A Quick and Easy Guide to Displaying Your Virtue

Becoming a good person who contributes to society is difficult, as outlined in a previous post.  It requires a change in mindset, a change in attitudes and acting according to rules.  Making that change can also mean that you will face consequences from friends, family and even the authorities. There will always be a cost to being a "good person".  It's actually far easier to LOOK like someone who's virtuous without actually making the sacrifices.  So, in order to gain social brownie points, you'll need to be effective at signaling your virtue to both your digital and analog social circles.

Here are a few easy tips on how to do that.

1) Be Offended and Outraged

You have a lot of options here. You can be offended about jokes. You can be outraged at the lack of racial/gender/religious/sexual orientation/physical size/disability/dietary choice "representation" in films and TV shows. You can complain about public figures' comments, or lack thereof, on a given controversial topic that they have no expertise on.  You can complain about the insensitivity of Halloween costumes.

Of course, even if you're not part of the group that you believe is being victimized by the offensive piece of content, you shouldn't be shy to show how offended and outraged you are.  After all, if you're not part of that underprivileged group, you can still be an "ally" to that group.  You can use your "position of privilege" to help the cause.

You know, because people that are different from you have no agency at all and will always require your help.

2) Take to the Streets and Protest
Historically, protesting on the streets has been a great way to get governments to take action.  This worked in the past when trying to get a dictator to step down from power or to have specific laws changed.  It's eventually worked for people wanting political prisoners to be freed or for people wanting to get an occupying power out of their country.

Of course, there's a cost for those types of protestors. They historically have been targets of violence, unlawful imprisonment and other human rights violations.  Think about the Civil Rights movement in the US in the 1960s, the Arab Spring protests in the early 2010s, the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, or more recently, the protests in Chile and Hong Kong as examples.

If you live in a free society and democracy in 2019, the types of causes similar to those mentioned above aren't found as easily.  Instead, you'll have to find ways to protest against problems and concepts like censorship of free speech, racism, police brutality, income inequality, sexism, anti-scientific thinking, climate change and human extinction.  It's not that these causes aren't worthy of protest. The problem is that these are complex, unspecific issues that require extremely complex solutions which can't be fixed by simply taking a walk.

For example, if you want to stop climate change caused by humans, you can try to get governments to commit to making investments in clean energy and reduce carbon emissions. To make that work, that means you need to create a mechanism to enforce their commitments.  And then those governments have to get trillion dollar industries to bend to their will.  Good luck fixing that with your march.

But hey, you did take to the streets for a cause.  You marched and blocked traffic to let people know that you're fighting against a concept or something that requires a multiple levels of complex thought to to reach a solution.  You didn't really affect change and put yourself in any danger of violent reprisals. Your protesting just made it LOOK like you did something. That should be enough. You just want to seem like you're "fighting" without actually incurring any real cost to your well-being.

3) "Think of the Children"

Saying that you're thinking of children and future generations as a reason for your position is great way to show your virtue.  This is true whether you're part of a highly religious group wanting to censor the latest blasphemous, popular film or whether you're part of an environmental activism group trying to fight climate change.

Even if you don't have kids or you don't really care about kids, you'll sound like someone who cares. All you need to do is to position your argument as being based on "protecting children" or ensuring that you are fighting to "leave a better world for the next generation".  This is a very easy way to demonstrate that you are unselfish and better than other people who can only think of theirs and their own families' current well-being.

It is true that children can be vulnerable to adults who can directly exploit them. This is not what I'm talking about.  To actually help expose and help prosecute a pedophile or a child pornography ring requires time, effort and could potentially put yourself in harm's way.  Studying and getting a job as a social worker who tries to take kids away from their abusive home is way more difficult than simply clicking "like" and "share" on a social media sob story.

It's much easier to say that you're thinking of the children when you petition school boards to censor what kind of books teachers should be teaching or when you demand that certain types of words need to be "policed" in schools.  That's an easier task that will make you seem like a good person who wants to help children.

4) Document everything on Social Media

Of course, you must make sure your efforts are visible to the world. If there are no pics (or videos), then it didn't happen.  This is where social media comes in.

Now I'll admit that in places where oppressive governments censor the press and the flow of information, social media has been useful at disseminating news of civic unrest.  The Arab Spring wouldn't have played out the way it did if it wasn't for Twitter, for example.

However, for those living in free, Western democracies, you can also use this tactic to make your actions seem more virtuous than they actually are.

