influencers

Psst! Sam Jones! The Idea of Being an “Influencer” Is Not To Influence Stupid People To Be Even More Stupid!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I can already tell: this is going to be a Great Stupid day.

And what better way to start it off than to visit the idiot above,Samantha Jones, also known as @samstrays on Instagram? For some ridiculous reason, the American has over 92,000 followers on social media platforms, where she purports to be a wildlife and hunting enthusiast. Below Sam is shown in an earlier incident, molesting what looks like a giant echidna, though maybe Sam is only two feet tall.

Her current infamy, however, has resulted from the incident shown in the photo under the headline, when she recently, while visiting Australia, snatched a baby wombat from the side of a road and ran to her car with the creature’s furious mother in desperate pursuit. After the “influencer” posted the sequence, it sparked an international incident.

“I caught a baby wombat!” Jones says to the camera. “OK, momma’s right there and she is pissed,” Jones adds, as the animal’s mother runs towards her. Jones then put the wombat down and drove away. The footage, which she shared on Instagram, sparked immediate fury in Australia.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong called out the ‘ugly American,’ saying, “It looked pretty dreadful, didn’t it…I think everyone who would have seen that would have thought, ‘leave the baby wombat alone. Leave it with its mum.’” An online petition calling for her deportation from Australia started amassing signatures, as home affairs minister Tony Burke announced that the conditions of Jones’ visa were being reviewed. Reportedly, Jones has left the country before she could be kicked out, deleting the offending video in the process. The Australian Wildlife Rescue Agency WIRES has weighed in to state that separating a baby wombat from its mother is a crime.

The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, even got involved. “Maybe she might try some other Australian animals,” he said at a press conference, when asked about the incident. “Take a baby crocodile from its mother and see how you go there. Take another animal that can actually fight back rather than stealing a baby wombat from its mother. See how you go there.”

Please, God, don’t let President Trump get involved in this and start a wildlife harassment war. Just have a bunch of birds shower this idiot with droppings, like that scene in “High Anxiety,” or something. Maybe have her social media followers bombarded as well.

Ethics Quiz: Dead Influencers

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

How unethical is Nelson Muntz here?

Oscar Wilde, mocking Charles’ Dicken’s “The Old Curiosity Shop,”quipped that “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.” This was my immediate thought when I read about the drowning deaths of Aline Tamara Moreira de Amorim and Beatriz Tavares da Silva Faria, both Brazilian social media “influencers.”

Sailing in a small vessel in dangerous waters off the coast of San Paulo, the two women, guests at a yacht party, refused to put on life jackets as directed because, the captain said, “They were taking selfies.” Indeed it has been confirmed that at least one of the women shared photos of herself on social media while out at sea. At least one of the women also didn’t know how to swim. “They said that life jackets would get in the way of their tanning,” the captain added.

On the their way back to land from the yacht in a smaller vessel, a large wave washed over the boat. All of the seven passengers survived except the well-tanned influencers.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

At what point, if ever, does one’s reckless and stupid conduct forfeit the privilege of sympathy when it kills you?

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A Cautionary Tale: The Worst Social Media Influencer Ever?

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

(Don’t bet on it.)

Here at Ethics Alarms we try to steer clear of posts on conduct that is so obviously unethical that even the dimmest MSNBC host could figure it out. Normally, a mother being arrested after one of her kids escapes from the home, emaciated and with restraint marks, and begs a next door neighbor for help, would fall into this category. But this mother was a renowned web expert on parenting, with a popular Instagram account and YouTube channel. Her @moms_of_truth account on Instagram had 341,000 followers, and until it was mysteriously shut down last year, her “8 Passengers” YouTube channel (named after her, her husband, and their six kids)had a very profitable subscriber base of almost 2.3 million.

