A Generation Impacted

 15 year old Sean Kealiher on being assaulted by a police officer

Photo by Ray Whitehouse, The Oregonian

I watched this video today, provided by Occupy Portland, of a 15 year old Portland boy named Sean Kealiher who had been purportedly struck three times by an officer of the Portland Police during a protest.  It filled me with somber introspection as I attempted to put myself into this young man's shoes.  I understood his shock and disenfranchisement and it called up yet another image that I had seen just a couple months ago of  yet another 15 year old boy, Walker Prettyman, within the same city.  When I first came across that photo, the initial thing that caught my eye was the dried blood all over his face but then I was drawn, inexorably, to his eyes.  His eyes told me everything of his current mental state, captured eternally within that single photo.  Fear, horror and disbelief in comprehending what had just occurred to him brilliantly captured on celluloid by photographer Ray Whitehouse of The Oregonian.  Prettyman is clearly traumatized in this photo.  In an interview just a few days after the incident,  Prettyman's thoughts seem to echo Kealiher's sentiments in the questioning of why the event occurred at all and the actions and decisions of the police department as a whole.  (Located here: Prettyman Interview )  Why did this happen?  Why were the police dressed the way they were?  Was it not an excessive response to peaceful protesters?   Both have been clearly and profoundly impacted by the incidents.  Kealiher speaks less like a normal 15 year old boy but with more of a wisdom that should be beyond his years.  Their similar responses to the traumas incurred, however, are not within the normative response of a victim of trauma. 

The element of questioning why something happened is very much within the norm but victims of trauma frequently internalize their inward questioning of events.  Both Prettyman and Kealiher show signs of awareness that their incidents hold some sort of social value and importance by actively voicing them within a public forum.  This difference could be answered by the nature of the incidents themselves.  Both were purportedly assaulted by police officers, individuals that each seem to have been raised to trust like many of us instruct our children to do so today.   Both incidents were publicized in some form through either the news media or Youtube whereas for other victims of trauma, their incidents are generally not a public matter.   Both Kealiher and Prettyman chose to speak, however, on the events that had befallen them.  Kealiher was not actively sought by any news media but, instead, voiced his concerns directly within a public forum, which simply happened to be filmed at the time.  Kealiher's action is important to consider because this was not a matter of him being forced into interview but instead, having the impetus of the incident become a driving force towards direct engagement of the subject, itself.  Very contrary to what one would normally see within a victim of a trauma. 

I think the answer for this difference is both held within the nature of the trauma, that is it being the action of a trusted authority figure, and also within the generational stereotype for both of these boys.  Both could be considered to be a part of Generation Y, also called Millennials.  As a generation, Millennials are known not only for their idealism but also for some degree of skepticism in authority figures as well.  Furthermore, expression and the ability to freely express ones opinions are of stark importance to Millennials.  Comprehending these boys' generational characteristics helps explain both their responses to what happened to them and their ability to air their questioning of the events and actions in a very public manner.  Additionally, it also explains why they seem to be ahead of their respective trauma responses in that both could have already held some degree of skepticism in the first place.  They have, essentially, been raised to become skeptical and airing their questioning in the face of their skepticism.  Having potentially found answer to the question of why they are responding in this manner, the next question to ask is what is the effect of such a response?

A couple months ago, while reeling from the shock of what I had been seeing through livestreams of protests, I called my mother.  My mother is your typical Baby Boomer.  When I, distraught by all I had seen, informed her of my shock, she was downright blase in response and even perhaps a little irritable and embittered.  In a snippish manner, she responded that she was well aware of what could happen in these kind of protests having seen the same things occur during the Free Speech, Civil Rights, and anti-war movements of the 60's. Furthermore, I wasn't even alive to recall what had happened to student protesters at Kent State so don't I dare tell her about how upsetting it all was.  After the phone call promptly ended, I was shocked for a different reason.  It wasn't simply what I had seen but the sheer fact that my mother had, throughout the course of my life, never revealed an inkling of her own distrust of authority figures or state anything at all on the subject matter of police activities during these movements.  Utterly riveted by this epiphany, I listened to Martin Luther King Jr's final speech, "I have been to the mountaintop".  Within this particular speech, as plain as can be, he spoke of just such similar activities not solely by the police but also the curious reporting methods of news agencies during times of protest.  In many ways, it was oddly comforting to know that what we were simply encountering was the endless repeating of history. 