Post selfies of you and your besties participating in protests to show that "you took part in this historic moment." That way, when someone else did the work of getting elected, changing laws and negotiating with multiple stakeholders to effect real-life political and social change, you can point to your Instagram pic and take credit because you skipped out on a job you don't like that day to take a walk.

Don't be shy to post on public figures' social media accounts to call them out on their non-woke behaviours and opinions. You can "call them out" if they're not living up to the arbitrary moral standards of the day.

Even if these public figures are too busy doing their jobs and have outsourced their social media to their marketing and PR teams, it's ok. You'll get more views on your posts by tagging these people than just posting something yourself. And that means more people can potentially see how morally superior you are.

Final Thoughts
It's very difficult to actually be a good person.  In fact, it's almost impossible if you consider all the unintended consequences of your choices and actions.  Creating real social change is incredibly difficult. It's much easier to make people THINK that you are virtuous.  It's easier to adopt a strong opinion on a subject and determine that one side is perfectly good and the other is evidently evil without examining the nuances.

Whether it's allying yourself with an "oppressed" group or using future generations as the "beneficiaries" of your actions, the idea is to make sure that the most amount of people see that you're being morally superior.  With that, you can reap the benefits of being a good person without having to face the difficult consequences of choosing morally acceptable behaviour.

Plant-Based Fake Meat is a Load of Bull

One of the best things about capitalism is that businesses will always find a way to co-opt seemingly positive social trends for the sake of making money off of easily duped people. The best example of this is the rising popularity of the new fake meat products like Impossible Meat and Beyond Meat.  Even more recently, KFC has jumped on the bandwagon by testing out the Beyond Chicken in their menu.

The marketing behind these products is that they're supposed to be better for your health because they're "plant-based". You seemingly get the protein you get in meat from plants while getting the same nutritional value as eating veggies.

The marketing material also implies that choosing a plant-based diet means that you're also being more environmentally friendly and you're reducing cruelty to animals. All this while keeping the same taste and texture of real meat. Amazing.  You now have a product that will allow you to feel morally superior to those ignorant meat-eaters without sacrificing the delightful feeling you get in your mouth when you're chewing on the flesh of dead animals.

Perfect product, right? Not so fast.

Healthier than meat?

For one this stuff isn't necessarily much healthier than meat. It's highly processed. To replicate the look, smell, texture and taste of ground beef and chicken with peas, soy and "plant-based ingredients", you'll definitely need to do some heavy industrial processing. You'll probably need less additives and processing to get a refrigerated piece of chopped up cow or chicken.

Also, Beyond Meat is mainly made of soy.  Soy has been shown to lower sperm count and decrease libido.  It has also been linked to mood swings and depression.  Prolonged soy consumption has also been connected to the growth of estrogen-dependent tumors found in breast cancer.


What about the calories and fat content?  Calorie-wise, a real burger patty has about the same amount of calories as a fake meat patty.  Sure, real meat will have more saturated fat than the fake patties, but new research in nutrition is showing that dietary fat isn't necessarily bad for your health.  In fact, it's actually necessary for your body.  The problem has been the sugar and carbs found in your burger bun and not the fat in the meat.

Better for the environment?

So what about the argument that avoiding meat is better for the environment and is less cruel to animals? Is that really true? That depends.  Sure, beef production which is used by most environmentalists as the worst case, does have a high carbon footprint.  Yes, the space required for cattle grazing usually leads to deforestation.

However, the amount of soy and peas used to make your plant-based burger requires mono-culture farming that's bad for the soil, requires a high use of pesticides, causes a lot of water pollution and has a high carbon footprint that contributes to climate change.  It also causes the loss of biodiversity by creating areas where only one type of plant can grow.

Coconut farming also promotes monoculture

At the same time the plant ingredients in that fake burger aren't sourced locally.  For example, the coconut oil required not only promotes monocultures, but also has to be shipped from Indonesia, the Philippines, and other tropical countries to North America.  That's a significant when it comes to fossil fuel use and carbon footprint.

Taste?

As for the taste, if you want something that tastes like meat and you have no allergies, why not just eat meat?  It always makes me laugh whenever I see fake meat products made for vegans and vegetarian. It's especially funny when the ones eating these products are the ones preaching and proselityzing about their diets. If their meatless diet is so superior, why are they still craving and trying to replicate the taste and texture of meat?

Looks like real meat, smells like real meat, somewhat tastes like it too... why not just eat a real burger?

