Briefly: Search engines are dumbing down online writing

By David McElroy · April 3, 2019

It’s scary that search engines are driving how digital content is written today. If you want the things you write to be found by more folks online, you have to consider what’s called “search engine optimization.” Experts in SEO can tell you how to rank more highly in Google searches, but they have nothing to say about connecting with real people with insights that matter. I want to do technical things such as make my pages load faster, but I don’t want to change what I’m writing so that a search engine will like it more. By the standards promoted by these SEO experts, none of the great books which have influenced me over the years would have been written (or discovered). Something is wrong with culture when software developers and geeks drive writing more than writers and thinkers.

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I noticed three instances over the weekend of people talking about Donald Trump’s “campaign of hate.” I wanted to correct them — because they misunderstand this narcissist — but I knew they wouldn’t get my point. It’s not that I’m defending him, because what he does is worse than hate. You simply have to understand the way narcissists think to understand him. Trump doesn’t hate. It’s worse than hate. He’s indifferent and angry with anyone who doesn’t obey him and worship him, those who don’t give him what’s called “narcissistic supply.” People believe that Trump hates blacks or Hispanics or foreigners or whatever group which he’s seen as hating. It’s true that he experiences rage at people who will not give him what he wants, but he’s not in touch enough with his real self to feel real hatred, much less to feel real love. He’s like a vampire who sucks all the available praise and adoration from any group of people — any way he can get it. He doesn’t love rural, blue-collar white folks, but their adoration gives him what he craves. He’s not emotionally mature enough even to hate. For a narcissist, people are simply objects to manipulate, depending on what he can get from them. Trump’s indifference is far worse than hatred. This isn’t ideological or political. It’s pathological. He’s not mature enough to hate.

The decline of modern culture can be seen clearly by looking at what passes for public discourse. There was a time when people who wanted their ideas accepted made rational arguments. It was assumed that most people were bright enough and rational enough to evaluate those arguments — and a surprising number of them really were. Today, the arguments are made in the form of irrational and simplistic graphics called “memes.” Because these graphics can’t convey complex or nuanced information, they present dumbed-down presentations of positions which are stunningly juvenile and seem designed to offend rather than to convince. We have regressed from books and dense pamphlets to a level more like that of angry kindergartners making crayon-scrawled hate notes to send to other children. Reason no longer plays a role in public discourse, and this signals the coming fall of this society.

Lucy just made possible friends with two little girls, but the girls are more enthusiastic so far than she is. Joy, 5, and Hope, 6, just moved in with their grandmother on my street. I didn’t know this, but while Lucy and I were walking, I heard a tiny voice from the darkness cry out, “Hi, doggie!” It took me a minute to figure out where the voice was coming from, but once I did, their grandmother, Rose, came out onto the porch and gave the girls permission to pet Lucy, which delighted the girls. Joy said she wasn’t allowed off her porch since she had socks and no shoes. Lucy was shy, but allowed them to pet her a bit, while the girls marveled about how soft she is. I hope Lucy will let them be her friends. It’s a joy to see how far Lucy has come since she came to live with me. She’s nothing like the “special needs dog” who I was told would never get close to anybody.

I’ve never taken YouTube very seriously as a publishing platform — not enough to do anything more than post the occasional random video — but I’ve started laying a foundation for doing more with it in the future. I created and uploaded some simple branding to my longstanding YouTube channel this weekend and I’ll be doing more in the future. The channel has only about 300 subscribers, so if you feel so inclined, I would appreciate it if you’d subscribe. As with all things on social media, subscriber counts and views help me to get future content seen more easily by others. Click here to visit the channel.

Don‘t appeal to any piece of paper or any tradition as the source of your freedom. You don’t have “constitutional rights.” You have natural human rights. If you appeal to a document as the source of your rights, you are admitting that politicians can come along and amend your rights at any time. A right is yours because you are a human being, but it means nothing if you don’t have the means and the willingness to defend it. The sad truth today is that almost all of us are at the mercy of politicians who ignore our natural rights — and they get away with it only because they have educated our fellow humans to believe we have no legitimate choice other than obedience. Rebellion without the ability to win is insane — so don’t make this argument to police, politicians or judges — but it costs you nothing to come to a clear-eyed understanding today of what your rights really mean and where they come from.

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