t get a girl cause you’re a fucking misogynist incel loser” said his sister quickly “don’t start blaming other people for your problems”
“okay, kids please” said Lenton raising both his hands in what his NLP Yoga teacher had assured him was a calming pose that leant him an air of kindly authority “can we have some calm? You know something a little less partisan at the breakfast table?” lenton scrolled through his own smartglasses looking for non controversial content. It was surprisingly hard “now, can we all agree that congress are a bunch of assholes? Or that kittens are super cute?”
His son opened his mouth to argue
“okay, how about dogs in cars, with their heads out the window?”
Kevin shut his mouth and nodded.
“I mean, I don’t know where it comes from” moaned lenton later at the popup office where he spent his days in online content creation “my daughter spouts anything that comes from the Kremlin via whatever hot youtube boy she’s currently hard crushing on, and my son says anything that some rock hard libertarian science guy says. Neither of them give it a second thought. I don’t know why, cause whenever I say anything they’re on me with laser sight scepticism”
“eh, I blame the technology” complained his colleague as she thumbed through mentions in her livefeed, feeling the desperate need for validation more than the caffeine hit in the cup in her hand “these kids, they wanna be spoonfed everything. I remember when we was their age. We hadda actually google search stuff. If you wanted to throw shade you hadda go to the effort of writing a livejournal about it. Now these kids just get a bunch of recommendations straight into their eyeballs. No thought required”
“too right, Tina. Its about hard work” said Lenton, looking at the day’s workload “it’s the attitude that’s the problem. They’re just too lazy to challenge anything” he scanned the list of hot button to do items “so, what talking points are we monetising for cultural leaders today?”
“we got a contract in from Russia. They want to see the latest round of the Israel Iranian conflict spun as being caused by Jewish bankers. Was thinking we can feed that one in via the Foxosphere. They love a bit of Jew baiting so long as we call em progressive liberal internationalists”
“good call” said Lenton, paging through the various socially destructive ideas and fake news he was being paid a hefty commission to inject into public discourse “we’ve got our screaming mob on retainer. Can get them with placards and slogans anywhere we need them. Although the RNC still hasn’t paid them for that last job. Something about how they weren’t violent enough against those BLM people…”
“they’re actors” sighed Tina as she refilled her mug from the genuine organic roast machine. Her mug bore the cheery slogan ‘world’s greatest stripper’ always reminding her of her grandmother, whose gift it had been “if they want proper violence then they have to get the real white supremacists, but they’re all booked up defending the Canadian border from UN one world government liberal invasion, or whatever we told them was the problem”
“thought it was LGBTQ infiltrators?” replied Lenton. It was hard to keep up. They were after all paid to shape the news and the information that influenced people, the consequences were not really in his pay grade.
“whatever” sighed Tina as she took another high protein cookie from the stack. They were super moreish but were almost physically indigestible. The resulting diarrhoea was always good for the waist line “and we got another Koch brothers contract up. Top dollar to get the key 18-25 demographic thinking that renewable energy is a problem”
“simple. Thread through the manosphere as being that renewable energy is unmanly and feminising. We can to nostalgia stuff around the petrol engine. The far right will love a bit of Tesla bashing….”
“and Tesla will pay us double to spread the counter message” said Tina, finishing her coffee “cool” she paused “look, don’t worry about your kids. They go through phases. Shit, I was tumblrd out when I was their age, woulda cut my best friends head off if she’d said a word against my fandom. They grow out of it”
“yeah” said lenton, already downloading the days false news and astroturf memes ready to infect the information stream of the western world with “but, you know they just seem so extreme. I don’t get why” he added as he pumped a thread blaming vaccinations for causing sexual inadequacy into a mainstream news forum where it would have an active effect on roughly forty five percent of the readership “I just don’t see where they get those ideas from”
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