The mot juste has been ‘in these difficult times’ or variations thereof.

Economically, the summer of 2020 is difficult. Many small companies are relaying the safety net of central governments, many large companies are cutting large percentages of staff and are themselves seeking backing from both investors and governments. In turn this is having a real impact in individuals, on families who are not sure what the end of the summer will hold and just how cold the winter of 2020 may be.

But the summer of 2020 has seen another mot juste, the rise of the conspiracy theory and the part that social media is playing in spreading stupidity across the globe.

Before I go any further a declaration: I do not have any social media accounts. I did, once, have a Twitter account. I was working Pointe Noire, PR Congo and a friend suggested I take a Twitter account to help keep up to date with the political shenanigans that were going on in the run up the that years General Election. I did. And for a while, it was quite interesting watching this nascent technological tool being used to varying degrees of success by people who, in hindsight, really did not understand the potential.

I carried on with Twitter for some time after, but, as the motivation for tweeting had long since gone, my interest in other peoples cat videos or the lunch time epicurean endeavours waned. I closed my Twitter account sometime in 2013 or 2014. I’ve never felt the need to go back.

Nor have I felt the need to provide Facebook with any more data about myself than it already surely has, either through Facebook, or Whats’App or the kiddies favourite, Instagram’. Facebook are astonishingly good at aggregating data from all these tools and formulating a picture of half the worlds population, simply for the need to sell advertising. And more advertising. And ever more advertising.

Facebooks principles are nothing new and build on the work of Stanley Milgram, an American social psychologist who, amongst other things, devised the concept of Six Degrees of Separation. Those of you who have played the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon will understand exactly the work of Milgram.

This is exactly how Facebook and Twitter work. And it based on the work of Milgram that conspiracy theories spread.

The current chortles of the day are a complex and convoluted adjunct of seemingly innocuous opinions about big Pharma’, oddly including Bill Gates and that virus are capable of being spread by radio. It is of course all nonsense but that does not stop the stupid and gullible from reading and re-spreading. For some this maybe about as much reading as they will do in a day. Which is why, as with most conspiracy theories, it is delivered in mono-syllables.

As in almost all conspiracy theory rubbish, there does not seem to be a coherent motivation for why Bill Gates and Big Pharma’ are propagating a radio spread virus, other than ‘because they are…..’.

Rational thought and reasoning topped up with a coherent level of questioning never seems to play part in the answer. It will only be a matter of time before Stilton, Gorgonzola, Roquefort and Dorset Blue Vinney are included. But I digress.

I have, in the most, been inoculated from this summers conspiracy theory of choice, not being any of the platforms mention previously. However, I have been reading /about/ the impact it has been having, which has been widely reported in the main stream media, which in my case is the BBC and the Grauniad. And it’s impacts have been catastrophic. Fools and idiots around the globe have been attacking and destroying inanimate objects, such as radio transmitters and telecomms junction boxes, attacking Engineers who have been trying to restore communications services; services used by health infrastructure and health services around the world, including the UK’s own NHS.

The irony of course, which is lost on the terminally hard of thinking, is that they then share their handy work on social media, often using 3G and 4G to access the services. But, it seems, according to the slow of wit, virus are choosy and only use select radio. Who knew ‘eh ?

The summer of 2020 will be remembered long after the summers final swallow has sung and will make the foolishness of the Brexit outcome seem almost laughable. The summer of 2020 will be remembered primarily for the massive global disruption that HG Wells once postulated might be our saviour, but will also be remembered for showing just how stupid humanity can be and how we’ve built the tools to propagate our own stupidity.

That is all.