Bottom Line:
The fake meat phenomenon is basically another sign of living in a privileged and easy society.  Historically, when you look at different societies around the world, humans will eat whatever they could get to survive. Even in hunter/gatherer societies, meat was considered a rare luxury because it's so difficult to hunt down and chase animals with non-firearm weapons.

As societies become wealthier and more industrialized, the consumption of meat increases. We're seeing that now in many developing countries the same way that we've seen that in the past in Europe and North America.  I suppose that when you reach peak wealth and privilege, the next step is to take your surplus of resources, go into a lab and create something that simulates the most historically coveted type of food.

Of course, I'm not saying that we should only eat meat.  There are many benefits to eating plants when it comes to dietary fiber, vitamins and other nutrients that can't be found in meat.  However, instead of trying to highly process these plant ingredients to look like meat, wouldn't it make more sense to just be the omnivores we evolved to be by eating your meat with vegetables?  I know it seems novel, but humans seem to have survived for millions of years eating that way.

5 Tips to Help You Win an Election

It's election season again in Canada. It can be fun to see what strategies each political party leader is using to win over their voters.  Some are working better than others, but if I ever become a politician and decide to run for office, here's what I would do to win.

Tip # 1: Don't pretend to be "perfect"
One of the problems with politicians is that they like to project an image of a leader that's above the common folk, that their values and thoughts are superior.  They want to show themselves as the perfect candidate, wearing the perfect clothes, the perfect family and always saying the perfect slogans, participating at the "right" events. So guess what happens when the dirt comes out that goes against that perfect image?  They immediately lose credibility.

What's actually better is to be somewhat less polished. Look at some of the democratically-elected world leaders who gained traction in the past few years and see how less-than-perfect their public images have been.

If you have any flaws as a human being (which we all do), don't be afraid to get called out on it.  Don't be afraid to laugh at yourself when you make a mistake.  Which brings me to my next point...

Tip # 2: Take ownership of your past
If I were running for office, I would make sure to prevent any potential scandals that could derail my campaign by being upfront at the beginning.  I will start by immediately publicly admitting past mistakes.  At the very beginning of the campaign, I'll post pictures of myself getting drunk and/or high on social media, videos of me making borderline racist jokes, and controversial blog posts or op-ed pieces that I may have written.

What you're doing is getting all the dirt out of the way as soon as possible.  You're telling the voters: "Yes, I'm human.  Yes, I've made mistakes in the past as you can see. I apologize if I hurt people before with the foolish behaviours of my youth.  I've changed since then.  I've evolved.  I've learned, I'm now wiser and ready to be your leader."

You can apologize if you want, but it's usually easier to do it once and then move on.  Yes, even if you are Canadian.  Sure it will hit the "news cycle" and it might hurt your numbers at first. But after a couple of weeks, when a new scandal, natural disaster, celebrity sex tape or a new provocative piece of "news" hits, most people would have forgotten your admitted mistakes and they won't affect your results come election time.

The idea is to control the narrative and not give your opponents the chance to portray you the way they want. This move also gives you the image of being a "flawed human" who can be a good leader because you have "proven" that you can learn from your mistakes.  You become more relatable.  You'll also be seen as transparent and not hiding anything.

So what's the best way to control your narrative?

Tip # 3: Use "new media" more than (if not as much as) "traditional media"
The problem with traditional media like TV, radio and other ads is that you have to make sure that you can get your views, your personality and why your opponent is wrong in very short, 15 to 30 second sound bites. Now you have to depend on your voters to pay attention and put together all the different sound bites so they can get an idea of what you're trying to communicate before they can vote.

You also have to depend on the goofy political debate formats where nobody really answers questions.  Instead everyone's trying to cram their talking points in where it seems appropriate. Worst of all are the political ads.  They're expensive to produce, it's expensive to buy time and most people probably don't think they're credible at all.

The better strategy is using new media, like YouTube, social media sites and even podcasts.  You have full control over what you say on a YouTube video.  You won't get interrupted by an interviewer because they need to get small sound bite before going to a laundry detergent commercial.  You'll be able to talk as long or as little as you want to explain your positions and policies.  You can respond more clearly to criticisms and you can interact almost instantaneously with your constituents from any where in the country.

Using certain social media sites, you can show the "behind-the-scenes" of your campaign. Or how human and relatable you are.  You just have to be careful to not be too perfect with your posts, because it's very easy to see when someone's pretending to be authentic.

