Hard to recognize the commercialism when surrounded by a forest of advertisements. A.J., Taylor Swift, and even Casper Mattress are all brands. (recent: https://medium.com/fast-company/the-29-billion-race-to-own-how-america-sleeps-is-heating-up-1cd01ce64977). A.J. no doubt became a bad distraction to the many issue holders that A.J. worked as his revenue stream. He is so all over the place, to me, that wedge cultural issues are simply tools for his brand. So he’s a problem for too many others or also brands so his revenue stream methods are cut off, bang, done for now. (except google plus). The Taylor Swift brand is associated with twitter revenue, ergo, twitter clobbers Taylor Swift haters or other more youthful A.J. wannabees looking for some e-attention. Casper Mattress will sue for bad reviews, (see link above).
There are measures of value in modern social networking and the brands associated with all these e-platforms, from one-off blogs to big online revenue streams, still, the underlying fact, in this democratic capitalist nation-state ordered empire, these social platforms or brands are a chunk of the economy, or the mental social services division of our economy? Not so much the manufacturing side of the economy.
If there is a point here, say a person is walking down the street and a big mean looking bully comes up and the person believes they are the next bully victim, what does that person do? How about this, suddenly look up at the sky, point at something, anything, and loudly say, “WTF is that?!”, if that works, kick the bully in the nuts as hard as you can and run away as if your life depended on it. Similarly, If a social bully approaches intent on reinforcing the bully brand, then what does the victim do? The same thing with the added maneuver of lifting the wallet, then disappearing.
See, these e-trolls are a business, and when they are on as many operations as to be unfocused but raking in ad revenue, then this A.J. episode story is all about the money, period. As so much is in our society. It’s hard to see the underlying forces behind our escalating social dystopia, even on our campuses, somewhere a revenue stream is the overt or hidden agenda/force.
