Dolly Parton and the Ai Slopaganda

In my day job life, I’ve been in digital marketing for nearly 20 years. I’ve been working in Social Media for the last four. In that time, I’ve taken on the mantle of Cassandra. I know this isn’t a unique journey, I know the lens I'm viewing things through is being worn by many.

Or at least I hope.

To explain, Cassandra was blessed with the gift of prophecy while being cursed with the fact that no one believed her. It’s a story of watching catastrophe happen right before your eyes, and being powerless to stop others from ignoring the danger ahead. Ok, so that’s a dramatic comparison with just being really media literate, but you get it.

Starting in 2024, I thought I would be sneaky and cheeky, and I created a troll page to review modern Propaganda. I gave it a fun name, and I would comment on posts, calling out the logical fallacies and propaganda tactics in each. Lots of people would like my comments, I would get bot comments as well, and I would also share the content on the page itself as a way to display. It was a whole lot of fun when a commenter would chew me out, missing the caption I had written about what a putrid piece of crap this meme was. When I explained further, they usually relented and thanked me for the energy I was trying to put into it. I can dig their passion. They were sick of the crap too.

But realizing there was page after page on Facebook re-sharing a ton of pure bullshit made me realize why people get so confused and I felt completely deflated. More and more slop started coming at me, I even found that AI was duplicating Alan Watts and his voice. I only noticed because the advice being given was so hateful and unlike his words I had listened to before. But what if you weren’t used to his writings? What if someone you knew and trusted suggested you listen to Alan Watts, and this served to start you down some misguided pipeline. More and more came at me, and it was dizzying. Taking advantage of disenfranchisement, citing an emotional reaction, often times coupled with political manipulation or ridicule to coerce angry people into feeling moral superiority. Eeeeew! The amount of likes and shares were astounding. I wanted to believe ALL the comments, likes, and shares were from bots. I really did.

If not Propaganda, why propaganda shaped?

I first noticed how rapid these memes were, around the time that Mayor Mamdani was going to be sworn in. A whole slew of fake “celebrity” quotes rang across the internet, using scare tactics and purporting that these folks were going to REFUSE to perform in NYC because of him. Dolly Parton was one of them. This was thinly-veiled racism and old Red Scare Cold War Bullshit and an attempt to drum up fake manufactured consent for Islamophobia. Really? All this combined? DUDE, we’ve done this before. I hated it in every other Gulf War conflict, and I have seen MANY in my lifetime. Are we still othering people in this day and age??? A quick Google would show that these musicians did not say anything of the sort. Why are people in such a hurry to believe this garbage? And why do we claw so far deep down to stay in these horrid pipelines? Why are people in the United States so allergic to the truth of the Western lens? That our society celebrates cruel psychopathy, and seeks to keep that vibe out in the orbits of both our leaders and population? Please tell me we aren’t really just cruelty zombies.

I fought tooth and nail with this page for months, trying to post and refute as many memes as I could find, hoping to fight against the machine. Hoping to teach just one person to look behind the curtain at the Old Mighty Oz and notice he was manipulating us into punching sideways when we NEED to be looking up at the folks pulling the strings. Haven’t people ever noticed the Foreign Boogyman concept? Do people not read history and see how easily crowds are swayed? But then I had to ask myself a really serious question. How can I fight a machine that is so well oiled? That has let it’s cogs and parts rust while it greedily laps up the oil meant to keep us all strong. How will we ever come together and get through this challenging time when we are so willing to giggle at stupid, untrue shit and performative cruelty?

And today, on the second day of Pride, I see a replay of this same tactic:

Really, “American Country Dreams”? You think our beautiful Queen Dolly would say absolute Garbage Quotes like this? Give me a break. This woman has spent decades teaching us all about kindness and dignity. How do you feel ok using this woman to provoke an adverse reaction from an emotionally immature and likely wounded audience? Pure and utter shame.

But that’s just it. This crap only survives because it’s effective. Take it from me, and learn from my mistake. Please block anything like this. Our time is so precious and it doesn’t deserve our energy. How can we build a cohesive society when we can’t even agree to disagree on its constructs? How is THIS the most important thing to argue over? What the fuck are normal parents, anyhow? Boomers? The Greatest Generation? I am even disappointed in some of my fellow Millennials. How did we get raised on rebel music, and still find ourselves falling prey to Blind Obedience with bad leaders who we know in our heart of hearts don’t have our best interests in mind.

After my brain exploded with what felt like my full on utter disappointment in other humans, I closed the page and took a digital time out, other than what I had to do for work. I read some books, namely Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which really got my brain working in another direction. My lifelong aggression with injustice has likely not opened any minds. In fact, I might have caused people to dig in further and that’s something I need to learn from. I am trying to take a page from Paulo Freire and work toward engaging my fellow people with curious questions, and focus on learning together with others instead of cramming what I believe is true knowledge down the throats of others. They won’t swallow, no matter how good it tastes, after all.

The attempts at misinformation and disinformation will only get worse with AI. I invite everyone to keep a really close eye on what makes people clap. Start as an observer. Then really take a deep dive into what makes YOU clap. Let’s get to a level where contrived cruelty doesn’t become something that another person asked to give applause. And once you’ve taken some time to observe, let’s ask these questions of ourselves as we contine with our media diet. I am making sure to do this too.

Questions to ask ourselves while ingesting content:

What emotions did this create?

Why would someone want me to feel these emotions?

What assumptions are being made with this meme/content?

Who benefits from this accepted message?

What harm can be done by the acceptable and spread of this message?

We are capable of thinking outside of the box. Of not letting memes and content tell us who to be, and how to treat each other. We need to push real community, and remember that the internet is not the whole of reality. Especially as it gets more and more fake with AI slop like this.