Harvesting Failure, Because Someone Brought a Dog
STATUS: HARVEST OF YOUNG MEN — IN PROGRESS
METHOD: CONTEMPT, FOLLOWED BY FEAR
UNANTICIPATED VARIABLE: Actual QUESTIONS
The Men in Excessively Strange Hats had constructed a method.
They constructed many methods.
Most of them were unnecessary.
The excessively strange hats demanded it. They were expensive.
This particular method was backed by a machine which was housed behind a magnificent green curtain in the Department of Public Certainty. It contained flashing lights, copper tubes, enormous glass jars and several gauges whose needles moved dramatically without measuring anything.
One gauge measured Outrage. That was orange.
Another measured Fear. That was blue.
A third measured Willingness to Blame Someone You Have Never Met. That was Red.
The largest gauge measured Engagement. That was chartreus with pink polka dots.
The Men in Excessively Strange Hats watched this one very carefully.
They had designed this particularly strange machine to harvest young pubescent males.
Young pubescent males were considered an excellent natural resource. They contained loneliness, energy, uncertainty, unspent anger and a perfectly reasonable desire to understand the world while feeling superior to everyone in it.
They were taking advantage of something necessary in nature - young men were meant to naturally break away from their parents and families to forge ahead independently. It was studied. It was documented. It was something they could use.
The Men in Excessively Strange Hats had discovered that, without any self reflection, and with careful processing, these qualities could be converted into strong feelings of distrust and resentment.
Distrust broke bounds.
Resentment could then be converted into loyalty to the excessively strange hats committee.
Loyalty could be converted into mob activity, antisocial behavior, and sometimes votes.
Votes could be converted into power. Distrust of votes could also be converted to power.
The double edge sword was their favorite sword.
And power, as everyone in the Department understood, could be converted into larger more excessive hats which were also very expensive.
This important and deliberate process began with entertainment on social media.
A young man would be shown a series of citizens in a city standing before a map.
“Point to France,” an interviewer would say.
The citizen would point to a decorative compass rose.
“Where is China?”
The citizen would point to Brazil.
“Can you locate the United States?”
The citizen would look directly into the camera and ask whether the United States was the blue part.
The young man watching would laugh.
Then he would become concerned.
Then he would read the comments.
The comments explained that voters were stupid.
Hopelessly stupid.
Dangerously stupid.
Too stupid to understand geography.
Too stupid to understand history.
Too stupid to understand economics.
Too stupid, perhaps, to be trusted with voting.
Democracy was built on lies and ignorance!
But with the excessively big hats got the votes, of course that was not the case. It was finally the system working!
(That was when machine B would start to operate showing how brilliant voters were and how they were benefiting. Not propaganda. The truth! Truth was never complex. They all knew that.)
And anyway they were still on Phase One.
The Men in Excessively Strange Hats called it Competence Through Contempt (it had been call Confidence but Competence was more …. reassuring.)
Once the young man felt safely superior to the people on the screen, the machine moved him into Phase Two.
An advertisement appeared.
The music lowered itself into a threatening rumble.
A black-and-white photograph of Ray Man Strong filled the screen.
Ray Man Strong had once governed the pleasant but politically excitable province of Northern Caribolina. He was currently running for a seat in the Great National Chamber of Shouting.
The narrator spoke.
“Ray Man Strong opened the prison gates.”
A gate creaked.
“Thousands of dangerous criminals poured into our communities.”
Shadowy figures moved across the screen.
“Now no family is safe.”
A father appeared.
He was grieving.
His grief was real.
This was important because real grief made excellent camouflage for distorted chronology.
Dates flashed too quickly to be read.
The words RELEASED, VIOLENT and THOUSANDS remained on the screen long enough to enter the bloodstream.
The young man was not supposed to ask what “released” meant.
He was not supposed to ask whether the people had completed their sentences.
He was not supposed to ask whether they were placed under supervision.
He was not supposed to ask what a court had ordered during the Great Plague.
He was not supposed to ask whether the crime shown in the advertisement happened years after the person would ordinarily have left prison anyway.
He was supposed to remember the geography video.
He was 13 after all.
It only mattered that he believed the following:
Voters were stupid.
Other voters, naturally.
Not him.
He was different.
He knew things.
The machine whispered that he could prove this by agreeing with the advertisement.
The Men in Excessively Strange Hats congratulated one another.
The needles rose.
Outrage flowed through the copper tubes.
Fear collected in the glass jars.
Comments appeared.
Some came from real people.
Some came from machines.
Some came from one man operating nineteen accounts from his bedroom while wearing a hat he had made himself from foil and political, real-estate, and nonprofit ads. No one got newspapers or magazines anymore. Only cardboard postcards. No one made the connection.
This man was hoping to become famous.
This man was hoping to become internet famous and internet rich.
He was not entirely sure what he would be famous for. That didn’t matter as much as fame and wealth.
What had ceased to be a requirement? What indeed. Did anyone ever think ahead anymore?
Everything was proceeding according to plan until a boy named Dill saw both videos.
Dill watched the citizens fail to identify countries.
Then he watched Ray Man Strong release thousands of shadow people through a creaking gate.
Dill did not immediately become frightened.
This was the first problem.
He became curious.
