What is it about nice people that attract total idiots?Nice people are martyrs. Idiots are evangelists.

SOCK IT TO ME BABY!!!

Monday, August 28, 2017

Hurricane Harvey and the flood of A-holes....

I am not going to belabor the news stories- either you know what is happening in Texas, or you don't care.  Now here, we follow these things pretty closely.  People need prayers, need help, and we have done both to the best of our abilities, 'nuff said.  And it has been heartwarming to see people around the nation- especially the courageous citizens of the Houston area themselves- coming together to do what they can to help.  Hopefully, a lot of them will still be doing so when the water goes down and the hard part begins.


I have taken advantage of several bits of social media to stay informed.  During the landfall itself, I followed the Category 6 blog on Weather Underground, which boasts a lot of really knowledgeable people who go out of their way to educate people who are in harm's way.  After a while, I decided to hop off and go to bed- and a funny thing happened, as I found out.

There was a storm chaser who was live streaming in Rockport- which was the jaws of the beast.  It was fascinating to watch, but the site he was streaming over had two very annoying features.  On the right, an continuous stream of hearts rising up like bubbles in a soda glass for a yet-unknown reason.  On the left, it was posting live comments.  Here was the problem, as most of the comments seemed to be from adolescent pervos making sexual innuendo and foul-mouthed comments about anything and everything.  I might have stayed on it, had this site given me the option to turn them off, but no such luck.  Unable to handle the torrent of utter stupidity, I got off.


A darn shame that, as I saw the next day a compilation video of the stream- without the BS- and it was exciting, amazing, and damn scary.  I also learned that the "comment stream" from this was bleeding over into the comments on WU (which is where I found the link in the first place), and that it had gotten so bad that the well-educated and intentioned regulars threw up their hands at the inability of the moderators to stop the flow of verbal sewage and just signed off till the next morning.  Indeed, much of the first little while I was on WU Saturday was spent on post-mortems of what they described as a debacle.


But by that point, I had already stumbled onto another debacle  brought about by the sheer stupidity of a minority of people.  Twitter was being used to relay info on people in trouble through the hashtag #Houstonflood.  But when I arrived, they were being hit by an ever-increasing amount of bot-spam.  95% of it was advertising for the night before's Mayweather fight, being directed through peoples' accounts by our friends from China, Baidu.com.  The other five were evenly split between a recurring, pair of blatantly porn posts and one that promised lots of examples of Katy Perry "exposing herself".

In between these, there were dozens of idiots that were finding every way possible to blame President Trump for the disaster- from his dropping out of the Paris Accords, to some disaster thing that Obama started that he dropped, to the heinous crime of tweeting about a book by Sheriff Dave Clark, to the fact the "climate change caused the whole thing, and probably another couple dozen nitwit things that I missed.

One person genuinely trying to save the hashtag for good things, begged anyone not in the middle of the tragedy to "report the hell out of the spam."  I spent about a half-hour reporting the same six spam posts over and over, blocking political agendists that felt that lives in danger was a great time to preach about how evil Trump is and that climate change deniers are inbred fools, and occasionally getting to read something pertinent- until somebody using their brains informed everybody to switch to #Houstonflood1 to get away, at least from the spam.

For a while, then, things improved.  I followed the KHOU live stream until they got flooded out of their building and got KFAA Dallas to cover for them, then switched to KRIV.  As the afternoon started, the Twitterites abandoned that hashtag as well, while plenty more brain challenged individuals were trying to follow the talk of the town- #HurricaneHarvery.  Yes, "Harvery".  That was apparently after two other hashtags that couldn't spell "hurricane" right fell by the wayside.


Then as evening settled in, the climate changers returned to WU.  These people weren't even smart enough to remember that 12 years ago, their predecessors were telling us that because of global warming, Katrina was a harbinger of what was going to "happen more and more often"- and yet, this was the first major hurricane to hit SINCE Wilma that same year.  And here they were, telling us that climate change was going to make "Harveys" the norm.  Thankfully, for the most part they were shouted down by the regulars, who told them to take their climate warming and political crap elsewhere.

Was it all leftist talking points?  No, there was a little rightside rhetoric, but the vast majority of that was responding to the people that were struggling with 12-year amnesia.

