Category Archives: Politics Sucks

War Sucks

Well, we’re in the eighth day of 2020 — and the new decade — and it already seems the world is spiraling into chaos. That didn’t take very long, now did it?

I’m sure everyone is aware, even vaguely, of what has been going on in the Middle East lately, specifically Iran. To recap if you’ve totally been under a rock: ~~the US~~ Trump (~~we/us because~~ I’m a proud ‘Merican.) decided to kill/murder/assassinate a big, important Iranian general. Making this action even more terrifying was that fact that he was killed in Iraq; he was in an allied country! Right away you should realize that bombing a target at an international airport of one of our allies is a bad idea. Iran was pissed and threatened us, and Trump, our wonderful commander-in-chief, taunted the shit out of Iran on Twitter. Yes this is how the world works now.

I was hopeful this would be the pinnacle of the entire crisis. Like Trump and Iran would swing their metaphorical dicks around trying to show the other up, and then we’d all forget about it after a few weeks. Nope. I was at work a few hours ago when I heard the newest news: Iran had attacked some of our airbases with missles! Oh. Shit. What would our Dear Leader Donald J. Trump do now? I’m almost certain a retaliatory attack is inevitable, and I’m haunted by the possibility that Trump tosses a few nukes towards Iran just because. I have the sinking feeling that this might be the brink our country is about to go careening off of and my anxiety skyrocketed. I’m on edge. I’m terrified. What if today is the September 10th or the December 6th — the taken-for-granted calm right before the world inevitably changes? I hope this post ages terribly and I can look back in a month and say, “Well, I was worried about nothing!” But until then…

One of my resolutions this year is to only drink on Sunday and I nearly failed today. War? Were we really on the brink of an actual war? For what? What’s the reason? It feels like dominoes falling where we just push the reason back to the last cause, and so on, until nothing makes sense anymore. Iran attacked our bases. But they did that because we killed their general. But we did that because he was a bad guy or something. But he was probably a bad guy because Trump sanctioned Iran and withdrew from the nuclear deal that was in place. And he did that because Obama negotiated the treaty and he attempts to undo anything related to Obama. And so on. Nothing here seems to call for an all-out fucking war though. It’s like a bunch of kids fighting: “I didn’t start the fight, MOM! HE HIT ME FIIIRRRRRSSSTTTT!“

I wouldn’t call myself a pacifist because some wars do seem like noble causes and inevitable. The last war in my opinion that was “worth fighting” was World War 2. If we never became involved in WW2 the world might be a very different, darker, and scarier place. We were attacked by an actual country, not a few random ragtag terrorist working on their own, and they had an agenda to wreck the shit out of our navy to dominate the Pacific and protect their empire. It wasn’t a NATO action or anything: Japan attacked and we did what we had to do. The attack on Pearl Harbor also got us involved in kicking Hitler’s ass, which was good for everyone. The war made sense mostly: there were Good Guys (us and our allies) and the Bad Guys (in WW2 there was also THE REALLY BAD GUYS). And before that? The Civil War. It was unfortunate but our nation’s history up to that point almost made it inevitable. Once again it’s an example of a massively important war that shaped our country’s history afterwards. We got rid of slavery. We kept the country united. While war is never a wanted thing, sometimes it almost seems required where there simply is no choice besides standing by and watching the world descend into chaos and evil.

What about Vietnam or Korea? Bullshit, relatively pointless wars with us getting involved via NATO. The Bad Guys here didn’t seem that bad: they wanted to unite their countries but were communists instead of capitalists. I don’t understand why thousands of soldiers had to die for that bullshit. What about Afghanistan and Iraq part 2? There were no Good or Bad Guys there; sure the terrorists were bad, but they’re not an actual country or a well-equipped military. They’re hidden and nebulous. This still didn’t stop us from getting thousands of our own people and civilians killed. About 3,000 people died on the September 11th terrorist attacks; more of our people died avenging the attacks in endless years of war than died in the attacks themselves. Something seems wrong there, doesn’t it?

