I have cable television on my phone. We get it from a streaming service. The way it is set up I can see my favorites on a Watch Now tab, to make it easy to go where I want fast, however, it does not allow me to change the channel order. I don’t watch Fox News, but I occasionally drop by to check it out, know your enemy and all that crap, so I have it on my favorite list. This means I sometimes catch a glance of what’s going on as I swipe through the favorites. That’s the extent of my interaction with Fox News channel.
There are at least two other categories of Fox News viewers, as far as it concerns this piece. One is the hard core, always dumb, Christian Fascist audience that is their target. The other is a handful of people who watch it for professional reasons, either in real time, or by visiting their website or You Tube video related material. Some of these, like Kat Abu, gather a short weekly summary of Fox News items, I think she still calls it “If you didn’t watch Fox News last week, this is what you missed”, to which she adds very concise commentaries. Others, like Decodingfoxnews, have an almost play by play of what the fuck is going on there, more often than not complete with illustrative video of Fox News shows, and a many times elaborate editorial, expressing her own views in detail, as she explains what the linked Fox News item is about.
The advantage of Kat Abu’s approach is that you get her summary once a week, sometimes a “special edition” covering targeted issues, and that’s it. The advantage of Decodingfoxnews is you get an exhaustive view of the issues. The disadvantage of Kat Abu’s take is you will miss a lot of what’s going on in Fox News, from an academic stand point (some, like myself, may actually find this advantageous). The disadvantage of Decodingfoxnews is it bombards you with a lot of Fox News, covering practically everything from the morning shows to the late night ones, which means that you are really watching Fox News, if you consider the time spent on all her posts, watching Fox News programming, as compared to the time you spend watching real cable news from other sources. Now let’s look at the impact on Threads.
I admit that, from time to time, something relevant comes along, but for the most part it’s just bulshit, not really all that important, like the latest drama between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, or the most recent blunder by Kevin McCarthy, or “news” Fox News hosts make themselves. In any case, I recently realized that, thanks to Decodingfoxnews, I could no longer say I didn’t watch that channel. I actually watched more of it than MSNBC, because of the constant pushing of its content.
Now you may say I only watch it if I want to actually view the video, and that is fair, but keeping in mind that all Decodingfoxnews does in video is the exact reproduction of the Fox News item, that means her editorial intro in text is right there, in my timeline, along with the still image from the video, featuring the freak du jour. So it started to annoy me, because I am a good diagonal reader, and most of that shit did make it to my brain.
I considered unfollowing. That would have done the trick on my timeline. But there are like 20,000 people following Decodingfoxnews on Threads, many of whom follow me or I follow, which means that, combined with her own prolific posting, the quoted articles still show in both the For You and Following timelines and my personal All and Replies tabs. So I just let it be for a while, until I started reading the editorials more closely. In the last I read, the commentary was such that it made Laura Ingraham look good. I shit you not. Complete with wishes that other Fox News hosts would follow her example! That was it for me. I blocked it, after she replied to my quote post where I specifically called her out on this, suggesting she was over watching Fox News. For some reason, she came at me with her combined Xitter and Threads followers, she claims to total 200,000. Impressive. She got the answering machine treatment, just like any nazi bastard with 20 followers would. Makes no difference to me.
These accounts, Decodingfoxnews, the Ghost of Conway, and others like them, who editorialize over Fox News content linked on their posts, are actually promoting Fox News to an audience it doesn’t get to. Us. The people who don’t watch it. And then I thought, it doesn’t even make any sense. I mean, decoding Fox News doesn’t take 24/7 every day. You got to be real dumb to spend years decoding every aspect of Fox News. I suggest a name change, and not going as far as suggesting “Promotingfoxnews”, I would go with “Watchingfoxnews”. At least it is honest.
As for those of you still curious, let me tell you this: Fox News is shit. There. I decoded Fox News for you in 3 seconds. No need to subscribe for updates. Fox News is shit. That’s it. Decoded. Now you can return to your previous non watcher status. It’s all good.
[finis]
Note:
Comments on this blog are locked. This is but a reading platform linked to Threads.
If you wish to reply with your thoughts, please do so on the Threads post that references this opinion piece. Thank you for reading.