It's almost ludicrously ironic that the very generation who experienced the activities within the 60's and 70's is now the generation that is at the helm of society itself.   Our political system and the chief executives of some of our largest corporations are still predominantly filled with Baby Boomers.  Although these movements did generate a change in direction for the country, the generation most poignantly impacted in their formative years by them were, for the most part, assimilated into the systems, themselves.  Before we can simply rely on the idea that what is happening now is simply history repeating itself, we have to consider if history is indeed repeating itself and if the outcomes will be similar.  There is one key, fundamental difference between these two periods of protest movements.  Thirty years ago,  Baby Boomers had more opportunities in which to become assimilated into the political and capitalist systems.   The same cannot be said for the Millennials. 

The Millennials are entering into the world not only with a greater sense of idealism and strength of expression and self-importance of their own individual views but also into a world whose leaders have a very fundamentally different sense of self and worldview and where the opportunities for assimilation into the American dream have profoundly declined to near non-existence.  For Baby Boomers, success was relatively defined as accumulating material wealth and the road to success was paved through education.  Millennials, on the other hand, have a tendency to be more selective of their employers and their respective ethical activities and are currently finding themselves obtaining degrees with little assurance of gainful employment at the time of graduation.  Whereas the "American Dream" may have existed for the Baby Boomers,  the knowledge of it seems to be more of a bitter dream lost to Millennials.  Through the economic situation that we currently find ourselves in, the Millennials are unlikely to be assimilated as the Baby Boomers were previously within the very fabric of our society.

We cannot always use the past to comprehend the outcomes of the future.  Were there young men like Prettyman and Kealiher speaking out and blatantly questioning authority figures in the 60's?  Mario Savio was one of those individuals but was in his mid 20's--not a young teenage boy still unable to legally drive. Therefore, the answer to that question is probably lost due to time.  However, it is clear that, although history has the innate tendency of repeating itself, the outcomes of such a historical repeat upon one of our largest generations cannot be predicted by looking backwards.   If Millennials are unlikely to be assimilated as were the Baby Boomers previously, then the possibility arises that this could be an increasingly disgruntled generation.  As such, it is likely that protests will continue and potentially grow in scale.  The outcomes of such a thing are ones that I fear to express.  However, how this all is engaged and played out within the near future is of distinct importance for our future.  Our options are either to listen and engage with what is being said or to simply fuel the fire with blase, discarding attitudes such as my mother's.   We must think again of what is being held in the eyes of Prettyman and the words of Kealiher.  We need to ask ourselves what society, as a whole and not just within these boys' generations, is going to do to bridge this generational gap in order to cushion the impact on this generation.

The Greatest Protest Ever

Today marks what has to be some sort of a landmark as far as the sheer number of individuals and companies joining together in order to protest two bits of legislation that Congress is working on passing this month.  I don't need to explain what this legislation entails.  All one needs to, very likely do, is use Wiki or go to one of their favorite websites to get an understanding of SOPA and PIPA.  To do so here would be unnecessarily redundant.  The point is, here we are at the apex of commentary like no other time in history.  October 15, 2011 was yet another one of those breathtaking moments where you had yet another incredibly massive gathering of people to protest the current state of the world.  Based on city by city estimates worldwide, I would hazard a guess that untold millions gathered that day in solidarity with one another.  Today, just a few months later, you are bearing witness to that same massive outpouring of solidarity.   It's almost tragic that, in both instances, much of the messaging was geared towards our country, our financial system, and, most especially, our Congress.

Even with this troubled economy, there is no doubt that the United States is indeed a super power still yet we often forget that the actions that we do often affect those living outside of the United States.  When we actually consider our own system's involvement with other countries, it is often held within a framework that seems to center on the effects to our own.  When we talk about American jobs in China, we focus not on the quality of life and safety for those workers but, instead, we speak with a resentment about how they are "stealing all of our jobs".  Foxconn, the manufacturer of parts for Microsoft, Apple and other tech companies, recently had a rooftop protest in the city of Wuhan where 150 protesters lined the rooftop to remind the company of the spate of worker suicides just last year.  These workers live in dormitories by the hundreds of thousands with amenities that either they are too overworked to utilize or are so polluted by the sheer number of inhabitants within the factory "city" itself that cannot be used.  It's hardly any different from what one might find in a prison in the United States.  But no, we instead hold a narrow focus of our country's actions on how they affect us--not the rest of the world and, as a result, we have the nasty tendency of dragging the whole world down with us.