This possible war seems like one of those latter examples, and even an extreme example of it. If this does turn into a full-fledged war, what will the narrative of it be twenty years from now? What was the grand plan and evil that we had to fight against? Islam? “Terror?” There is nothing. It’s pointless. It’s a war myself — and I’m assuming the majority of Americans — are against.

I think of the average Iranian citizen and how I feel about them. If I seen an Iranian in public, would I harm them? Would I kill them? No. What would I do? I’d probably ignore them because I’m socially inept, but I’m sure I’d smile and maybe say “hi.” I have nothing against them as a people, because they’re just like me. They wake up, go to work, feed their families, and they want the same thing that I do: to simply be able to live their life the best they can. I bet there are thousands of Iranians sitting at their computers trying to type bullshit blog posts, just like I’m doing. I think of how these random, average Iranian citizens must feel about the possibility of a bomb plummeting into their house at night and killing their family. Is this what we’re trying to do here? Mohammed in Iran just wants to write his blog, eat some tasty food, and relax. But somehow when we start talking about “terrorism” and “evil” and “retaliation” we forget about the average person — in the US or Iran — that simply doesn’t fucking want a war. There is no grand sacrifice when your life is lost in a pointless war.

Update a-half day later: This was a post that I churned out at 11 p.m. when the world was still on edge. I decided to post it at 10 a.m. in the morning to actually get some readers, but this was almost the time Trumpy decided to actually address the nation. It seems I was wrong, and as much as I’m a person that likes to be right, this is not one of those times. I’m so happy that maybe this post was a bit anxious and fearful and that it turned out to be unnecessary. Either way I got to vent and felt better about it. I also don’t think we’re out of the woods yet: Trump could get restless in the next month and do some more dangerous shit. But for today? Things seem to be much better than they were 15 hours ago.

Greta is our Hero

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Note: I wrote this a week ago and with my ever present procrastination it sat around in Google Docs doing absolutely nothing. I even thought about scrapping it. But yesterday I found a news story saying that the main motivation for this writing, Greta Thunberg, was actually nearby! She was in Iowa which is notable in and of itself. Iowa isn’t exactly where you’d expect to find someone with worldwide fame to be at outside of presidential candidates during Primary Season. Coincidentally, I was in Iowa last weekend when I was bitching about hotels. I’m well experienced with the absolute nothing that is in Iowa: they have corn and that’s about it. I also can’t shit on Iowa too much because I myself live in Illinois, another state that can easily be described with the singular word that is “corn.” (And Chicago I suppose.) So the stars aligned and Greta was only a few hundred miles away from where I am now and stupidly close to where I was last weekend. Let’s publish this shit and get it over with while I naively think the Universe is sending me signals.

This post is clearly breaking with tradition by not featuring something “that sucks” but if anything what does suck is our inability to actually change the world as individuals. I wrote an early post about that here if you want to check it out. Instead of dwelling on the negativity of our helplessness I want to take a more positive approach. Crazy, right?

Greta Thunberg is yada yada and I’m sure you’ve heard about it all on either mainstream news stations, social media, our your drunken, second-amendment-obsessed right-winger uncle. And I’m sure you already have your opinions of her depending on what you’re brainwashed to believe: she’s either a personal hero (raises hand) or a total fucking villain, something something deepstate/liberal propaganda puppet. I don’t like giving an overview of people like this because it’s tedious and boring; anything or anyone I write about is probably popular enough that you already know who they are. So yeah, Greta. You already know her.

But hey, didn’t you say you weren’t going to write anything political anymore? Yeah, you’re right actually, and that hasn’t changed. What you might not realize is that climate change isn’t political at all. It’s established scientific fact, kinda like the theory of general relativity, quantum mechanics, and electromagnetism are (and surprisingly aren’t politicized). Climate change is such sound science that I’m not going to dick around with proving it to you guys: it’s like trying to explain that the sky is actually blue. I’m not going to prove shit because it’s already been proven. The idea that climate science is a political topic is just some bullshit wizardry invented by those that have a personal interest in the public’s ignorance on the topic.

