Get Over It

This younger generation is amazing to me. And forgive me if I sound like my father. Someone posted on Facebook one of those 'clever' fake news stories claiming Stephen King purchased/posted a number of fake reviews to lift a doubtful book upon publication.

I stated in my comments that I didn't believe the story. After all King is an icon. Fan boys and girls, mostly horror writing hopefuls, would spend their mother's last nickel to purchase a fully stocked, flies included, manure bucket if Mr. King himself wrote the word 'manure' on it. In between fainting over the brilliance of the written word, these same followers would write 'clever' tomes extolling the bucket of manure's historical horror virtues. This is a given. So the story itself is clearly ridiculous.

What isn't ridiculous and what I commented on was the author/publisher practice of filing a flurry of fake reviews to bolster a questionable book; as well as some finagling of printing/sales
data to boost numbers on best seller lists. This IS and HAS ALWAYS BEEN found in literary circles for decades.

Of course I am attacked. Of course I missed the point. This is a genius fake story that is so funny H. L. Mencken himself can be heard belching in belly laughs from his own grave.

Well, the story itself is not funny. It's as funny as most bizarro literature. And clever? It's clever like two plus two equals four or is it seven now that we have Common Core?

I wish this generation specifically would actually experience the outside world and stop being reactionary and naïve. We don't live in a utopia. There is no such thing as an utopia. The world is a bad place. The world is a dangerous place. The world is deceitful.

Authors and publishers will do anything to promote a book and pad sales. Hype is promoting and is usually promoting something far from genuine. And if I say something about Stephen King that is negative, which I did not, I do have freedom of speech.

Well do I?

All my years, history backs me on this, to live in  a world believing everybody is nice, that no one lies, that is no one is bossy; and unfunny is funny will only leave that dreamer holding nothing but a bucket of manure.

Wake up.