[Seth Says] Sponsored By No One!

Hello Friends,

Welcome to another exciting edition of this newsletter, which is not sponsored by anyone, and is written entirely by me. I can't promise that it will be high quality (although as I always say about my jokes, what I lack in quality I make up for in quantity!), but I can promise that it will be original and real, which already puts it ahead of an increasingly large swath of content on the Internet, thanks to constant new innovations in nonsense. (I mean, I also try to constantly innovate in nonsense, but the fun kind. Froople-de-doople!)

I know I've posted on social media before about the various jobs of disinformation I've turned down, which have ranged from writing reviews for products I've never seen, to posting on a fledgling social media site (meaning tiny and just starting, as opposed to Twitter)(Oh right, now it's an X-Twitter, it flaps no more, it has ceased to be.)(Elon hasn't just ruined a big website, he's also ruined my little fledgling website joke) while pretending to be a teenage girl at a specific college posting about mental health issues. Testimonials, dating sites, everything is made up. 

Earlier this week I saw a job posting for "Youtube video scripts in the police dash cam genre", so yes, many of those police cam videos you see online are also fake. (especially the ones with the singing and dancing officers, fine show though Reno 911 may be.) Also earlier this week I read a piece about influencers and how they fake everything, from staged subway drawing videos purporting to be real, to "millionaire" get rich quick experts who are massively in debt and borrow fancy houses and cars to film in. (I even heard a rumor that pizza delivery boys aren't constantly invited in for sex!)

And that -- just like every picture you see of a horrible event from 10 years ago that someone is trying to pass off as a picture of a completely different horrible event -- is all low-tech fakery. Of course thanks to photoshop, video editing, and AI, a lot of very high-tech fakery is also afoot. I've seen numerous voice actors on Twitter posting unhappily about new AI voice programs which essentially steal their voice and convincingly have them say things they never said. Obviously bad for creative humans who don't want their work and livelihood stolen (such as all of Hollywood, and me, and most other creative humans), but also bad in terms of the more nefarious potential for
 

With tensions raised ever higher on all sides, and things seeming even more polarized than usual, it's an especially bad time for misinformation (which of course means it's an especially good time for misinformation peddlers, who are having an even easier time spreading lies than usual, so another tip of the hat to Melon Husk.) All of which is to say, maybe if we hear about something horrible, we shouldn't leap to signal-boost it unless we trust the source. (I say "we" because, friend, I have been guilty too.)

Not that there's any shortage of actual horrible. I was going to say something about the Lewiston mass shooting, but I can't think of anything to say that I haven't already said, so maybe I should just try talking about something funny in what is ostensibly a humorous newsletter.
 

Speaking of things that I've written over the years, I was reminded this week that nearly a decade ago, someone had asked me for an original "yo mama" joke, and I had offered:

"Yo(ur) mama is so postmodern, she p(r)ays to Derrida as the go(l)d standard."

They said, "Really? You put Derrida in a joke?"

To which I replied, "I have always already put Derrida in a joke."

I realize especially the joke itself may fall into the dreaded category of "More Clever Than Funny", a tag which was often handed out by the Empress of the Washington Post's Style Invitational to entries where she could appreciate the artistic merit but not enough to actually publish them.

Of course now that I'm a professional freelancer, writing jokes unpaid with only a small chance to get them published is less appealing. I really try not to do work on spec, which is why I have this newsletter where I know what I write without getting paid gets published by me; I have standards! But what I don't have is sponsors.
 

English is such a weird language, because said and paid don't rhyme. (I mean, that's not *why* English is such a weird language, it's probably something to do with the fact that as James Nicoll once wrote, "We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.")

Anyway, if you're one of the seven people who still reads newspapers, thanks for still reading newspapers! But also if you're one of those people, you've probably noticed a lot of sponsored content lately, which generally means advertisement that has been gussied up to look like a regular newspaper article. And again, that's just the sponsored content that's labeled -- I was talking to a PR guy this week who says for a fee, he can get you sponsored content in any one of a number of major publications, and for a higher fee, he can get it without having it labeled as sponsored content.

Of course, most publications who offer sponsored content present it as a best of both worlds, where they get to offer you the valuable content you want at lower cost, and all they have to do is thank the brand footing the bill. But of course the truth is somewhat... well, let me share my latest column with you, which isn't actually sponsored content, but I am make-pretending that it is in order to illustrate a point (but also mainly just to have an excuse to be extremely silly, because as mentioned, the world is rough and this week I've decided my column should not dwell on things and should just be exceedingly silly.)(And indeed it is, so you should read it especially if you are a Star Wars fan or enjoy terrible puns.)

 

So yeah, there's that. And sponsored content attempting to masquerade as objective information you want is everywhere, as you've probably noticed if you've ever tried to read a mattress review online, or, y'know, use Google.
 

But no one's paying for this newsletter, so I don't have an agenda -- I'm not agenda traditionalist. (Shout out to the NB folks from an ND writer.)(And NEone else not big on NAbling rigid gender roles.)(I considered going on about NKsing people in restrictive gender roles and trying to do a whole alphabet, but I shouldn't do that to my friends if I wouldn't even wish it on my NMies.)(Besides, I don't have the NRgy.)(And I'm NVious of people who do.)(It is NXplicable why I decided I wouldn't do this and then just kept going.)

Okay, that's too many letters. Not just that paragraph, the whole newsletter! The problem with writing post-midnight is that my filters fall off and I just blather (as anyone who has talked with me past midnight will tell you). So as always, I thank you for reading, and I'll be back in two weeks with another column you can NQ on your reading list -- as well as, of course, various other nonsense.


Froople-de-doople,
Seth