Catching Fish

Anyone who fishes, knows, there is an art to catching fish. You need the right environment and weather, the right, bait or lure, and a bit of wisdom and finesse, in the way you cast out. It’s an art really. Not everyone can catch fish, and be good at it. Then there is the whole question of ethics.

Do you use barbed hooks or not, do you catch and release, do the fish feel pain, when you hook them and reel them in, are all issues, discussed at nauseam, by too many to get into. Your answers vary depending on the side you are on in the argument, as well.

Enter social media. Ah yes, the life oracle that seems to be in every corner of the home and conversation for an entire world, akin to cockroaches in a Manhattan apartment building. There is no getting away from this cesspool of tension, loathing, contention, and self exploitation. How are they involved in catching fish you are thinking right now, and I am about to tell you.

You wake up in the morning and prepare your coffee, because it’s dangerous not to have your coffee first thing, in the morning (see my previous article on the dangers). When you sit to enjoy the wonderful elixir or life, you pull out the umbilical cord, and begin trolling social media. An endless feed of anything and everything flashes across your screen. As we progress more and more into a world of media at your fingertips, out attention spans have decreased to almost nothing, so everything you view or pass by, has to have something that grabs your attention, so you will stop.

That is a never-ending marketing nightmare, as the developers of all kinds of goods and services, try to peg what today’s man, woman, or adolescent, is interested in. What is the flavor of the week, month or year, is not as simple as here is a good product, buy it. Everything you see has competition. So what does that mean in relation to the title of this article?

It means that marketing strategists are constantly busy, trying to find ways to catch fish. You, in case you didn’t already know, are said fish. The lake, river, and ocean, they fish in is social media, because believe it or not you are contained fish, in a body of water that is contained. Yes the ocean is contained. You don’t see ocean water floating in the sky or pouring over your lawn. Sorry Florida, that does not apply to you. Just go with it, for the articles sake.

So we are on all on the same page, the marketing/business is the fisherman, the body of water is social media, and the fish are all of us, the victims. The fisherman’s objective is to catch the fish no matter what. He does not care if the fish enjoys the bait, just before he is hoisted to the dinner plate, as long as the fish get caught, for devouring. So, let’s discuss lures.

Not all fish eat the same thing, or are attracted to the same lure. Some like worms, some flies, some don’t even care as long as they can stuff their gills with something (catfish). So, the fisherman over the years has become adept at synthesizing the live bait. He has created artificial lures. Anything from fake worms scented or flavored with realistic fish delicacies, to flashing metal spinners that mesmerize the fish into chasing it, think laser pointer and cat, and you’ll get what I mean. I am still not clear on if fish can smell under water, or if they even have taste buds, but there it is. Something for every fish and fisherman.

In the social media swamp, wait did I say swamp? Yes. Maybe the muck and slime of a swamp is a better example of the murky waters of social media, so I will go with that. The swamp doesn’t care who does what, as long as the swamp is full and used. So it gives the fish what they want, an endless supply of refuse to eat, fake and real, and it keeps the fisherman happy by not regulating what they fish with, as long as the swamp get a cut of the meal.

The lure, I am talking about in the swamp, is the temptation of miracle cures and products, peddled by everyone these days. From has been actors, trying to have discretionary incomes selling cosmetics, to gorgeous women trying to sell you weight loss, snake oil cures for being overweight, to the naturalist pusher, trying to sell you that simple, make at home remedy to life, there is no end to the garbage they try to make us buy.

I am not going to get too deep into the products, themselves, though I will gloss over them. What I am going to gripe about the barbed hook of the manipulative spinner bait. The shiny, spinning and flashing thing that we stop at because the tag line hits us at a point of our vulnerability.

For women, the bait is anti-aging, weight loss, and cosmetics, and for men, is male pattern baldness, trouble with libido (or fishing with a limp worm), and a miraculous instant six pack, the twenty some odd aged man is selling.

Say it’s January, and you have over indulged the whole holiday season and now you’re having trouble shedding those pesky desserts and cookies grandma made each and every holiday. You are down emotionally and all of a sudden you see some actress on screen who was typically overweight, but is now this lithe waif of a woman. She looks fantastic and promises you can as well in a month of drinking this super easy drink, you can make at home with every day ingredients. Well except one. I’ll get to that.

You click the find out more, button, because you trust that some actress would never lite to you, and there it begins. The reason for this entire feature. The intro starts with the actress taking about how miraculous this drink is and now it’s so easy for everyone to make and use. Then she share with you that someone shared the recipe with her, and now she wants to share it with you, because she is so concerned for your weight.

First off, the people in this infomercial only care about their pocketbooks, because of they cared so much for the peon person at the other end of the screen, they would give you the recipe for free, and post it everywhere. I mean, what does a millionaire actor need with your money to get the recipe, truly. But as we see in all aspects of society, people care about themselves and their wealth.

We ignore that fact, and keep watching. The story they begin to feed you is that it’s a well known secret some rare tribe or, ancient aliens, left us, and they just happened to discover it, anew. Lies. All lies. Then the most popular and easiest part of the recipe is shared, and its cider vinegar. By now you are hanging on every word, because wow, you have that in the pantry.

They go on listing some simple ingredients. Some say ginger, some Himalayan salt, some name some tea leaf or powder, and top it all off with honey. The honey incidentally is to make the drink potable. Vinegar is the most acidic and difficult thing to drink, and yet they tell you it tastes so amazing. It doesn’t. Even if you pour a tablespoon of vinegar in a tub of honey, you will gag and takes the vinegar and feel its burn as it travels down you esophagus. It is unpleasant at best.

You stick with it, though, because you have this hope against hope that you can trudge through the unpleasantness of the warm drink once or twice a day. Then the lead ball drops.