Ruby Franke, the wise and admired mom, was arrested and charged with two counts of aggravated child abuse in Ivins, Utah this week. A press release issued by the Santa Clara-Ivins Public Safety Department stated that on Aug. 30, 2023 “a report came into our dispatch center regarding a juvenile asking for help.” Franke’s son, 12, had “climbed out of a window and ran to a neighbor’s home,” according to the police booking affidavit. The boy asked the neighbor for food and water. “The neighbor observed duct tape on (the boy’s) ankles and wrists and contacted law enforcement. Upon arrival, law enforcement judged the boy’s wounds and malnourishment to be “severe.”

Funny, Ruby never discussed that child-rearing technique on the web…

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Mid-Day Ethics Tidbits, 11/4/2020: Sort-Of Post-Election Edition, With Yummy NONE Election-Related Items!

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

1. Ay Caramba! Does anyone think that former Playboy model Eva Marie has a legitimate complaint because she was kicked off a Southwest flight along with her seven-year-old son for wearing this outfit on board?

Eva Marie

I don’t. She said she was “humiliated and embarrassed” when a Southwest Airlines flight attendant told her she couldn’t board looking like that. I don’t believe it for a second. She was seeking publicity. “When they threatened to remove me off the plane if I didn’t have a change of clothes, I felt completely humiliated, embarrassed and highly offended,” the Instagram influencer said of the incident. “I’m an A list member for SWA and have a credit card with the airline and I have perks that allow any person traveling with me to fly free because of my high status with the airline. So even as being a loyal customer with them, I felt like the other women on the plane were judging me based on my attire and they were saying my breasts are too large,” she added. “Well, that’s something I can’t help.”

No, you shameless jerk, they were judging you because you won’t observe even minimal social conventions, like not going out in public looking like a stripper mid-routine. If she is a “high status” member of the airline, then she is presumably aware that it has a dress code. It is overwhelmingly likely that she pulled this as a stunt to gain Instagram users  to “influence,” and exploited Southwest to do so.

The airline would be fair and reasonable to ban her from flying.

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Morning Ethics Warm-up, 7/18/2019: Heading Toward An America Where “America” Is Banned, Where It’s Illegal To Call An Illegal Illegal, Where Judge’s Say “Good Work!” To Felons, And Where Illiterate Celebrities Are “Influencers”

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

Aiiii!

Everything is seemingly spinning out of control!

1. For example, this stupid controversy, and surprisingly, it involves the Kardashian family. Kylie Jenner, Kim’s half-sister, is, as you may know, a “social media influencer,” which means companies pay her millions to use Instagram to promote their brands or products to the mouth-breathing idiots who follow this fatuous and useless celebrity.

Kylie recently issued a post featuring this photo of herself nude in a huge straw hat…

 

which rankled another “influencer,” Amanda Ensing—how can someone get paid to influence people when I’ve never heard of them?— who accused Jenner of stealing her pose.  Ensling has more than one million followers on both YouTube and Instagram, where she posts her outfits, makeup looks, travel experiences, and hairstyles, and  had previously appeared on Instagram like this…

She implied that Jenner had engaged inInstagram pose plagiarism, or something. (There’s no such thing.) The ever-articulate half-Kardashian lashed back, in words reminiscent of Dryden or Wilde in high form,

“from the words of Kim K ur not on my mood board but i did get my inspo off Pinterest”

This exchange justified breathless accounts in People, The Daily Beast, Cosmo, E!, Us, and dozens of other websites, as well as celebrity cable shows, spreading the false impression that what these semi-literate narcissists  say or do matters, thus increasing their ability to make our young trivial and even dumber that our schools make them.

Apparently Pierre Auguste Renoir isn’t active on social media, or he might have complained to both “influencers.”

2. From Minnesota, a very different kind of stupid: In an epic example of woke virtue-signaling because Nationalism Bad,  the city council for St. Louis Park in Minnesota decided to end the practice of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at its meetings—you know,  to be more “inclusive,” which means to pander to members who don’t care that much for the United Sates of America.  Then they were shocked to discover that a very vocal majority of constituents found the move offensive, so the city council members did a complete 180,  said, “Never mind!” and reversed themselves unanimously,though complaining bitterly and implying that Deplorables made them do it. Integrity! Principle over expediency! Continue reading →