The effects of activities in the United States has no more profound and obvious affect than the Financial Crisis of 2007-8.  Our banking industry, through questionable lending and the rating and selling of questionable CDOs, plummeted the entire global economy into the depths of despair.  Our world is still feeling those effects.  Here was a case where the policies within the United States  had an unprecedented effect on the global economy.  If we broaden our focus to not just view the effects on ourselves and the global economy, we will find that our own plights are currently be shared with many other people just like you and I all over the world.  This is why what had to be the world's largest protest on October 15, 2011 happened in the first place.  We are a super power and the effects and usage of that power is not just felt here in the United States.  It is felt everywhere.

Climate change, resource depletion, bankruptcies, so-called "austerity cuts" (which honestly are nothing more than asking the already downtrodden and beaten to cut back more), child and slave labor, pollution on a grand scale,continents of plastic bags within all of our major oceans--the list of the grotesque and negative effects of how we use our great power is unimaginably long.  Just this last month, Nigeria, probably the most polluted country on earth because of the activities of oil companies, rose up in protest of those companies.  In the words of Uncle Ben, "with great power comes great responsibility".  We have had great power for so long yet when have we ever really used it responsibly?

Here in the United States, it's been a year of unprecedented.  In my own city, 10,000 people marched on October 6th to protest the inordinate power of corporations and the toll that greed has taken upon everything we hold dear.  Across the United States in cities small and large, protests erupted.  Yet, instead of holding our government policy makers accountable, we regarded it, almost uniformly, with acrimony.  Here in the United States, we are breaking records.  We are breaking records not just in terms of people gathering together to demand change but we are also breaking records in narrow mindedness and dogmatic belief in systems that are currently failing.  We are breaking records in apathy when confronted with a Congress that broke its own record of having the lowest approval rating ever.  As human beings, we prize our ability to act rationally and logically--this is what is supposed to set us apart from all other living creatures.  Perhaps how we separate ourselves from other species shouldn't be based on either of these but on our level of stupidity.  You don't see deer raping the earth in order to go ahead and make Happy Meal toys.  I know it's insulting and I'm sorry for that but what other way can we see our own actions?

Today, we have some of the largest, most dreadful issues before us.  The choices we make no longer affect just our own locality but can create an adverse effect upon every living creature on this planet.  We find ourselves living in a time of the unprecedented and here we are, again today, having an unprecedented protest.  A massive outpouring in competitors and individuals worldwide to protest two bills that impact are civil liberties on the internet.  It is both amazing and heart wrenching at the same time.  On one hand, our very survival is at question and yet, it does not receive the same regard.  On the other hand, it shows our human potential.  Probably the most frightening fact of today's action is that it may not do anything at all.  We have a Congress today that has the lowest approval rating ever and the $94 million in lobbying fees spent may very much win the day.  How is it even possible that $94 million still somehow trumps the desires and needs of a world?  We already disapprove of our Congress' latest actions and inaction yet we somehow expect that, by uniting for one day, we will somehow change their minds?  We have already tried that. 

We have a fundamental flaw within our system that our Founders most certainly did not foresee and that is that we have allowed the perversion of our democracy through monied interests to the extent that it trumps democracy, itself.  It's interesting to note that the Founders were fearful of the majority of citizenry harming the property holders and depriving them of their properties.  That was the context and viewpoint of their fears.  I doubt that they could ever imagine, living in a time where there was no such thing as an unlimited life corporation, that the tables would turn so grotesquely so that the minority would instead be depriving the majority of democracy, itself.  We expect that our Congressman "do what's right" when we elect them into office and what we hold as right can be highly variable.  Yet, at the very least, we expect our Congress to represent our interests.  How much confidence our current Congress must have that they will somehow remain unaffected by their constituents' opinion of them to gain such a disapproval rating.  It fills me with a curious fascination but a fascination that is akin to the seeming inability to look away from a catastrophic car wreck.