Why Greta is so beloved/hated is due to how outspoken she is in regards to climate change. She is also a young female which also attracts the ire of detractors. She isn’t wrong though: the climate is a finely tuned and immensely complex machine that has developed over literally millions of years. Humans destabilizing the machine within a few hundred years leaves ecosystems with nowhere near enough time to change and adapt and it’s this upcoming collapse of ecosystems that is the real issue with climate change. As much as people like to think they’re separate from nature we are as much a part of it as any other lifeforms on earth. We’re hopelessly dependent upon the very ecosystems were destabilizing. Greta is pissed about all of this because people have been fucking up the planet for decades well aware of the problem at hand and have done jack to prevent any of it. She’s basically been telling world leaders to get their fucking shit together because we don’t have much room for error going forward.

I think Greta speaks for all of us too: why can’t people in charge get their shit together? Why are companies allowed to pollute and pump endless amounts of CO₂ into the air? Why doesn’t somebody do something?! Note how we always gripe about someone or somebody else. Here’s where I slightly disagree with what Greta is saying: we are the people that need to be doing something! You and I are the problem, and asking or demanding someone else like companies/governments to do something is slightly missing the point. The only problem here is that us, as individuals, feel utterly powerless to do anything to prevent climate change. While we actually hold all the power, we don’t know how to wield it.

Companies don’t pollute for the hell of it because that would go against simple economics. Everyone acts in their own self-interests, corporations as well as us consumers, and this is what drives the world’s mostly capitalist economies. It isn’t a perfect system but it seems to be the economic system that works the best. Us as consumers want good products for cheap and companies provide those products to us to earn the most customers/money. Consider the electric companies: they don’t burn coal for the hell of burning coal, they burn coal because it is the cheapest form of fuel they can find and if they find anything cheaper they’ll switch to that. The problem isn’t companies blatantly polluting, the problem is they have no incentive to do otherwise because us consumers demand their products.

The reason none of us alter our daily activities and habits is because we all feel powerless. If I was the head of a giant corporation I know I could take drastic measures to combat climate change. The same is true if I was a politician. But I’m neither of those things and am just some random guy in Illinois. What can I do to stop climate change? And why would I want to change anything if it will be utterly futile? This is why we want the government or corporations to do something; we can’t do a damn thing because we feel powerless as individuals.

We can stop climate change dead in its tracks if we collectively got our shit together as individuals. We are the problem, but by being the problem we are also the solution.

And back to Greta. Greta is our hero because she can unite us usually helpless feeling individuals and give us direction. I really think humans by our very nature require leaders. Left alone we kinda zip off in our own directions and wander around with misdirected motivation. I think of bugs or moths around a light a night: each of us while wanting to do something is zipping around lost, confused, misguided and undirected. If only we had someone to give a voice to those who feel they have no voice and to give us all a direction to move towards. Someone to inspire us.

And that’s what I think Greta’s main power is. We all like her sticking it to world leaders and corporations but they only do what their constituents/consumers want. They’re only working as they should in a capitalist economy. (Maybe that is the problem? There is no incentive to work in a carbon neutral way because there is no economic incentive to do so. I think a carbon tax might be a good idea, although I’m no expert.) But with Greta sticking it to the world leaders, she gets us all on the same page. She gets people passionate about climate change and has us asking What can we do to help stop climate change? I know I’ve been asking myself that same question over and over the past week and I can only imagine that other people are doing the same thing I am, possibly by the millions. We’re not alone and she reminds us of that.

Facebook Sucks: Overexposure

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We live in shitty times. If it hasn’t been obvious, I despise Donald Trump and the way the country is heading. Environmental rules are being ripped apart, multibillion dollar businesses somehow are getting tax cuts while everyone else is given pocket-change tax breaks, we seem to be on the verge of a nuclear war every few weeks, and you can’t go a month without hearing that another school has been shot up and that the NRA lobbied as hard as can be to stop anything from being done about it. Russian’s are running rampant on social media while no one cares and our international imagine is faltering. It almost feels that America is falling apart.

