You Want It to Be One Way.
But it's the other way.
Gooooooood morning, Scam Fam!!!
How are you doing? Has anything changed in your last six months?
My 2020, especially the part since we last spoke, has obviously been absolutely perfect, no complaints, I hope it never ends. Between all the travel, the socializing, the physical contact, the stability, good health and a positive economic outlook, life has simply never been better. My loved ones are flourishing out here, my enemies are experiencing an appropriate amount of pain, you cannot keep me down.
Of course some of us are struggling with the current rEaLIty. Which isn't totally unreasonable, I guess. We do live in a world where bedbugs exist, where the shipping confirmation says the package is coming tomorrow but it won't really be here until next Thursday, where the restaurant that only recently reopened no longer has your favorite dish on the menu and doesn't respect you for knowing that it was once there. Laundry's a requirement, your connection is unstable, living in a body hurts, deodorant never fixed anything, you once typed the phrase "per my earlier email." I could go on, but suffice to say the Kars4Kids commercial is STILL airing, it attacked my ear drums just the other day. The cruelty never stops.
Now more than ever, the scam is on our side ;) Which scam? Well, all of them. But let's discuss one in particular as is our wont.
Some people look at the fossil fuel industry and see an evil, many-headed behemoth come to extract the life from our communities and our land, trading our future and increasingly our present for the wealth of a few (maybe someone you know even wrote about that a while ago?). Those people need to grow up. What kind of precious, irreplaceable planet do they think we have here?
What I, an adult with a brain, see when I look at the fossil fuel industry is a comms budget roughly the size of that floating gyre of plastic in the Pacific Ocean. That's something I have in common with FTI, a global consulting firm, that will make "grassroots" websites that say anything you're willing to pay them to say.
In a dizzying investigation for the New York Times, Hiroko Tabuchi examines how FTI took a small piece of that oil cash and used it to fund a nice little online alternate rEaLIty where lots of regular folks get together to share questionable science about climate change. One example is Texans for Natural Gas, a self-described local organization that recently hired a plane to thank essential workers in the oil fields with a banner. As we all know, if there's one thing that makes people who do physically taxing and life threatening work while their communities are ravaged by a thing I'm desperately trying not to mention feel appreciated, it's money. Short of that, it's definitely this gorgeous banner.
"Tell me more about this generous organization doing such vital work in these troubling times," you say. Sure, I'd love to. Here's what Tabuchi wrote:
Acting as Texans for Natural Gas representatives, FTI employees have launched pro-industry petitions, produced videos and reports on the importance of the Permian Basin oil field, and written opinion pieces for local newspapers supporting fossil fuels. The site features testimonials from three women, two of whom are represented with stock photos and one with a photo used without permission from the Flickr page of a photographer in the Philippines.
If you've ever catfished anyone, you know this is very normal stuff. And if you haven't, well, what are you waiting for? There's a playbook I'm assuming Exxon paid quite a lot of money for right there in the paper of record.
Building a website that can almost credibly claim 400,000 supporters and chartering planes might be a skosh ambitious for your first time out, but creating a Facebook profile for a woman named Susan (she "likes ice cream, the movie Annie and her local farmers’ market") so you can keep tabs on environmental activists planning to protest a drilling site is real try-this-at-home material.
Next you take a personality quiz to determine your avatar's love language. In an internal document obtained by Tabuchi and the Times (a true thank you to them, I needed this in my life), FTI provides some great options to choose from:
After much consideration and despite a lifelong goal of becoming a Dog Typing On A Keyboard, I am resigned to my identity as Patronizing Voice Of Reason.
Here's the thing about climate change, other than how it's a hoax: The more I understand about it, the less conscionable everything about both my specific life and the general idea of modern life becomes. Which is a terrible way to live! Poisoning children so my takeout can be delivered to me in a single-use container that keeps it extra hot? Gross! Starting a war because I want to fly across the country for the weekend and I don't want to bankrupt myself to do so? Horrifying! Drinking out of a paper straw? Who are you, the gulag?!
This is the moment where the the Concern Hipster reminds me that personal choices don't address systemic problems and the Skeptical Capitalist calls out my privilege and our drunk uncle accuses the frogs of making us gay. These are just the facts and they're different than my point, which is that I really, really wish the world was different. Since I cannot singlehandedly make it so, I'm glad FTI built a slick little website where I can learn about how fracking brings emissions down. I like that better than the other option.
Scam on, friends,
Ruthie
My Week It's Been Quite a While in Consumption
For my birthday, my soulmate Queen Kayleen got me this Tracksmith jacket. When I wear it, I feel like I am a leggy blonde who inspires others to do corny workout classes.
I have been listening to Canary on my morning walks; I'm allergic to a lot of podcasts, but I am finding this one gripping and sensitively made.
The best book I've read this year is The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. You have probably read a glowing review of it somewhere and thought it can't possibly live up to the hype. Somehow it exceeds it!
Turnips: Did you think they were a trash vegetable for peasants? Maybe they are, but holy cow did I enjoy this recipe.
A very frightening thing in my life is how I am on the precipice of having watched all of the good TV and will have to seek joy in other things. For now, I still have a few episodes of P-Valley left, phew.