There is a tea or a component in this simple drink, you’ll love, that is not the everyday variety that everyone has in their cabinet. For this purpose, I’ll use tea, but it could be the ginger, the honey, or whatever else the snake oil salesperson wants to use for this purpose.

It is not a regular tea leave. It is a green tea. “Well I have green tea, in the house, so it won’t be a problem,” you say to yourself. But no, it is a super duper rare green tea leave harvested at an altitude no normal man can climb in a rare alternate universe, which is then rolled into round balls, on the thighs of alien, traveling women, from Betelgeuse.

Oh no. How on earth can you get a hold of this tea now? No worries, because the woman on the screen has done all the work for you. She has traveled the universe and made a deal with the planet, for a constant supply of the leaf, just for you. But there is another problem.

Considering the rarity of this tea, and the fact that it has to travel such great distances, the drop in the altitude, and change to an oxygen rich planet, as well, no doubt, causes the leave to lose its efficacy. Again, the beautiful woman with her savage tan and designer blouse, has gotten her hands dirty for you. She has hired a slew of scientists and manufactures to help in the transformation of the tea leaves into a powder, fifty times the usual strength. She has then worked tireless days and nights, to find a way to make it easy to take.

You see, she also knows, vinegar tastes like battery acid. She banks on the fact that you’ll try some adapted version of the items she has so far listed, and give it a shot at home. She knows what happens then. You will do anything to not have to drink this acid. Keep in mind that at no point has she given anyone the exact amounts of any of the ingredients in the drink.

I hope you are tracking with me here, because you are into this article only a couple minutes, and the person who is engaged in the baiting, is already into the film, about thirty minutes. The victim had now clue how much longer until he or she gets the recipe, either. Some, will try to fast forward the video, and are not allowed. The video stops and will not forward. If you exit, and go back in, you have to start again at the beginning. How is that for a kick in the pants. Oh, but it gets better.

You keep watching, or if you are like me, you mute the pitch and go about cleaning up the kitchen and run some errands. Maybe you go have lunch with that girlfriend, you haven’t seen in a year, and then do a little shopping for shoes, before you head home.

When you home a long, long time later, you look at your laptop or computer to see the end result of the epic miniseries length ad, and see that it is still running. But wait, it is just about at the end. You sit and wait it out. And here comes the results of the tenacity and philanthropic actor and their guru, pills to make your life so easy. Let’s say it’s a red pill and a blue pill. Get the reference?

Anyway, you just sat there for all this time, so you want to see how much they are, to make a decision. You see the exorbitant price of $500 a bottle, and hyperventilate. The woman peddling her miracle herbs, immediately says, she knew that would be unaffordable for most people, and that she told the manufacturer that it had to be affordable for you, the average person. By miraculous, scientific intervention, she was able to get the formula down to $49 dollars a bottle.

She is willing to sell it to you at that price instead, because of her kindness and general wonderful personality, but only for the next 2 minutes. And her comes the countdown clock on the corner of the screen. She tells you that the more you buy, the cheaper it gets, buy some mystical power, but that there is a very limited supply in total. That means you have to get it now, or someone else will take the bottles you want and need and you won’t be able to get any of this product until they make more, which the model says is not guaranteed.

It makes me sick just writing about this. I hurts my heart that so many fall for it, and are brutally disappointed, having lost no weight with the herb pills, having not lost one wrinkle with a cream or drop for the face, or not having grown one hair on the scalp with some instant fertilizer for the hair follicles of a man whose, identity resides in a coif of handsome thick hair. The thing that makes me livid, is the millions upon millions of dollars, people spend on this garbage. Just stop.

Learn to love yourself as you are. You are you and that is more than great. No one else can be you. Are you a little chunky or a lot chunky, love it. You have more to love. In a world of billions, there are millions and hundreds of millions of men who love that, and don’t believe a woman should be a size zero.

Do you have wrinkles, embrace them. Each and every line is a tale in your life. A struggle, a year, a life well lived. You will age no matter what, and at best you can minimize the looks of the wrinkles, but in the end they will win. They are the bibliography of your story. Every story is a wonderful journey.

Are you losing or have you lost the hair wars, only to feel like you are not as attractive? Well take a look at The Rock, Jason Statham, Bruce Willis, Shemar Moore, are only a small sampling of hotter than hot men, with no hair. I am telling you here and now, bald men are hot. I am married to one. I don’t think I would recognize him with hair and I probably would not like him with hair. So, know that women find it sexy. Men all over shave so they can be bald, for women who love it. Be you. You are enough, and perfect as you are.

We live in a world that values the shell over the contents. Hollywood feeds us that lie at every turn. It’s a lie. Hollywood types are not the normal. They are incredibly underweight for the camera, and often have emotional and metal disorders, that manifest into eating disorders, because they are not happy with how they look, or rather how they must look to be accepted.

You are accepted. You are beautiful. You are perfectly and wonderfully made.

** JUST AS YOU ARE.**

If you are made to feel less than that by friends, work, lovers, find new ones! They are not friends, of they don’t love you as it. The job is not for you if you have to feel self conscious and inadequate because your body is not to their liking. Get another one where they value your work, your merit. If you have a lover that makes fun of your head, your muffin top, the lack of a six pack, to the inability to count the bones in your body through your skin, find another. Get rid of the dead weight. Just think, if weight loss is your trigger, you just lost over a hundred pounds by dumping the judgement. Hooray for you.

Love yourself. It is hard, I know it is. But do it. Tell yourself every day, how beautiful you are and that somewhere there is the person who will see you as the hidden diamond no one else sees. That is a keeper. Toss the small fish back into the waters and look for the big one.