Some people have a problem with watching too much news and news programs don’t do shit to “fix” the problem because if the world is shit and they hype things up they get better ratings and more money from advertisements. It’s a shitty system where the news is rewarded by sensationalizing everything and making everything breaking news. What’s actually nice about the news is that it’s linear though; they can only talk about a single news story at one time. And like you might be aware, they usually drag it out for hours and hours by having “experts” give their opinions. The world is shit, but you might only be aware of one single aspect of it that is shit. When Florida was getting shot up people forgot about whatever new Trump scandal was happening. It’s linear and you get one shitty aspect of the world at one time.

How about Facebook or other social media? You already know how it is. Depending on what you like and follow you might see a myriad of bullshit as you mindlessly scroll down the page. Kids are getting shot, the NRA throws money to not fix the problem, lawmakers don’t care, and teachers will have guns. Or, conversely, illegal immigrants get better treatment than veterans, the media is shitting all over Trump unfairly, and the democrats are pushing the Russia deal to shit on Trump. Also liberals stopped the pledge of allegiance because of tears. It doesn’t matter what you believe because you’re still going to be convinced that the world is going to hell. Everyone knows the world is going to shit.

I can’t get on Facebook and not feel shitty simply because I become aware of not a few bad things, but all of them. Whereas TV news focuses on single stories forever, when you scroll Facebook you see about ten or twenty problems with the world. This also happens every time you check the damn thing. You don’t even have to read the stories because the headlines are shitty enough. Even if you click the link and read the story there are still more clickbait news stories at the bottom of the page to tempt you!

Coupled with the feeling that the world is going instantly to hell is the feeling of helplessness that is involved with seeing the news. Everyone wants to help solve the problems facing America or the world, but what can the single person on Facebook do? Nothing. Say it again. Nothing. You can’t do a damn thing. Most people try sharing links or joining groups and ~~discussing~~ complaining about the issues but you’re either insulting those with opposing views or circle-jerking your worldview with others that share the same outlook. Think about it: has a person sharing anything on Facebook really changed your opinion? Has someone sharing a gun control post really changed the mind of a hardcore second amendment bastard? Has the opposite ever happened? Not that I’m aware of and it seems near impossible. Yet we keep sharing thinking that we’re doing something to fix the world. Because doing something is better than nothing, RIGHT?

Facebook gives you the idea that the world is terrible and that you can’t do anything to change it. And even if you are trying to change it no one is listening to you. You feel like shit, but listen. Shut your computer, phone, or whatever else you dose up on drama with and go outside. Look around. I see trees, houses, dead but soon to be alive grass and the occasional squirrel. Sometimes a loud jackass on a motorcycle drives down the road but other than that the world is rather quiet and peaceful. I don’t see kids shooting each other with guns and I don’t see animals going extinct. The shittiest thing I see is that Mountain Dew bottle someone tossed by our mailbox. The world is shit, but it’s shit in a way that doesn’t personally affect you much. Outside and the world doesn’t seem too bad really.

I’m not saying to ignore the problems because the world does have some serious problems. I’m just saying not to let them consume you and sacrifice the quality of your life. Climate change is a problem but shitposting on Facebook isn’t going to help it. Stop driving your car as much or ride your bike but don’t worry about it in an unhealthy way. How about guns? You really can’t do shit about that so don’t even try. Just go outside and do whatever the fuck you like to do. Go run, or bike ride, or whatever. Facebook Sucks because it magnifies the problems in the world in a forum that makes change and discussion nearly impossible. You feel shitty and helpless. This doesn’t help anyone or anything. Taking a break from Facebook might make you feel happier about the world and your place in it. Give it a shot. Because Facebook Sucks.

Edit: It was during writing this I found a New York Times article about a dude who, being upset and depressed with Donald Trump’s win, decided to keep himself ignorant about all political matters. It’s an interesting read and touches on some of the same points I did here in regards to Facebook.

The Illinois Primary Sucks

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(This is a dreaded “political post” but not about the typical dumpster fire. Maybe it won’t be so bad.)

The Illinois primary for Governor is Tuesday. This post is a little late in coming but with a deadline comes desperation which brings motivation. The primaries should mostly be focused on the democrats because our governor is a republican (Brucey Rauner) and will certainly win his primary. What’s more important is Brucey is pretty well hated in our state and we will (almost certainly) elect a democrat for our next governor. In effect we’re choosing our next governor based on whoever wins the democratic primary Tuesday. So who’s running?

