We need a Digital Dust Bowl

Will no one rid us of these turbulent engagement farmers?

I despise social media “influencers” who sow controversy, stupidity, and division in hopes of boosting engagement.

The worst thing Elon Musk did since taking over Twitter wasn’t changing the name to X, although that was pretty dumb. The worst thing he did was to offer financial incentives to engagement farmers who use controversy for clicks.

As soon as those attention-starved knobheads discovered that the key to getting a share of X’s ad revenue was to say the most insane, retarded, and controversial things imaginable, these content-farming “influencer” accounts became even more insufferable and disgusting than they already were.

Ad revenue sharing wasn’t the brightest Musk brainchild to come along, that’s for sure.

Since Hamas launched its barbaric October 7 attacks on Israel, Musk’s severely disabled brainchild has only gotten indescribably worse, with many engagement farmers going full-on “Hitler was right” to goose their engagement (and revenue-sharing windfall) even higher.

When you reward repugnant behavior, guess what happens?

You’d think a guy as brilliant as Elon Musk would be able to work that out all on his own.

I wrote in my September 5 column, The Engagement Whores of X:

I have zero interest in helping a bunch of over-eager, money-grubbing dipshits profit from being the biggest, loudest idiots on social media.

I’m amending that statement slightly: I have zero interest in helping those dipshits profit from monetizing Jew-hatred-for-clicks.

The weeks following October 7 have been a real eye-opener on Musks’s platform, with many so-called “conservatives” embracing antisemitism with unrestrained enthusiasm.

As I pointed out in my column “Strange Bedfellows,” some of the antisemitism has been mind-bogglingly in-your-face.

Some of it, however, has been a bit more subtle.

On Thursday, the MAGA engagement farmers all decided to X-tweet “Jesus is King.”

Did they all have a Damascene conversion on the road to the bank to cash their ad revenue checks?

Ha-ha-ha-ha. No.

They were posting “Jesus is King” as a subtle dig at Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro.

As you might already know, Ben is an Orthodox Jew. He, like every other practicing Jew, does not believe that Jesus is the promised Messiah.

For the Christians in Name Only on X, Jews not believing Jesus is the promised Messiah came as surprising news. For the rest of us, not so much.

Anyroad.

It all started on Wednesday evening when noted engagement farmer Candace Owens clutched the victim card because Shapiro criticized her ignorant responses to the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Candace, who once admitted to not being an evangelical Christian, decided to post this passage from the Sermon on the Mount:

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve both God and money.

Now, Candace didn’t have a “Come to Jesus” moment.

This was Candace’s “Look at me: I’m being persecuted by Ben Shapiro, who is saying ‘all manner of evil’ against me falsely, just like what Jesus was talking about!” moment.

I can picture Candace furiously typing “Bible verse+persecution” into a Google search to find just the right verse to post.

Her replies included the usual suspects from the so-called “Groypers” (AKA the Jew-hating virgins who skitter around social media like goose-stepping cockroaches), leaving little doubt that Candace’s post was her passive-aggressive way of claiming Shapiro was persecuting her for her newfound “Christian” faith.

Shapiro responded to Candace’s Googled Bible passage, saying:

Candace, if you feel that taking money from The Daily Wire somehow comes between you and God, by all means quit.

Unsurprisingly, the over-eager engagement farmer responded by clutching her victim card even harder:

You are utterly out of line for suggesting that I cannot quote biblical scripture.

The Bible is not about you.

So the gal who thought Jesus was personally describing her when he said, “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’s sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” decided to pretend that Shapiro was persecuting her for righteousness’s sake.

What a drama queen.

Then again, being a drama queen is the key to successful engagement farming.

Ah, Ben, you silly rabbit. Don’t you know the Bible is not about you? It’s about CANDACE!!!

I can see why Jordan Schachtel described Candace as Greta Thunberg in a MAGA hat.

It’s ironic that Candace included the part about not serving both God and money. Isn’t that precisely what Engagement Farmer Candace is doing – using the words of Jesus to increase her share of X’s ad revenue?

By the way, I’ve read Shapiro’s response several times and for the life of me, I cannot find the part where he suggests that Candace can’t quote the Bible.

After her faux dust-up with Shapiro, Candace’s fellow red-hat engagement farmers piled on by posting “Jesus is King” in support of Candace over the Jewish guy who is allegedly persecuting her.

Would you guys stop using the Savior to fertilize your engagement farm? If you’re that eager to increase your engagement among Jew-haters, how about quoting from “Mein Kampf” instead?

Boy, what I wouldn’t give for a Digital Dust Bowl right about now.

As my friend Martina Markota once said about Candace Owens, “Clout is a powerful drug.”

Now that Elon Musk has monetized the loudest, stupidest clout-chasers on X, that drug has become more powerful and poisonous than fentanyl.

The only solution is to block or mute the engagement farmers. Remember, even negative replies and quote-tweets help water their crops and make their revenue share grow.

Only completely ignoring them will deprive these guys of the engagement they need to cultivate their poisonous rhetoric.

Become the Digital Dust Bowl that puts an end to their undeserved wealth and fame.