How They Cover Their Hands Now

I've been noticing a lot of sock puppet videos on YouTube lately, floating to the top of my particular algorithm soup. For those who don't know, in internet lingo a "sock puppet" is, according to Wikipedia, "a false online identity used for deceptive purposes . . . Sock puppets include online identities created to praise, defend, or support a person or organization, to manipulate public opinion, or to circumvent restrictions such as viewing a social media account that a user is blocked from." Mostly I've been seeing Japanese sock puppets aimed at foreigners, particularly pro-Sanseito sock puppets, like this guy called Shohei Kondo who has a lot of videos about video games and dating that casually slip in messages about how actually Sanseito isn't as crazy as its reputation suggests and they just want what's best for everyone, etc.

Yesterday I came across this guy called Evan Edinger whom I can't say for sure is a sock puppet but his videos somehow generate over a million views despite being extremely bland. The video I watched part of (and linked to) begins with him explaining how he, as an American, grew up in an environment where guns were a fundamental part of life and Britain introduced him to this novel idea that maybe the average person doesn't need to own a gun. His voice and cadence sound so fake (not A.I. fake just phony shill kind of fake) that I assumed he was a sock puppet before I saw his regular view counts. Could so many people really be interested in a sock puppet's content? Maybe he's just a really good sock puppet. So far I'm not seeing it but I never understood Dancing with the Stars either. Anyway, speaking as an American myself, I never experienced that feeling of having to own a gun and I don't know if anyone I knew did. Even people I knew who owned guns gave me the impression that it was their own particular predilection rather than an omnipresent need everyone in the social group feels to own a gun. I'm sure there are people like that but the YouTuber's description of it as just an every day fact of every American's life is ridiculous and feels like anti-American propaganda.

This is all, of course, why I've always said fiction is superior to non-fiction. Non-fiction, by its nature, asserts truth as its province and implicitly sets itself against that metric. Fiction is just ideas with no pretense at being otherwise.

Now that it's starting to feel like autumn I've been listening to more Elvis Costello lately. I don't know why exactly but Elvis Costello is associated with autumn for me.