social media – KEN WHEATON

Oh no! The sex-traffickers are back at Target

Posted on September 20, 2021 by kenwheaton in social media

Looks like it’s time to hide your kids and your wife. According to the never-wrong news source, “Some Lady’s Facebook Post,” strange men are once again following families around the clothing department of Target with an eye toward throwing them all into a white van in broad daylight.

I don’t know what it says about social media, but it’s sort of annoying that even these sorts of stupid, divisive, uninformed, mostly-fake memes, have to be recycled every few years. Can we not get something new to freak out about?

This hysteria seems to have originated in Oregon back in 2017, where some woman took a picture of a guy and claimed she and her family were being stalked. Or, wait, maybe it started in California that same year, in an Ikea. Nothing came of either case.

These posts are typically the result of an overactive imagination mixed with some old-fashioned racism (a lot of the posts I’ve seen claim the guys “look Mexican”) and straight up narcissism.

Here’s the truth, lady. NOBODY WANTS TO KIDNAP YOU OR YOUR KIDS. They’d probably return yall after half an hour even if they did.

Not to let facts intrude into social media fantasyland, but this is the exact opposite of how trafficking works. According to Lara Powers who wrote about this at the time, “I have encountered thousands of child sex-trafficking cases in the United States. I have never seen, read or heard about a real sex-trafficking situation in which a child was abducted by traffickers in broad daylight at a busy store under a mother’s watchful eye.”

Maybe a creep did follow you around the store. I worked in retail and there were plenty of creeps, some of whom even liked to pleasure themselves in the dressing room. But that’s a far cry from sex trafficking.

If your child is going to be trafficked, kidnapped, or sexually assaulted, the number one contenders are:

Your ex
Your current
Your priest or pastor
A teacher or coach
QAnon members
The leader of the gang you didn’t know your child was in
Assorted scumbags who’ve inserted themselves into foster networks
The Florida congressional delegation

You need some sort of power-dynamic in play and, more often than not, trust of some sort. The rando in Target has neither of those things.

What I find (almost) funny about this is that the same person who will immediately (and sometimes repeatedly) smash the share button on these Facebook posts is the exact same person mad at the media for “spreading fear” and “being divisive.” This isn’t the media. This is you. You are spreading fear and being divisive. You are the fake news.

And don’t get me started on the inability to do basic risk assessment. “Even after 700,000 people have died of a disease, I think it’s worth the risk to send little Sally to Saint Anti-Masker’s Church of the Unvaccinated. That’s just freedom and common sense. And look, I’ve heard the rumors about the youth-group leader who drifted into town with no backstory and that weird bracelet on his ankle, but he seems SO nice. … We all know the real danger is walking around Target on a Monday.”

None of this makes me pro-sex trafficking. And I sincerely apologize if you, like Nicki Minaj, have a friend’s cousin who was kidnapped from the underwear section at Target. Truly, I do.

Enjoy your shopping.

Fidgety fingers and internet addiction

Posted on January 9, 2020 by kenwheaton in social media, Writing

I wrote the first drafts of my first three novels with pen on paper. I did it not because I’m in love with ink and notebooks, value them over all the wonders of modern technology. No, it was partly so I could focus, partly to force an extra round of self-editing. I’ve got nothing against computers. I think they’re wonderful. In fact, the most recent novel, the unpublished one, I wrote almost completely on a computer. Why? Seemed to make sense at the time. And the tone and style I was aiming for was punchier, shorter, so it felt okay.

But I might have to go back to pen and paper. For fiction at any rate. I’ve been working on a short story this week, in the morning hours before I sign on for work. The first half of it I wrote in a notebook. But I’ve typed that up and am forging ahead on the keyboard. This isn’t affecting the writing style or the tone.

But there is a matter of distraction. We all know we’re addicted to the interwebs, etc. And it mostly happens these days on our phone. You’re always looking at the thing, even on the toilet, even when you’ve got two other screens going. Even if you’re watching a commercial-free Netflix program.

And I’ve been embarrassed this week at my behavior. It’s not even that I NEED to check Twitter and Facebook every five minutes. I CAN walk away. (Sure, Ken. Sure you can.) But I noticed that every time I ended a paragraph or written thought and paused to figure out what would happen next, my hands almost automatically started the process of switching to a new tab. It didn’t even matter which tab. They just wanted to open something. My mind wanted to look at something. To keep things flowing into it. Disgusting.

I got that urge somewhat under control. Yes, it can be done. You simply have to put some effort into it. But just when I got the desktop urges under control, my hand went and grabbed the phone and opened Twitter–which is also open in one of those tabs on the desktop. Like I said. Embarrassing. And scary!

So it’s either back to the notebook. Or I sit on my hands between paragraphs.