What's even better is that you're making it easier for traditional journalists to get the information they need from your campaign because it's all accessible.  You get to be top-of-mind.  And of course, all this is relatively cheap when compared to buying ad space or paying PR firms to get you on TV and radio shows with dwindling audiences.  All you need is good lighting, an intern holding a smartphone and your YouTube and social media accounts.  If you provide entertaining, but politically relevant content, you're good to go.

Tip # 4: Find the quiet majority's opinion
It's quite easy for opinions to be swayed by what the media likes to highlight as "important issues" of the day.  The common cliché is that the traditional mainstream media will normally highlight the loud, minority opinion because they can sometimes be so extreme (on both the left and the right side of the political spectrum), that it gets more ratings, views and clicks.

If you truly want to get elected, you might want to actually talk to your constituents instead of watching the news media's version of what the constituents want.  Most of the time, you'll find that a lot of "hot-button" issues are really non-issues to the common voter, and a lot of issues that are being ignored by the media are really the most important ones to the electorate.

Once you find the true pain points of your voters, the easier it will be to come to them with a solution that only you can provide.

Tip # 5: Destroy your opponents' credibility
The most interesting thing about elections to me has always been the marketing problem that each candidate faces.  They are trying to position themselves to appear a certain way to voters, while at the same time trying to position their opponents in a very negative way.  If you want to make your opponent look bad, there's no point in lying or spreading misinformation about their positions.  All you need to do is to find a way to diminish their credibility.  The simplest way to do that is by making them look like hypocrites.

This will work the best because most candidates are still stuck in the past and haven't followed Steps 1 and 2 above.  In all likelihood, most politicians are hiding some kind of secret that will conflict with their proposed policies.  For example, if your opponent is championing diversity, equality and is depicting themselves as the "inclusively woke" candidate, finding old pictures of them wearing a racist Halloween costume or recordings of them going on drunken, anti-Semitic rants can be very damaging.  If your opponent is the pro-family values candidate, finding old videos of them smoking crack cocaine while partying with sex workers is not going to be good for their image.  You get the point.

Whether or not their target voters agree with their behaviour isn't the issue.  It's the fact that their proposed policies compared to their past behaviours will make them look like hypocrites that will make them less credible.

Now it goes without saying that when your people find the dirt, you simply have them use anonymous social media accounts and pretend to be "confidential whistleblowers" to leak this information.

Finally, be wise about the timing of your leaks.  You don't want to release these too early.  What you want to do is strategically leak these as soon your opponents' numbers are reaching a peak in the polls.  The damaging information, will cause those numbers to go down and put the opposition on the defensive.  As soon as they get their numbers back up again, that's when you release another piece of damaging information to put them back on the defensive again.  Just hope that you have enough dirt so you can repeat the process over and over throughout the duration of the campaign.

So that's it.  Five simple tips that any political candidate needs to follow in this era.  If you look closely, you'll notice that more and more politicians will begin using these strategies in the future.

Banning Ring Card Girls is Anti-Feminist and Prevents Women's Empowerment

Anyone who watches professional combat sports will notice that there are always scantily-clad women carrying large cards around a ring or a cage to remind viewers what round in the fight we're in.

Apparently, some very well-meaning, though misguided feminist activists and politicians in Australia have decided that enough is enough.  They want to end the objectification and exploitation of women by banning ring card girls (a.k.a. "round progress managers") at a championship boxing match this past August.  They are now even petitioning the UFC not to have the iconic Octagon girls in between rounds in the upcoming event this coming October.

Are current feminists all of a sudden uncomfortable at the thought of women showing their bodies and getting paid handsomely for it if they want to? I was under the impression that a way to empower women is by giving them choices in the types of work they do.  If a woman wants to show off as much or as little of her body in public as she wants, nobody should be able to tell her otherwise
 
I can see where the "objectification" argument might come from, but as for "exploitation", I tend to disagree. None of these politicians and activists actually asked the women doing the ring girl jobs if they've ever felt exploited or forced to do this.

By banning these jobs, these politicians and activists are effectively taking away these women's right to make a living legally. And yes, I do call this work for the simple reason that it takes commitment and discipline when it comes to exercise and diet to maintain the physical condition that these women have.  Also, if you do any research, you'll learn that many of these women have actually used the platform of combat sports as a launching point for extremely lucrative partnerships, sponsorships and careers in modeling, art, broadcasting, podcasting, and other fields.

