I wonder how big public safety campaigns of the past would’ve fared in today’s post-truth, social media as news, opinions are facts society? I think about things like the push for seatbelts as a standard or “smoking kills” or get this shot to not get polio.
I guess some, or maybe all, of these things did experience pushback – with seatbelts in particular I can remember the news about legislating them in the 1980s. But I feel like the commitment of today’s do-your-own-research crowd seems much stronger than the resistance of the past.
If the smoking-causes-cancer education campaigns would’ve happened today, would people doubt the science, or motivation, or find/create “alternate facts” to refute it? You’d think that maybe the undeniable specter of actually dying would be persuasive enough, but apparently not to the anti-mask anti-cupcake crowd of these past few years.
I can just see the image macros saying smoking is fine as long as you eat manuka honey and colloidal silver and rub lavender behind your knees at night. You can even soak the filters in breast milk for an immune-boosting smoke! You didn’t know that?! Yeah that’s because they don’t want us to know that.
Anyway, I don’t even wear a seatbelt. I just mix a little MMS & ACV into my homeopathic kombucha (made with alkaline water) each morning and wear my magnet bracelets and crystals so I’m good.
Humans. Doing everything we can to just barely stumble through it.
Also written on this day...
- this whole thing was supposed to be about hands - 2008
- kipp wrote for me - 2007
- keaton's gonna want to go to college - 2006
- brotherly love - 2005
- what'd you say about... - 2003