Draft News Pointers

(April 8, 2019) Leaving the screen on occasion is not enough to build a truly individuated mind. But it's a start. Only touching autonomous media -- leaving the internet hive and entering another world -- will break temporarily the infantalizing umbilical chords of the social media silos owned by Facebook media group.

And individuating on a habitual basis is vital for maintaining a democracy.

Until one is individuated from one's parents, he or she always will be dependent on them for opinions and thought. That's the healthiest version. Individuating from cult leaders also is important. A cult leader-like offer from who appears to be a mere friend says "turn all your decisions over to me, I'll make them for you." It's a tempting salve to a stressful ambiguous and chaotic time.

A blog post plugin could solve a problem. A blog article, a news article, is not the final word on any subject. But when we're in the habit of consuming a finishable snack of news on a daily basis, just that one article leaves us juiced. Endless scrolling leaves us drained.

Let's say in one two-week period, news breaks five times about one company. Say that company is called Farkbook. Let's say two very unfavorable news items break one week, and one favorable press release from Farkbook comes out late Friday. Outlets report the press release with little re-writing. Just in time for the Sunday shows, the press release gets the repeater signal boost from media outlets who they successfully manipulated.

What if, every time a news article publishes about Farkbook, an icon above and to the left of the article points to the next most recent article on Farkbook.

Below and to the right of the article is nothing on the day it publishes. But the following week, as soon as the next article surfaces in the mainstream media about Farkbook, an arrow below and to the right of the article points to it.

Tuesday an unfavorable Farkbook story publishes. Thursday an unfavorable Farkbook story publishes. Saturday morning, Farkbook's internal news department (that's what they're calling them now) publishes a favorable press release. In today's world, only the last item gets the repeater boost.

In a world of news pointers, the last article publishes with two daisy-chained arrows above and to the left of the favorable story.

This work by AJ Fish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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