We have three “big candidates”: J.B. Pritzker, Chris Kennedy, and Daniel Bliss. Surprisingly (really unsurprisingly), I know who’s going to win. It’ll be J.B. Pritzker. Why? Because he’s rich as fuck that’s why.

Here’s a link that, while a bit older, describes what these people make or are worth. I know they’re different numbers but you get an idea about how much money they have to throw around. Kennedy made over a million dollars last year, and J.B. made about 9 million dollars and is worth over 3 billion dollars apparently. Biss, along with his wife, made $55,000. Wow. Biss is poor as fuck.

J.B. will win because if you have three billion dollars you can spam ads everywhere. Every few days I get a goddamn Pritzker ad in the mail (which immediately goes into the trash), and I see other ads for the bastard everywhere. Facebook spams me with Pritzker ads and the TV yells Pritzker ads at me. That’s all anyone in Illinois hears about is Jay Bee Pritzker. It’s exhausting.

A wild Pritzker ad appears! Seriously, these things are like Zubats in caves.

Politicians don’t win elections based on how decent their policies and ideas are. They’re successful based on how well they can get their names out to the masses. It’s one big, stupid popularity contest. You could have the best candidate ever but if they don’t have money to throw around they don’t have any chance of winning. It’s sad, but that’s how it is. Politics Suck.

You could also blame the voters. People walk into the booths on primary day with little idea of anything. They vote for the name that is most familiar. How many ill-informed voters will stroll in to vote only knowing there’s some democrat named J.B. running? Enough of them to guarantee victory for the guy. JB? Hmm. I’ve heard of him. And his name sounds cool! *Fills in bubble*

I’m sick of rich people being in politics. I get that “business people” are seen as good candidates for office, but damn, can we quit having billionaires running for things? Having a fuckton of money doesn’t show you can successfully represent people; it just means you have a fuckton of money. So say hello to our future governor of Illinois J.B. Pritzker. He might be qualified and he might be a good governor and you should notice that I haven’t mentioned anything about specific policies. This is mostly because policies don’t matter and that’s not why he’ll win. He’ll win because he’s rich as fuck and can buy advertisements. That’s it. Once again, Politics Suck.

An Update (Which Sucks)

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So here’s what I’ve been up to the past few months (besides not posting a damn thing on Everything Sucks). I was working a new job which over the course of a half-year became unbearable. I worked for two package shipping companies which as you would expect was a mistake during the holiday season. I made it through peak season but instantly quit one of the jobs afterwards. Thinking about going back to that job makes me physically ill.

My sister said that motivation is like a muscle: you can only use it so much. She might’ve stolen that from somewhere so don’t blame me for stealing someone’s quote because I didn’t know about it. I suppose that working two jobs outside in the winter wore me out a bit and the blog suffered from neglect (along with my diet, my weight, my happiness, and my sobriety, etc.). I intend to change that now that I’ve quit.

A few of my older posts were rather political. Now don’t get me wrong, Donald Trump is a piece of shit and probably the worst president we’ve ever had, but there isn’t any point in blogging about it. The way I see it there is way too much political shit out there and I’m really worried that people are becoming fatigued by it. Trump Sucks, Trump Sucks day after day but we’re stuck with him so why fucking throw it up on the news nonstop. People are just to the point that they don’t give a fuck to hear anymore, or at least I am.

I took a break from the constant stream of news and toxic social media and the quality of my life improved immensely. Others should try not being exposed as much.

More to the point, why should I blog about it? As much as I’d like to think that I can change people’s minds I probably can’t. If the (“failing”) New York Times can’t get Trump supporters to change their minds with actual in-depth reporting why the fuck would some random unknown blogger such as TheBlackHairedGuy change any minds? It would be like expecting this shit to actually change my (or any anti-Trumpers) mind. It won’t and it works both ways. Their stupid shit won’t change my mind, and my stupid shit won’t change their minds.

