PP Behind the Curtain: Don't Be a Passive Consumer

One of the biggest problems these days is the number of people who are relatively passive consumers of entertainment & information. But you can very easily begin to make your current habits more useful by taking some notes and begin turning the tables on the Elite.

Do you watch online videos, films, TV, or documentaries? Well you should consider writing your thoughts down as you watch and maybe even composing a content summary. By bringing the content into another medium (video->text) you help make it more accessible to others and you also provide yourself with resources which you can draw on to create more complex works in the future.

For example, below are the notes I composed while watching HBO's "The Day Sports Stood Still". I chose this documentary as I expected it would be a relatively simple doc that would hopefully provide some good opportunities to illustrate a variety of concepts. I was not disappointed.

Notes:

• opens on montage of dramatic sports clips throughout history
• a dramatic build up of the events of march 11th in OKC relating to NBA game cancellation due to a positive test
• obligatory italy reference and people dying in hospitals. the mention of bergamo bell ringing for every death adds a nice touch of dramatic flair.
• after the reveal of the positive test, the documentary has the players recounting how they were kept in their respective locker rooms and the selected clips are designed to emphasize the seriousness of the issue.
• one player recounts thinking through all the possible contacts he might have had. this provides supporting narratives to the idea of contact being dangerous and unacceptable.
• in response to the NBA cancelling the season: "That doesn't just happen for no reason" well, they are correct, the reason being a bunch of ignorant people got tricked into panicking over a virus with an over 99% survival rate.
• obligatory montage of audio clips of news reporters mentioning various sports league & event suspensions
• This would certainly make an interesting low-budget disease thriller flick. But as documentary it's not great
• another quote from the "Doesn't just happen" girl (also, she was an American playing in china so maybe she's just got a thing for authoritarianism?): "These are billion dollar organizations that are now postponing because of a virus. So it smacks you in the face of how real this virus truly is."
• nice touch: they made sure to include the hand sanitizer use prior to the removal of the mask for one of the interviews. Give that propagandist a raise!
• chris paul discusses how he sat outside his house after flying (private) home and wouldnt go inside because he didn't have his test results yet. cries remembering how he saw his kids but couldn't touch them. he acts like he would have guaranteed their deaths
• another montage of ambulances and coffins and such
• staying sane and having fun in lockdown. obviously toilet paper is mentioned
• OMG negative test. Hug time! this was accompanied by video which would seem to imply a house whose footprint could hold every dwelling i've ever lived in
• if this thing pivots into systemic racism remember that the dwelling above was owned by a black NBA player
• mark cuban, wealthy man-child, comes in to provide more support to "this isn't just another virus" narrative
• i forgot to note: there's a fun little line graph graphic of the deaths and date that is occasionally brought out to show the increasing death and case totals. Thanks PCR!
• "I was scared to see our world kinda collapsing" --big bearded dude
• OMG fetuses getting coronavirus!
• now a sports player's mother's illness is being used to manipulate the viewer's emotions. he recounts why he made a video at the time talking about it "if i saved one life thats all I ever wanted to do in that video". these aren't sinister and evil people. they're true believers in the greatest mass delusion in human history (she dies)
• home workout montage. someone even lifts a bulldog, how cute
• making the lockdowns seem less bad by highlighting connections with family during it
• the sinister line graph is back...1.4 million, May 15
• this has to have been pointed out before: the NBA commissioner is Gollum
• i think we're getting systemic racism! news anchor really goes native when pronouncing "Latino"
• "The players are on the frontline here...they would be going back onto the court...ultimately maskless, breathing each others air..." --Gollum "Breathing each others air" the horror!
• oh yeah, we're definintely gonna get systemic racism, heres the George Floyd video
• so after priming covid's dangerousness (remember "Breathing each other's air".) we're now treated to a montage of protesters crowded together in cities across the nation. there's a hip hop song in the background, it's not terrible for hip hop.
• china fangirl is talking about how she got "chills" after the protests which showed "white americans the reality in which black and brown people in this country live"
• photo of man-child mark cuban doing "hands up, don't shoot" pose
• the woke changes to the NBA which resulted in ratings tanking are being talked up as amazing and necessary
• baseball is called a "white sport"
• montage of athletes kneeling during anthem. one appears to show a white teammate kneeling with a black one and the white girls tears are falling like literal rain, visible on camera as they drop to the ground
• this next montage shows a reason why Disney would be so interested in hosting the NBA bubble: we have players, many big into social media, providing video tours of their Disney rooms. Walt would really have appreciated this.
• our line graph is back, this time with bubble cases added. its 0!
• this is amazing. they're now discussing how they must record their health symptoms every morning, including having some readings done by some kind of apple watch for fingers, and they mention how if they don't do this, their magic band on their arm that gives them access to things stops working. how dystopian
• talking about how they will focus on specific social justice issue each week. Breonna Taylor is mentioned. #SayHerName I'm still waiting for #AshliBabbit week
• clip showcasing the creepy screen audiences that have proliferated over the pandemic. apparently microsoft helped them with this. Bill Gate's creations really are the greatest aren't they?
• OMG virtual crowd containing barack obama...and there's Weezy!
• Kamala's buddy Jacob Blake makes an appearance
• "...black men are an endangered species..."
• magics HIV announcement, banning Sterling (Clippers) for life from the league, milwaukee bucks boycotting game 5 over jacob blake: most memorable sports moments according to ernie johnson
• chris paul brings up making the arenas voting locations due to covid. what sport was that GA arena with the late night under the table ballot cases reveal?
• "its amazing to see covid ended up just being the starting point. but its definitely not the ending point." this was seemingly prompted by paul commenting on how the documentary had originally begun as about covid and then morphed to something else with the social justice it actually proves true in the case of the transhumanist technocrats plans too
• showcasing covid positive tests for NFL and NBA 2020-21 seasons
• credits rolling with Lift Every Voice and Sing playing
• ends on audio clip: "there are forces that want to take us back to another place. we don't want to go back, we want to go forward"
• it began as a semi-acceptable thriller but ended as a sappy directionless social justice flick. not recommended

As you can see, in this case the notes are a mixture of quotes, personal commentary, and summaries of the content & visuals. I think its safe to say most people reading this could have crafted these notes or similar ones (maybe even better!). Using these notes I composed the blog post "I Watched HBO's "The Day Sports Stood Still", You Shouldn't". Now this post isn't going to win a Pulitzer. It's probably just mediocre for a review or piece of commentary (check out this Matt Taibbi piece for a more advanced example). As with the notes I suspect most readers of this piece could craft something similar given the time and inclination.

So maybe this will serve as some inspiration for you, the reader, to do exactly that.