Over 10,000 websites, communities, and perhaps millions of people may not be enough to avert SOPA and PIPA.  Even the threat of not voting for them may not be enough because they know that you are going to vote for your Democratic or Republican favorite.  They know that you're going to chose to vote for your own view of what constitutes the lesser of two evils instead of voting "not evil" at all. This is why our system is failing.  To make it clear, the last thing that I want for my beloved country is massive civil unrest.  I do not want the overthrow of our government or harm to come to any wealthy individual or elected official.  I love my country and I truly believe that if we use the democratic process given to us appropriately, we can fix everything.  If our political parties do not listen to us, then how do we expect to get them to amend the very laws that allow them to profit so considerably?  This year, we should have the most unprecedented movement ever held at the voting booth where we vote not for whether someone is democratic or republican.  Instead, we vote for actual change through candidates that pledge to remove the undue influence of money within our government and make every assurance that they do it.  If we can find a way to unite ourselves in this manner, we can do anything.

The Theory of Jeans (aka The Inner Thigh Rip Phenomena)

One of the subjects that seems to be prevalent within my School of Business classes this term is the concern that free market capitalism is collapsing and is potentially failing to be a viable system.  I disagree based on the very presupposition within this idea that what we are currently utilizing is actually free market capitalism.  The basic idea behind a free market is that you have a series of competitors within the market who diligently compete with each other in order to produce products that are preferred by the consumers within the marketplace based on a balance of quality and price.  If our existing market is not actually free, than the normal processes that would lead to the effectiveness of free market capitalism through competition and demand, would not be in play at all.  To prove that what we have in existence is not a functioning free market, I introduce to you the Theory of Jeans.

This may be hard to believe for some but once upon a time, jeans used to live.  In fact, jeans could live for a very long time.  I once owned a pair of Levis that lasted, intact, for 10 years.  If the tearing of the fabric of jeans is equated to the death of  said jeans, then the frequent cause of death was a wearing out and tearing of the knees of the jeans.  Flash forward to today and one finds, except in the case of younger children, that the new most frequent cause of death for jeans would be ripping along the inner thigh--not the knees where one would expect the greatest amount of wear and tear on the structure of the jeans.  This phenomena of tearing along the inner thigh, as some would think, is not directly related to the increase of overall obesity.  As peculiar as it sounds, I have polled a variety of people of all weight classes and found that the problem of inner thigh ripping exists within each group from the thinnest to the widest.  The diversity of weight among those queried precludes that weight is actually the culprit of this phenomena among adult wearers though it is necessary to observe that this phenomena does not occur in younger children whose jeans still rip out chiefly in the knees. 

One could explain that the reason why the knees of the jeans were still the first to wear and tear for children is because they are more active and eventually the inner thighs would rip.  Not true.  With my daughter as a test subject, I did not throw out any pairs of jeans that had ripped at the knee.  Yes, my daughter actually went to school with holes in the knees of her jeans.  Some of these jeans she has been able to wear for the last two years.  None of them have ripped at the inner thigh.  Although this information would seem to indicate that my first assumption that weight is not a factor is untrue, I disagree.  If anything, the lack of inner thigh ripping in children's jeans indicates that there is a structural flaw in today's jeans. 

Jeans, especially tight jeans, are subject to a variety of stresses and enforcements.   Hems and stitching both can act as a reinforcement, much like the studs within our homes and as an area of stress when they are at their greatest distance from each other.   Anyone who lives in an earthquake prone area knows that the areas where one should escape to during an earthquake are the smallest of rooms.  The reason being for this is that these contain the highest number of studs in the smallest amount of area and are, thereby, the most reinforced rooms of a home.  If we are to compare an adult pair of jeans to a child's pair of jeans in terms of being "earthquake proof", then the child's pair of jeans is, in effect, the "smallest room in the house" as they have more reinforcement due to the closeness of the studs (hems).  This allows that the primary cause of death for children's jeans continuing to be the old norm of tearing at the knees but with a shorter lifespan. 

