An unpleasant feature of life in The Hallucination Regime is that one day, you’re just minding your business, doing your whatever, maybe running a pizza shop and the next you’re being stalked by a bunch of crackpots who read some theory online.
A recent case is that Emma Gonzalez. No, not that Emma Gonzalez. Another Emma Gonzalez, who just happens to share a name with the more famous Emma Gonzalez.
People think she’s a Parkland ‘crisis actor.’ It’s terrifying.
The strangers mocked her on social media. They called her old boss, saying she should be arrested. Now she feared one was stalking her.
Emma Gonzalez became an Internet obsession after a gunman killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine’s Day. She no longer felt safe walking home in her neighborhood of four years.
“Do Americans really fall for it when you talk about being a victim of a school shooting in Florida?” someone had messaged her on Facebook, joining dozens of others who doubted her identity.
But she wasn’t that Emma — the Parkland, Fla., student leading a national gun-control movement who has appeared on CNN, “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” and the cover of Time magazine.
She was another Emma, a 31-year-old vegan chef in Brooklyn.
Sure, she used to star on a low-budget cooking series. She was not, however, what they called her: a “crisis actor.”
That is some sort of fucked up. And why does this stuff always seem to have something to do with food. Remember that whole pizzagate thing?
I wonder if this is some sort of algorithmic thinking becoming embedded in the human brain. Like, based on the same name and a sort of passing resemblance of facts, Google confidently states that my novel was written by another “Ryan Oakley.” Are people mirroring that sort of “thinking” and producing conspiracy theories as a result?
Whatever it is, it’s pretty fucked up.
thegrumpyowlredux.wordpress.com 