Maybe it's a question of representation.  Would there be as many complaints and bans if more "plus-sized" women were represented in the job the same way that we now have an increasing amount of "plus-sized" models?  What if we had more women over the age of 45 doing the job?  Or maybe more women in wheelchairs?

Would there also be as many complaints if in addition to having ring card girls during men's fights, we had ring card guys during women's fights?  The all-women MMA promotion Invicta FC debuted Canadian pro-fighter Elias Theodoru as their ring card boy last year.  He hasn't done it since, but I think it would be more interesting to see dudes doing the same type of job in other organizations.

How many feminists and activists would complain if pro-fighter Elias Theodoru continued working as a Ring Card boy on the side?

 

Personally, I've always thought that it was a bit weird to see ring card girls in between rounds of a women's MMA championship fight.  So it would make more sense to have more ring card guys reminding us what round it is.  It would be somewhat sexist and regressive to consider this job as exclusively "women's work" after all.

The point I'm trying to make is this.  The Australian bans are simply an attack on soft targets that make it look like they're doing something when they're really just trying to show off how much more virtuous they are than the rest of us.  If politicians and feminists were really looking to empower women, stop exploitation and objectification, they would be aiming their outrage at real issues of violence against women and lack of education for girls in other countries outside of the Western world.

How to Gain More Influence on Social Media Through Annoying Behaviour

We've all used social media.  The currency on all these sites are followers, clicks, views, likes, shares, retweets and number of comments.  If you have nothing of value to share on your social media, the best way to get these is by being annoying.

1) Post vague status updates (mainly on Facebook) about how you're feeling bad or sad or annoyed, etc, without explaining exactly what happened.  This is a great way to "get attention" and "concerned" comments asking if you're doing ok.  If you're a complete narcissist, it's an excellent way to fish for compliments from well-meaning people who want you to stop feeling bad about yourself.  Also, public comments showing concern will also make these well wishers look sympathetic to other people so they'll have incentive to be nice to you.

2) Write a self-righteous, virtue-signaling, social/economic/political/religious rant complaining about white people, cis-gender males, non-LGBTQ+ males, people with money, people who aren't vegan and basically people who won't respond because they're too busy running the world.  You will get social brownie points from the echo-chamber of people who think like you. The more sweepingly general and having the least amount of nuance in your post, the more angry reactions you'll get.  If you're doing this on Facebook, the algorithm will ultimately move your post to the top of the news feed because it's keeping eyeballs on the site / application. Bonus points if you can somehow claim to be a victim of whatever group of people you're railing against.

3) Repeat point 2 on Twitter.  Because of the character limit on Twitter, you can write your angry rant as multiple posts, numbering them.

4) The off-shoot of points 2 and 3 would be to write the virtue-signaling, self-righteous post against the people on the opposite end of the political spectrum.  You'll get just as much of a response from the other side.  You'll even get strong reactions from people who disagree with you.  Again, the social media platforms' algorithms will identify the post as being engaging and will therefore give it more views. If you go this route though, you have to be careful because the rant can end up being borderline racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/xenophobic.  The platforms might flag you for "violating their terms of service". Of course, if that happens, you can use that to further strengthen your following by playing victim.  You can easily say that you're being censored and your right to freedom of speech is being violated.

5) "Humble-bragging".  In case you didn't know what that is, it's a bragging post about an being in a great event or being in a pic with someone famous disguised as being "blessed" or "grateful" or of course, "humbling".  A great example is a someone going to a TED talk, taking a selfie with one of the famous speakers and then posting it with a vapid quote talking about how lucky they are to be there.  We get it: you were able to gain access to an exclusive event and rubbed shoulders with some very influential people. You don't want to seem like you're showing off on your LinkedIn profile, so you write it with very obviously fake humility.

6) Be "on vacation" all year round. Whenever someone goes on vacation, they normally take their vacation pics and either post them all at once when they get back or they post everything on the day that they take the pics.  Instead of doing that, I suggest banking your best vacation photos and then post a different one or two daily on Instagram and Facebook.  Not only does this make you look like a well-traveled individual, it's also very attractive to people who are stuck in depressing office jobs, or who have to take long commutes on public transportation. This is especially true during the winter.  Great travel pics will get a bunch of likes especially if you start adding semi-motivational, humble-bragging quotes and hashtags.  Bonus points if you're a relatively attractive woman who can pose in a bikini on a sunny, white sand beach.

These are just a couple of tips that you can use if you're trying to build a social media following.  Get a critical mass of likes and followers and you can finally monetize your social media accounts by selling fit teas and supplements.