Father’s Day 2024
This morning I attempted to purchase, online, a few exfoliating body scrubs from pureSCRUBS. Things went fine, swimmingly well, until I was, once again, confronted with proving I’m a human.
The gauntlet of fuzzy animal figures appeared, for matching to the Primary Image.
And it looked to me as if The Duck was oriented in a very odd way in the water. I therefore thought that the physical orientation of The Duck was the key to solving the Captcha.
WRONG.
Over-thinking, or even thinking, is the surefire way to fail these idiot-tests.
Dear Husband came to my side. Well, actually, he hovered over my shoulder, a position for which I gave him permission because (1) I was desperate for help; and (2) it is, after all, Father’s Day.
The Father’s Day digital sales promos shall vanish, to be replaced by the 4th of July Extravaganza Sales EVENT! Capitalist companies that were spreading Patriot-Scram all over their woke websites are now zooming to celebrate my nationalism and that putrid populism that’s such a threat to democracy.
Go figure.
I have figured.
Their sales figures are in the basement, and, suddenly, I, the red-blooded, true-blue slob of an American, am the target of their phony schtick which they can go schtick somewhere else.
It’s entirely possible that I’m forgetting another crucial SALES HOLIDAY between now and then, which is approximately three weeks hence.
The Summer Solstice is coming up. There’s a ripe opportunity to hawk your wares to the Earth-Firsters via one zip-code generated plug, and to America First via an entirely different locale-dissemination. The problem for these PR Experts is the Internet has “facilitated” the wide open view of all of these con games, at the same time!
My Dear Husband, who is now known as Jolene’s Dad in our rustic village, informed me of the objective of this humanoid-detection-grid. The blurry image to be matched is, indeed, that of A Duck, or mallard, or wild fowl, or domestic water bird.
I was unable to duck out of this problem-solving puzzle that gives me nothing but problems!
And the problem, as I see it, is that the entire Internet, that Information Superhighway, has become increasingly un-navigable by any person seeking true information, or even true lies.
I am grateful, every day, that I researched certain historic background materials on the Internet of 2005-2009. The search engine algorithm of today places the Highest Bidder at the top of the line, or screen.
Trying to find the Top 100 Traditional Country Songs brought the names of a Ms. Swift, Beyoncé, and unheard-of rock stars to my eyes! The Listicles are a running and incorrect commentary on atrocious ad-bait.
Cut bait or fish, in such a scenario, equates to swiftly close the laptop.
The electronic auction has become grotesque. It looks like e-Bay on a bad day.
I guess this advertising feeding frenzy was inevitable, given that the search engine was never free, but promoted as such, to gullible users. I don’t even know how many of those conned consumers exist. I never took part in Soche Media, or gigabyte gimmicks. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, or free love!
The Subscription Model is a feasible way of peddling business online. The creepy-Tekkie-Titans of an industry based on the accurate reporting of clicks to provide a sliding scale for the price of ad-space, those awful, pompous ogres have succeeded in taking a potentially thriving medium, The Internet, and turning it into an engine of skewing EVERYTHING to their advantage.
It’s Un-American.
I realize that such a statement is fascist in the here-and-now. The undeniable fact of human nature is that that the swinish weirdo projects his real self onto his, or her, competitors, be those rivals in business, politics, or even the home front.
I have carefully observed the Brownshirts in Power, and the macabre Masters of the Universe, aided by their compliant but loud lockstep followers, during the past decade, and particularly during the past five years. My only conclusion is that fomenting a public campaign of calling your opponent a Nazi is an unintended confession of your own corrupted soul. That shrill propaganda is endlessly, terminally on display on what used to be called a Video Display Terminal.
Waking up to a harsh and painful reality is rarely an easy or pleasant activity. I look at the mess that we’re all in, in terms of Incompetent Elected Elites partying and power-mongering with our money in the name of protecting us, caring for us, doing so much for us, for our own good — and I go for a nice, long walk in the woods.
That bailiwick is my property. It’s an actual physical domain which is eons away from the world of un-reality and perverse illusion that has captured a certain percentage of any populace within the past decade.
Once again, I do not know the precise numbers of those individuals who have given up on living in a real world, and who prefer deception as part of day-to-day existence. Those masses are most likely fewer than what the Website Weirdos, who profitably pander to them, believe. The untapped market for any quick get-rich-quick scheme can be overstated; and, during our current crisis, it is.
In the good old days of selling advertising space for magazines, newspapers, radio, and that fossil of the past, TV, there were verifiable ways to count subscriptions, viewers, and users. Presently, there are only the users and the BOTS. The advertiser hasn’t an earthly of verifying how many times HIS COMPANY has been put to the front of the payola-online line.
Ripoff Artist: Search Engine. Ripoff Victim: Retailer.
A revolution in digital retail is long overdue. Maybe the ether-sphere ghouls behind the screen know that reality. Me, I’m just waiting for choices, not in Ads, but in multi-directional pathways on that one-way superhighway that’s led to mediocrity, mayhem, and, in some human cases, madness.