And today, I see a CNN reporter was all upset because one of the rescue boats had a confederate flag on the back.  "I would have accepted the ride, but I would have torn the flag off when we landed," this reporter said.  I said, " I don't know as I would do that so close to a big, spinning propeller."  And I am also told that MSNBC asked the Governor of Texas if he was doing all he could to rescue illegals along with everyone else.  I will go on record right now as saying to the left, I don't see how you expect me to take your claims of being inclusive and willing to work with others at ANY level when you can interject this manner of utter trash into a disaster situation.  To me, this is telling me that YOU would probably let a community of white Christians drown if you had the chance- at least those of you so willing to show your online courage.

Thankfully, there are a lot of lefts and rights who realize at times like these, politics is even more stupid than it is normally.  And a lot of them are gathering in Texas, or sending money and supplies that way.  To you, I don't apply the above remarks.  But if you are one of those who interspersed your climate change BS in between people's pleas for rescue, the mirror is yours.


Oh, and one more dreg of humanity I wanted to mention. Some prince wrote up a whole deal about calling the National Guard for rescues, giving a phone number that went to some out of state insurance company.  I hope you have a good explanation for your "clever marketing scheme" to give before your Final Judge.

Oh, and that reminds me of another dishonorable mention:  The same old tired atheist troll getting on a "#Prayfor.." hashtag to tell everyone to send money and stop wasting time with fantasy.  I would have nailed him, but he got shouted down by a fellow atheist.  Sometimes there IS a justice of sorts...

12 comments:

  1. Disasters are not a forum for political rhetoric, proselytizing, or commercialization.

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    1. BTW, I wanna say publicly I retweeted something yesterday that I regretted and almost deleted yesterday. Roland called BS and I agree.

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  2. Chris:
    ---Well, I have to say that you DID NOT DISAPPOINT as far as the two of us being "on the same page" when it comes to disasters such as these (and the societal fallout from the terminally-stupid among us).
    ---You covered EVERY point I would have spoken to, except for the (actual) social media PCBS...you know how I feel about THAT already.
    ---This is a time for some REAL UNITY from everyone, much like the nation a lot of it's citizens USED to be...and not a cause to belittle, denigrate, and insult those trying to help in any way, shape, or form.
    ---I applaud you for all you had to say here.
    Heaven help those weirdos out there when it becomes THEIR turn on the social carousel.
    (those rescue boats might be running a tad slower).

    Very good post.

    Stay safe (and rant on) up there, brother.

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    1. Spam seems to be on another uptick. So many posts are filled with the same dumb thing over and over, and I had FOUR spam calls today- two of which were decidedly rudely hung up on.

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  3. The confederate flag on the rescue boat is the perfect illustration of everything that has gone completely awry in this country as of late. It's like the good doesn't matter--the people taking the time and effort to help others (i.e. the people operating the rescue boat) don't matter because one of the boats had an OfFeNsiVe!!! flag on it. It's bloody ridiculous.

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    1. Exactly! I wonder if the reporter would have even noticed it IF they had really been in need of rescue.

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  4. You wouldn't believe the level of stupidity going on right now on social media regarding anything from criticism of our mayor's decision not to evacuate the city, to asking the mayor what happens if illegals are rescued is he sending them to ICE officeals -to which our mayor (who also happens to be a lawyer) retorted, "If anyone that is rescued is taken in because of their legal status I will represent you myself" I could go on and on but it's too exhausting. People need to continue banding together and ignore the thoughtless assholes.

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    1. Unfortunately, I would believe it- only because I see it every-stinking-where. So many social "geniuses" out there doing nothing but proving their stupidity. Definitely have learned how to work the block button lately.

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  5. Nice post.

    Social media (twitter, facebook, etc) is somewhere between difficult and impossible to regulate on an immediate basis. In the case of the ongoing moonbat blather, what a moderator might want to do is suspend that particular user for 30 days - but there's no way to do that.

    Anonymity is fine for political discussions, and in fact is very desirable in many situations - but not at the expense of the purpose of the platform or thread. I would go so far as to say that it's a lot like being unable to call 9-1-1 due to robo-calls on the network. Who would you hold responsible for that? The robo-callers, sure, but the provider bears a large part of the blame as well. At least that's the way I see it.

    So - prayers for the people in Texas. My cousin is one such, but I have every confidence that he's high and dry somewhere else.

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    1. One thing that William Shatner brought up today is how so many of these big brave SJWs who have to inject politics into everything have side "mouthing off" accounts they use in case their over-the-top crap gets them banned.

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  6. Never experienced a natural disaster, saw on the news about Harvey and oh what a disaster and the flooding it is horrible

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    1. Never been in anything close myself. God has been good to us.

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