Ron Paul & The Righteous End of Pre-Internet Media
Monday, August 22, 2011 at 7:12PM Before the internet there was something. Not many people know that. It was called "Bulletin Boards". You could host something like a website at your house but the only way for people to access it would be to actually call your house phone number at speeds of 300 baud or 1200 baud. The slowest analog dial-up modem that exists now is about 56,000 baud, just by way of comparison. And, nowadays, you can download at speeds of 1 MB/s. Back then it was 1 MB/day. Those are the ravages of bandwidth deflation!
I spent more than a decade in the seedy chips and coke (and I mean coca-cola... although most preferred Mountain Dew... more caffeine) world of underground computer nerds and hackers when, finally, in early 1994, Al Gore created the internet! I have to hand it to Al. He has become a sick, twisted, fat lying whore... but he says he created the internet and so, for that, I give him credit.
I knew instantly what it meant. Heck, I had been dreaming of the day for years. The moment someone told me that the internet was here I said to them, "Do you realize what this means? No more wars! Peace on earth and massive prosperity!"
I was proven partially wrong for a period - although you can't really say that the Iraq, Afghanistan or Libyan occupations are wars. As Bill Hicks said, in order for it to be a war there has to be two armies fighting.
I also soon after predicted that we would see the end of all pre-internet media.
In 1999, in a meeting I had with Thomas Curley, the President of USA Today (owned by Gannett), who was interested in investing in a new media start-up I had founded (Stockhouse), he stated to me, "We just spent hundreds of millions on new printing presses."
I just started laughing. I told him, you'll be lucky if you even exist ten years from now. He didn't end up investing in my start-up... not all that surprising now in retrospect!
But, again, I was a little early. But you have to admit I was in the ballpark! In the subsequent years many of the old media titans have fallen. Newspeak (a.k.a. Newsweek) sold last year for $1. And Gannett, which was trading at near $60 in 1999 hit nearly $1 per share in 2009 before having what is eloquently referred to as a "dead cat bounce".
In fairness to Gannett, however, my internet start-up was also worth a lot in 1999 and today it isn't worth too much... but that was more about circumstance and bad timing than any comment on the direction old media was headed and where internet was and is going - just look at Google and Facebook for proof of that.
The half-demise of my internet start-up led me on a quest for knowledge which has led me here in 2011, sitting on the beach in Southern Mexico writing anti-government hate speech and calling central bankers criminals... amongst other things.
Now, in 2011, even new media that is old, like Myspace, has already gone from worth billions to worthless... that one couldn't have happened to a better sociopath, Rupert.
And, in the last decade or two, after having more than a few media articles written about myself I realize what an exercise in propaganda - especially pre-internet - media is.
Probably the most egregious was when I sank my catamaran off the coast of El Salvador and connected a call through to the head of the El Salvador Navy at 2am, who showed nothing except anger at my early morning call and told me that "maybe we'll come look for you tomorrow or the next day".
Luckily two Americans and one Canadian/New Zealand yachtsmen from a nearby marina saved me a few hours later as I clung to my surfboard.
But, as I walked around town in San Salvador the next day, being front page news (Canadian adventurer sinks boat off of El Salvador), I noticed something strange. Back then I didn't speak Spanish, but I felt like many people were saying something about the Navy.
I bought one of the local papers and thought it was strange that about 30 of the local El Salvadorean Navy had came to pose with me, all with big grins on the photo on the front page. It was only about 5 years later that I realized what the papers had said.. it said that the El Salvador Navy had saved me!
Well, after ten years of world travel and self-investigation, it has become fairly clear to me that about 90-99% of everything you read in newspapers and see on television have as much to do with truth as dirt has to cleanliness.
Now, thanks to the internet, everyone can report. And those who report best get acknowledged best. This is a true free market for journalism.
And now, the old media looks more ridiculous than ever before. All of their tricks are becoming so obvious that even a young child can spot them.
Take as example this "2012 Presidential Poll" from 80 year old US News and World Report:
I wonder who K is. Even when they can't deny the truth any longer they always find a way to skew it to their political interests.
Ron Paul, if that is who K is <ahem>, does not speak to the corporatism, fascist interests that are the media world of the US today. So, he is 'other'.
Even Jon Stewart, who I can only watch regularly when a Republican President is in office (because he only really attacks the right-wing statists and coddles the left-wing statists) had this to say on Ron Paul's old-media coverage:
Most of the truth in American TV media today comes from The Comedy Channel. What does that tell you?
The old-world media has been dying for more than a decade and is now the embarrassing 70 year old man in the disco full of teens.
The old-world media, the nation state, democracy and the status quo are all on their way out. And good riddance.
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