Nor is this phenomena brand specific.  Tearing at the inner thigh has been reported within a wide diversity of brands from Levis, Billabong, Old Navy, H&M, and even all the way up to more expensive brand offerings from Nordstroms, a department store whose very name tends to conjure up ideas of quality goods.  If it is not brand specific and if it is not weight specific, then what is the culprit?  One could suggest that it is the actual manufacturer of the jeans themselves.  In today's globalized economy, one frequently finds that a large diversity of brands are actually being manufactured, sometimes alongside, other brands within the same exact factory.  A prime example of this would be the factories that manufacture Nike, New Balance, and Adidas shoes--sometimes at the same time.  This is most likely to be true for the manufacturers of the various brands of jeans.  A single factory may be producing Levi's alongside jeans for Old Navy and could, thereby, be producing the same structural flaw within every pair of jeans on the market through the hemming.  This isn't possible, however, as no single factory could possibly output all the jeans currently on the market. Furthermore, this premise is not supported by what we have already ascertained about weight in regards to blue jeans.  Children's jeans show more reinforcement than what exists in adult jeans.  This points to a flaw within the very fabric of the jeans.

Instead of looking for a solitary manufacturer of multiple brands of jeans, we should be looking for evidence that a solitary manufacturer of the fabric for this variety of jean brands exists.  Looking at today's world, even something as tiny and seemingly insignificant as bacteria is patented.  One of my professors told a story in class one day about how the company she worked for came up with an idea of punching circular holes into packing material to allow better airflow.  Pleased with their innovative solution, they gleefully sent things out with these circular holes punched into them until one day they were served with a cease and desist and an order to pay.  Apparently, someone had patented the punching of circular holes into the same material.  Instead of paying to continue to punch circular holes, they began punching squares instead into the material. 

As hilarious as this may seem, this is an example of the level of patenting that we are at in this day and age.  Something as minute as a subtle change in percentage of lycra to cotton is most likely patented.   Therefore, the fabric for a pair of jeans that is 90% cotton and 10% lycra probably comes from one single manufacturer who holds the patent for that particular ratio.  The same manufacturer of fabric probably holds patents for jean fabrics consisting of variable ratios around this figure as precise consistency in the ratio should never be expected.  One day, it could be 89% to 11%.  The next, it could be 91% to 9%.  The actual output of the manufacturing process very rarely matches the target goal and, therefore, patenting the expected variability is most likely what occurs to protect the company from litigation by other fabric manufacturers.

What does this mean?  Well, it means that a diverse multitude of brands of jeans are being manufactured not necessarily by the same company but it is very likely that a single jean fabric manufacturer is manufacturing all the fabric for a wide variety of brands of jeans.  Ten years ago, my jeans weren't ripping in the thighs.  This is, instead, a more recent phenomena and the source for it is undeniably the constrictive effect of the recession.  As the various brands are being faced with less consumer spending, they have most likely opted to reduce the manufacturing costs to produce their product. The fact that this is occurring in a wide variety of brands and at various supposed quality levels, indicates that this has been the response for perhaps all jean manufacturers.  In this case, it is likely that the fabric manufacturer whose product is the cheapest is the one that is providing the fabric for all as quality is being forsaken due to the reduced purchasing.  One company becomes the victor of free market capitalism due to these constrictive effects of recession.  Or, in more simplified terms, someone won the competition.

 The potential of a single dominant provider of a good is not conducive to the idea of a free market.  Instead, it is the very anti-thesis of the idea behind the free market system.  A free market system is considered to be effective where competition among producers of a good or service exists to provide a good balance between quality and price.  What we have is the sacrifice of quality within the very fabric of our free market system for the sake of price.  Are the manufacturers of the various brands of jeans to blame?  No, I don't think so.  They are doing whatever they can to survive in a prolonged recession.  Nor is the dominant provider of the fabric to blame.  If anything is to blame, it has been the seeming inability of our global economies to rebound to allow a regeneration of competition.  As time passes, more companies fail.  As more companies fail, the number of competitors decline as do the number of consumers.  We are not operating in a free market capitalist system any longer but, instead, on a self feeding mechanism of market constriction and decline.  No wonder it's failing.

