We All Just Got Along

It was 1989 AD. Everyone and everything was cool, right? Madonna released Like a Prayer. The Cure saved me with Disintegration. Paul's Boutique was the Beastie Boys' ballsy pop-hip-hop triumph over everyone. At work, there was still not a Mac to be seen. We all still had hardwired rotary phones and shared a single number with our entire families. Sometimes our siblings told us when someone had called. We slept outside to score concert tickets; literal physical tickets that you’d better not lose. Ski trips, camping weekends, keg parties, and beach house rentals all went off without a hitch — or a text. Somehow, we all managed to make it on time to wherever we were going. Yeah, there was drama around the world as the credits rolled on the Cold War, but that was more of an older adult concern. We were in our roaring 20s. Everything was, like, totally awesome.

Thirty years later, not so much. As one of my closest current and dearest all-time friends lamented a few years ago during the height of the 2020 national election insanity, “Man, I miss the days when everyone just got along and none of us had any idea where anyone else stood on whatever the issue of the day was, let alone what party we were registered with.” Me, too, man. All we used to do was play ball, drink in the basement, and listen to music. Hey Ladies!

Yeah, we all registered and voted. We mostly did each according to how our respective neighborhoods and/or parents expected. It was a thing, it was not everything. Most of all, it was a private thing.

He and I have had a few dust-ups over the years, and that poignant piece of nostalgic waxing followed one particularly heated exchange. It doesn’t matter whom or what it was about. But it was the kick in the nuts I needed to realize it was not us fighting. It was our positions in opposition. And that’s OK. We moved past it a few minutes after it began and we bro-hugged it away. As bros do. But why are two practically lifelong friends allowing our opinions of people, positions, or party pit us against one another?

Blame those goddam party people and their media presstitutes whose purpose it is to create and fertilize that division among friends and family. They’re the people who would be without purpose if we (the audience) were to collectively call them out on their shit. In a bipartisan manner!

And now, in 2025, it has gotten demonstrably, provably, insidiously worse. Frankly, the talking heads at MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, PBS, Newsmax, and all the legacy alphabet media network stations have lost top billing. All they're doing — most of them, anyway — is reading editorial content from the boss's Prompter like obedient, better-dressed, less hilarious Ron Burgundys.

Today, we all face the fucking algorithms.

The manipulation and the control are real. We've been seduced into a fictional, digital world of instant gratification and opinion validation, and allowed the fucking algorithms to create factions, divide friends and families, and, worst of all, to get away with it.

"O'Malley, what the freak are you raving about? Take off your tin foil hat, man. Jeeze, you and your conspiracy theories."

Yeah? No. This is how it works. This is what they do. Sure, the legacy networks and cable stations still have a role, but think about what we do all day, every day. We reach in our pockets "when we have a minute" (yeah, right) and check our social media feeds. If you're over 50, it's Facebag, otherwise, mostly X (formerly Twatter) and Insta.

It's not coincidental that it instantly, always entertains us. That's the fucking algorithm at work. And you did it to yourself. Any time you ever, EVER, engaged with a post, watched a video, gave a Like, or shared something, the robots knew. And remembered. And like meth dealers keeping you high, the robots keep giving you exactly what gives you that digital dopamine rush. That video snippet that proves Kamala is an idiot or that Trump is Hitler. Or a tease for a new album release coming soon from Taylor Swift or maybe Jellyroll (you won't get both). The robots at Facebag, X (formerly Twatter), and Insta know precisely what makes you feel warm and moist and delivers every freaking time.

Do a Google search for anything. Pick literally anything. Living room furniture. Everyone loves a good sectional and you need the extra seating for Christmas. Do a little browsing. Now go to Facebag, X (formerly Twatter), or Insta. Lo and behold, every freaking ad is for furniture retailers. It's ostensibly a business function upon which the advertising pricing structures are built but it's nothing more than spying, learning, and delivering. But apply that to anything social, political, news, religion, pop culture, military, sports, music, gender, and on and on, multiplied by billions of malleable souls around the globe, and billions of specific iterations of the fucking algorithm to give each addict exactly the hit they need, and we end up where we are today.

And it's not that we're not smart. It's just that we like to feel good. And, conversely, we don't like to feel bad. So, you tell your dealer — Facebag, X (formerly Twatter), and Insta — what you want, and he places a baggie in your hand. It's that simple. It's that evil.

It’s humiliating to me that I’ve allowed myself to be that manipulated. By words. Sure, that buddy and I can be diametrically opposed about Issue A, B, or C, but we can talk or not talk, and we can tweak one another with some masterful chirps, but we realize there’s far more we agree on than not. We’re both decent men who want the same things but sometimes have different ideas on how to get there. So we withhold judgement, and we move on. Usually with some adult beverage leveler involved. At this point I feel like it’s a solid plan to fake fight just for the make-up drinks. He'd agree.

And that’s how and where things should be debated. Hell, not even debated. Discussed. In the flesh. Over drinks. Over coffee. Not online, anonymously, copying and pasting, adding a weak “This!” and tossing it like a live grenade over the digital wall. Not our style, anyway.

It wasn't very long ago that I shared some thoughts about "stimulus checks" on socials (F me) with zero regard for the fucking algorithm and cocksure of my virtue:

The nation is debating what portion of our money is fairly bequeathed back to us by our benevolent congresscritters; none of whom have ever missed or will miss a paycheck or lose the opportunity to opine on their unimpeachable righteousness for their respective fan bases and media fluffers from CNN and NBC to FNC. I submit they all suck. It’s only the continued suffering of the American people that sustains their purpose. So why would they remedy it? Happy New Year.

ADDENDUM (it may sound dramatic but I really don’t care):

Just a moment of clarity this morning; the pointlessness of perpetuating left vs. right “political” debate when the real divide is “public servants” vs. We The People. I’m doing a lot of writing on the subject — I know you can’t wait for the release — and prefer to work towards reversing the trend of the past 20-odd years in which politicians have become pop stars — personalities with rabid fan bases no different than in professional sports. Yankees-Red Sox, Islanders-Rangers, Patriots-Everyone Else — and with media presstitutes in their pockets.

I’m old enough to remember when we pulled levers and broke bread. Today we’re consumed by tribalism; manipulated and divided by people drunk on power and determined to keep it — by keeping us divided and doing their bidding; singing their songs, if you will.

So I, for one, am done. Like (another dear friend) shared yesterday, “Let’s drink and debate at the bar, hug it out, and move on.”

And let’s hold public servants accountable rather than holding them up as paragons of virtue because they confirm our biases. “Public servants” and media mushmouths survive and thrive the more we divide and fight. Call it a New Year’s Eve penance; contrition for my part feeding the monster — and a promise to be better than the human trash who need us to be worse.

That was just a few years ago, maybe it was 2021. I was raging against the legacy media machine. Nothing about the socials. Ah, the good old days.

My buddy and I have never been tighter. We’ve both realized our friendship and history mean more than any opposing viewpoints. We’ve both done our respective part in laying off the purposeless online “debates” and focusing instead on what continues to matter most: gin, bourbon, sports, and lasagna. Yeah, we discuss "issues" but without the venom and vitriol the robots require. We prefer to argue about the ideal level of viscosity in an autumn pot of chili, the merits of the designated hitter, and to soil ourselves laughing during a 3-hour game of Cards Against Humanity. Victory.