Writing about politics itself Sucks. Trump is so goddamn all over the place I’d be chasing headline after headline and that’s exhausting. Even though it’d be “popular” to shit on Trump it’s a very cheap sort of popularity. Political posts also age very quickly and my last post about the Nazi dudes is such long forgotten news that it’s pointless to even have it up anymore. Do you even remember RyanCare? I sure didn’t.

I want Everything Sucks to be about things that Suck, but I want it to be in a fun and maybe depressing way. A sort of “Haha, life is shit, but it’s kinda funny.” So that’s what I’m going to try to stick to. And goodbye to the political posts because they Suck.

Donald Trump Sucks: Transgenders in the Military

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In case you weren’t aware (or to recap), our Dear Leader Mr. Donald J. Trump announced in a series of tweets back in July stating that transgender people will not be allowed to serve in the military. Okay. And today, on August 25, he apparently made it official by signing some shit or whatever banning these individuals from the military. It’s still up in the air as to if current military members will still be allowed to serve. This is Everything Sucks, and this is a really stupid policy, but what else did we expect from the president?

The policy makes zero sense. I really don’t see how it is supposed to help anything. Remember, Trump has promised to Make America Great Again, and…how does banning transgender people from the military help anything? I don’t agree with nearly all of the Trump Administration’s policies, but in a distorted way I understand how most can be seen to play into the goal of “making America great again.” Take for example coal and the environment: Trump has undone a bunch of regulations targeted to “bring back coal jobs” and while I’m skeptical of other aspects of the policy (if it’s realistic, if it’s correct given the existence of climate change, if market pressures will allow coal to become popular, etc.) I can still see how this can be seen by supporters to “make America great” by “bringing back” coal jobs. Like I said, I’m doubtful coal will ever be “brought back” or even should be brought back if it is able to be brought back, but I get how people would view Trump’s environmental deregulation as being in-line with his stated goal. If you want coal and really think that’s why the economy sucks it makes sense. But the transgender military ban? What? How does that play into Make America Great at all?

It has been said that the cost of gender reassignment surgeries and medication is one reason for the ban (the primary reason actually. According to a tweet: “…cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.”). It doesn’t take a math wiz to realize how tiny of a drop in the budget bucket this really is though. According to this Washington Post article, transgender medical costs in the military could be up to $8.4 million annually. This, according to a study done by the Rand Corp., is an increase of 0.13% over current costs. Another popular fact to bring up (that has been brought up elsewhere) is the current costs of erectile dysfunction to the military: $84 million annually. In case you were wondering, the total military budget in 2015 was almost $600 billion. $10 million is fucking pocket change. And if Trump is really trying to cut costs by cutting transgenders from the military, he’s targeting the wrong thing. It’s like if the manager at walmart was trying to save budget costs by making the staff stop using post-it notes.

Is there another reason? I don’t know. None seem to jump out at me. Trump makes no sense and the only other reason I can see for this change in policy is to simply be a dick to people. I really think the only reason he wants to repeal Obamacare is because the word “Obama” is in the name. There seems to be no real, logical reason to ban transgenders from the military; cost is given as the primary reason but is so small as to be basically zero. If you’re going to cut costs there are countless other ways to save a few pennies. So the only alternative to the ban is to simply be a dick. I really don’t see what else the reason is. Maybe it’s some way to wage war against the PC culture or something? Either way, if you’re the president and you base policy off being a dick, you probably Suck.

Facebook Advertising Sucks: Avoiding the Echo Chambers

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I’ve recently been experimenting with Facebook advertising and this blog. I’ve known consciously for a long time that any endeavour is successful in a large part by how you sell yourself: you can’t just have a really good blog or business or whatever and expect that word of mouth can carry you to success. You could have the best damn widget ever and no one will ever buy it if they don’t know about it. There is a lot of hard work and shamelessly selling yourself on the road to success. I say I’ve known this consciously because while I’ve known it, I didn’t really believe it at a really deep level. Anyways, while I want this blog to be successful, I don’t really intend for it to be an actual business. I figure if I get a bunch of readers I could sell T-shirts or something, mostly so people can rock my sister’s logo design, but it isn’t a get-rich-quick sort of scheme. It would be cool to get more readers, and see if that whole “selling yourself” idea works, and it would be an interesting experiment if I ever did try to start a business. So that was my motivation behind advertising, to see how effective it really is and to learn from it.

