Neptune continues its long and slow journey through the sign it rules, Pisces. There are certain benefits to having the planet which rules illusion in that strong a place for it. Look at how great special effects have gotten over the last few years, and how many sources of entertainment we have now, for example.
On the other hand, it also means that a lot of people are being total suckers for falsehoods being spread around on the Internet. Here is today’s real news about “fake news.”
Last month a video of a woman pouring a bleach and water mixture in men’s laps on a Russian subway train went viral. This was allegedly the work of a “typical angry feminist” in an attempt to combat manspreading — that’s when a man sits with his legs wide apart on public transit, thus taking up more space than he needs to.
The video became fairly popular on social media, and was the basis of news stories on a few major websites of a certain political inclination. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which inclination that is, but here’s a hint: we’re talking about the sort of website that portrays feminists as crazy and/or dangerous. If that’s how you think of these things, it’s the sort of news story that you yourself might end up sharing on Facebook or Twitter.
The only problem with this is that the video is entirely faked. We have now learned the video was entirely scripted, and everyone in it was a paid actor… and yet the original source for the video presented it as true. The original source of the video? Russia Today (better known as RT), the English language website operated by the Kremlin for propaganda purposes — a site many of you have likely read, believed, and repeated stories from yourself.
I’ve looked at a few of the websites that repeated this story. As of this writing, three of them still have the story up and available without updating or apologizing. A fourth one also has the story up, but with a small update at the bottom, claiming “If this really is a Kremlin created propaganda piece, YES. We totally fell for it, because feminists are so freaking batsh*t that there’s NO WAY we’d ever doubt they’d be THAT batsh*t.
* Sigh *
In other words, sure it’s a lie, but we’ll believe it anyway because that’s what brings in the clicks and the ad revenue. Eat it up, suckers!
We all have at least a bit of a natural tendency to see what we want to believe, rather than things being the other way around. That, unfortunately, is human nature. We may live in “The Information Age,” but some people have figured out that disnformation can be spread much further, more quickly, and more proiofitably. Reality is subtle and nuanced. Fiction can be spun to be a lot more entertaining than that. Neptune loves a good illusion… and doesn’t particularly care about “the truth.”
Want to know how to work with the current and future energy to get maximum benefit? Feel free to write me about it!
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