How could a former leader who was successful do such a ridiculous and dangerous thing and then run for another office?
The questions were much worse.
“Who made the geography video?” he asked.
The machine hesitated.
“How many people answered correctly?”
One of the smaller lights went out.
“Why did they show us only the stupid answers?”
The Contempt Valve began making a troubling sound.
Dill scrolled down.
“Are these comments from real people?”
The copper tubes trembled.
“Why am I seeing this political advertisement immediately after a video telling me voters are stupid?”
Behind the green curtain, the Men in excessively Strange Hats stopped congratulating one another.
“Give him another crime,” said the tallest hat.
The machine produced a murderer.
Dill looked at the date.
“Was this person actually released by Ray Man Strong?”
The machine produced a grieving mother.
Dill felt for her.
Then he asked another question.
Both things happened at the same time.
The Men in Strange Hats had not planned for this.
Their calculations assumed that compassion eliminated analysis, while analysis eliminated compassion.
They had never considered that an intelligent person might experience sorrow for a victim while still checking whether the story surrounding that sorrow was true. They especially didn’t anticipate distrust in authority to extend to the internet channels and ads.
“Increase the music,” ordered the tallest hat.
The music became darker.
“Make the photograph grainier.”
Ray Man Strong became so grainy that he was composed almost entirely of sinister dots.
“Repeat the word criminals.”
The machine repeated it eleven times.
Dill opened another window.
He found the date of the lawsuit.
He found the court ruling.
He found the original settlement.
He found the ordinary release dates.
He found the organization paying for the advertisement.
Then he found how much money the organization planned to spend making sure he saw it again.
The Engagement gauge began spinning backward.
At that moment, Dill’s dog noticed the green curtain.
The dog’s name was Maybemarryberry.
Maybe was not a trained investigator.
Maybe had no position on Ray Man Strong.
Maybe believed all political parties existed primarily to postpone walks and playtime.
But something behind the curtain was squeaking.
Maybe pursued it.
He seized the curtain and pulled.
The magnificent green fabric collapsed.
Behind it stood the Men in Excessively Strange Hats, frantically operating levers labeled FEAR, MASCULINITY, HUMILIATION, CRIME and THEY THINK YOU’RE STUPID.
One man was typing comments.
Another was interviewing the same confused citizen in three different shirts.
A third was feeding donated money into the machine.
The tallest hat stood on a box speaking into a microphone.
“Ray Man Strong opened the gates!” he thundered. This man had no pants. Ew.
Without the curtain, his voice sounded small and nasal.
Dill stared at the machinery.
Other young people gathered around him.
They had questions too.
“Why is this story appearing now?”
“Who profits if we believe it?”
“Who selected these images?”
“What happened immediately before this clip?”
“What happened afterward?”
“Why does every message seem designed to make us afraid of someone?”
“Why are you wearing those hats?”
The last question was not politically relevant, but it was long overdue.
The Men in Strange Hats attempted to restart the machine.
It would not cooperate.
Questions had entered the intake pipe.
Context had clogged the Fear Valve.
Chronology was wrapped around the motor.
Someone had poured media literacy into the Contempt Chamber.
The machine coughed.
It shuddered.
Then it released everything it had harvested.
Attention returned to its owners.
Fear separated from fact.
Grief emerged from the advertisement and became grief again—not a weapon, not an accusation, not evidence of something it could not prove.
The citizens from the geography video stepped out from behind the machine.
Most of them had identified the countries correctly.
One had been joking.
One had been nervous.
One had never been shown a map in school but went home afterward and learned.
The woman who had pointed to the decorative compass rose explained that the interviewer had asked her to give the funniest wrong answer she could imagine.
They had removed that part.
The Men in Strange Hats backed toward the exit.
“This proves voters are stupid,” one of them announced.
“No,” said Dill. “It proves you believe we’re vulnerable. You’re working very hard to distort how we feel about our country and one another. You aren’t appealing to our intelligence. You’re trying to bypass it.”
Maybe barked.
A nearby goat fell over.
No one knew why the hats had that effect on goats.
There would eventually be an investigation.
The Men in Excessively Strange and Expensive Hats escaped, of course.
They always did.
There were other curtains.
Other machines.
Other frightened faces waiting to be separated from dates and circumstances.
Fudgy complexity would ooze out of holes of Swiss cheese.
But some young people had seen the machinery.
That was the mistake.
The Men in Strange Hats had aimed their advertisements at young minds because they believed young minds were empty vessels waiting to be filled.
They had forgotten that young minds were also equipped with toolboxes, the chief ones being a crowbar and a monkey wrench.
STATUS: HARVEST OF YOUNG MEN MINDS — UNSUCCESSFUL
CAUSE: SUBJECTS EXPOSED TO CONTEXT AND ASKING FOR COMPLEXITY
RECOMMENDATION: REMOVE ALL DISLOYAL DOGS
SECONDARY RECOMMENDATION: DISCOURAGE DISLOYAL QUESTIONS
LIKELIHOOD OF SUCCESS: SOMEWHAT DECLINING
Somewhere a man with an excessively large had beside him sat up from bed breathing hard, drenched in sweat, heart racing. He had had a nightmare.
He assured himself that intelligence was on the decline.
He slept with his hat on.
It reassured him.