So I advertised (“boosted” in Facebook parlance) a few of my posts. The first one I advertised was the post about writing and typing; it was a fairly tame post that I figured people might find enjoyable. If you clicked the link you can see that it did get quite a bit of shares, more so than most other posts (33! Shit! I didn’t know it did that good!). Anyways, advertising on Facebook is cheap, easy, and does seem to get your message out to people. It also allows you to pick your audience by selecting interests that you want to target for your audience. Obviously for that post I selected people who liked reading, writing, and blogging. You want to advertise to people who the message will resonate with, obviously. More on that shortly…

For advertising my second post I wanted to go right for that juicy market that is Donald Trump hatred, and selected my scathing but fun post on covfefe. (And got 55 Facebook shares?!) It wasn’t so much trying to get those sort of readers, just that my first advertised post was fairly tame, and I wanted to get in on the mess of politics. When it came time to pick my audience it was obvious to select those who identify as liberal and who possibly lean towards liberal views. Duh. Like I said before, you want to target people who your message will resonate with. But this seems really cheap and easy, so I also targeted those who were very conservative and who leaned conservative. In a recent post about Echo Chambers (which I learned from advertising the covfefe post), I railed against people reading shit that agrees with their views. To me, what’s the point of advertising an obviously liberal point of view to people who lean liberal? I’d just be contributing to the “echo chamber” problem so why not advertise to the conservatives? So that’s what I did…

And it was kind of a mess.

First off, it finally clicked in my head that I had just spent $25 to target conservatives with a very anti-Trump post, and if you care to check this blog’s Facebook page, some people weren’t happy at all about it. Curiously, a bunch of liberals “liked” the post, but few conservatives shit on it, so I’m assuming many of the people angered by it just ignored it. Still, that isn’t as bad as shitting all over the page like some people did and could’ve, but it’s still wasted money by going absolutely nowhere. Advertising on Facebook Sucks because you pay to target an audience, so you’d naturally pick those who agree with you. No one in their right mind would pay to target those who hate their ideas and views. Imagine if Shell or Mobil gas tried to target electric car owners? Or if Tyson Foods advertised towards vegans and vegetarians:iIt’d be a waste of money.

Secondly, I don’t think this would get any sort of conversation going at all. Not a single conservative voter will read my blog posts and go “Hmm. He has a point. Trump is bad, what was I thinking?” The political posts I write are some vulgar, simple, and easy hit pieces on Trump and the Right, mostly because they make such obvious and easy targets on a page called Everything Sucks. While I don’t want my blog to only appeal and to target liberal-minded voters, trying to actually get a conversation going (while simultaneously shitting on Trump) on Facebook seems pretty stupid and futile. I mean if a newspaper as prestigious as the New York Times (“the failing @NYTimes”) can be labeled “Fake News” and shit on by Trump supporters, why would Everything Sucks and Facebook Advertising change anyone’s mind? It won’t…and I’d be dumb as hell to think it would.

So, in short, Facebook advertising is pretty cool if you just want to shamelessly support a page, company, blog, or whatever. It does work and is fantastic at getting your product (or whatever) out in the world for people to notice and perhaps utilize. This puts the success of your whatever on it’s quality and not if people have heard about it or not. My two blog posts got tons of views and shares after I advertised them, but in terms of trying to advertise to those who disagree? Hell no, because no one wants to spend money to reach people who will hate their message. Even if I’m trying to be inclusive and not contribute to creating my very own echo chamber, Facebook advertising sort of encourages advertising to people who will be supportive of your message. Facebook makes it so you can target an audience who will like your message, but this ease in getting positive feedback discourages any willful targeting of a dissenting audience, further contributing to people hearing what they want to hear. Facebook Advertising Sucks in getting a conversation going and further contributes to the problem of people having Echo Chambers where they can hear facts and opinions that already support their own opinions.