Most did, some didn’t. That was already a decade ago. The prism that people see the world through has changed dramatically. It was far easier to discern satire from reality back then.
Things that would have seemed completely impossible in the mid 2010s are reality now. It’s the same reason that nowadays I have to check each news story to see if it’s satire or not.
People are insane now. They weren’t 10 years ago.
I spend the morning listen to a woman talk about herself to her friend. Every sentence was a tidal wave of how difficult and awful and demanding her life was, how nobody could understand her struggles, but then also how she was the most empathetic understanding and self-aware person in the world. How she is so happy and wishes others could be happier like her, but she’ll never be happy because she can’t have the things everyone else has. She has so many great amazing friends, but she can’t really be who she really is around them or they won’t like her. Oh, and this is all in the context of her YouTube channel she’s trying to monetize.
Our world is so far gone that people’s self-conceptions/identity has become hyperreal on an everyday basis.
And I’m over here like, petting my dog sipping a black coffee thinking how this lady is like every other person I have met the past few years, her little speech is basically every other person on youtube or a podcast these days. NPC who thinks they are the main character and everyone else is the NPC.
And I think 10 years ago, would anyone have socially tolerated this crap? No, they’d have avoiding this person like the plague. Now they are like, folk-heros and everyone aspires to be like them. Shit’s wild. Not even Colbert could pull off the hyper absurdity that so many folks now just embody everyday.
And we wonder why the world is like this… well because the people in the world are like this and people like them for it.
He said in the past that the reason he didn’t renew his contract with comedy central was because he would suggest something outrageous, and the next day all these republicans would be like “YEAH!!! LETS DO THAT!!! THAT MAKES A LOT OF SENSE!!!”
And no…it never did. The absurdity was the joke. The right took the joke, didn’t get the joke, and ran with it as a serious idea that they liked. He said that he no longer wanted to be the guy who inspires stupidity.
I had a right leaning friend who thought it was serious. He was working on his PhD and was extremely smart. It was shocking.
They thought he was real enough to be the MC at one of Bush II’s White House Correspondents’ dinners
He was invited by the WHCA, not the White House or Republicans. They knew what they were getting.