Down the Rabbit Hole

I'm always the first to admit that I am a rather odd type of person.  I mean, there is plenty of evidence that I am a very odd sort of person indeed.  After all, I freakishly aced my Statistics final.  That, in itself, qualifies me to fall under the "freak" title for many people, let alone my fellow classmates who gaped open mouthed at me when my Statistics professor proudly announced my test results.  The funny thing is that I am most certainly not a mathematical genius.  On the contrary, my experience with Calculus was so rough that I could list a thousand other things that I would prefer doing, such as drinking a gallon of milk that I'm allergic to, over doing Calculus.  The reason why I aced my statistics final is because I am, quite simply, a bit of a freak.  Where others can, presumably, go on through their day without ever once noting any sort of trend or pattern in the conversations of those around them, I'm spotting patterns and innately calculating probabilities for just about everything.  

I jokingly call all of this "finding patterns in the cosmos through license plates" but really, that is a joke.  I only look for patterns in license plates out of sheer boredom when stuck in rush hour traffic.  Really, when you're pinned in your car for 45 minutes with nothing else to look at but the back of cars as you crawl slowly forward, it's not a bad activity to do but one certainly isn't going to find patterns in the cosmos there.  Despite my tendency to spot patterns, I am, in fact, a devout Occam's Razor applicant. To sum up Occam's Razor for those who may not know the term: the correct explanation for an occurrence or even set of occurrences frequently tends to be the simplest one until proven incorrect.  The combination of the three tend to be very effective in predicting outcomes for just about anything involving human behavior and, as a result, I'm very rarely surprised by what people actually do.  It's not to say that I am always right.  That would be statistically impossible and I can be wrong.  There are always alternatives that I did not consider because they were outside of my awareness.

All this being said, I find people extremely interesting.  One of my chief pastimes is to simply listen to the chatter, or in some cases, read the chatter.  What are people saying, thinking, feeling?  What thoughts, ideas, or statements are trending about specific subjects?  Twitter makes this last bit fun and easy as you can easily plug in a term with a hashtag to see what people are saying.  There is one minor issue with Twitter, however, and that is that the people on it may not be what they seem.  Sometimes, while watching the chatter, I see things that I find very curious indeed and happening with a frequency that would fall outside of a statistical norm of human behavior and probability. 

Rabbit Hole Exhibit A (apparently, somebody somewhere didn't like this image--tsk tsk, it's been effectively censored):

The first peculiarity would be the usage of the precise same wording in each of these purportedly independent tweets.   For an individual to use the same exact wording for a tweet as 4 other Twitter users is pretty odd unless it's a "retweet".   A retweet would be the fastest way to spread information; however, none of the above tweets are retweets.  A retweet would have a "RT"before it and would signify the original tweeter.   In this case, the video being linked to is being hosted by PatDollard so one would reasonably expect to see "RT @PatDollard Romney Flawlessly Handles #Occupy Hecklers: bit.ly/AqbyZM".   This is not the case in the above tweets.  None are retweets.  Other than some mild variety in hashtag use (#tcot, #twisters), the core tweet itself is virtually identical.  That could be considered a statistical anomaly until one actually views the video.  The title of the video is called "Romney flawlessly handles Occupy Hecklers".  Therefore, it is not unreasonable to assume that an individual giving a link to a video would most likely use the name of the video as their tweet.  However, one could also expect to see additional commentary based on the opinion of the twitter user of the video they are spreading to help encourage its spread or viewership, such as:  "Way to go, Mitt! Romney Flawlessly Handles #Occupy Hecklers: bit. ly/AqbyZM".  We humans tend to enjoy sharing our own opinions with others.  The absence of opinion being added in addition to the video title is, in itself, rather anomalous.

The most glaring but perhaps unnoticed peculiarity is the timing of the tweets.  Each one was tweeted at nearly precisely the same time or "38 minutes ago".  This is well outside the norm of expected human behavior, especially considering that the source of the video is listed second in the tweets in the sharing of it.   When a video is normally released through some online medium, it takes a bit of time for it to be passed through the populous.  In a normal scenario, Pat Dollard would have made the originating tweet with a link to the video.  Individuals would then spot Dollard's tweet and watch the video themselves.  The video in question is 1:34 long.  It would be reasonable to assume then that what would normally be seen would be Dollard's tweet and then, either a. retweets of Dollard's tweet or b.  tweets about the video roughly two minutes after the originating tweet--at the minimum.  One has to account for the time it takes for the individual to: 1.  spot the tweet, 2. click on the video, 3.  load it, 4. watch it and then 5. type out the tweet to share it.  It is statistically impossible for human beings to do all of this instantaneously.

I remember a few years ago while playing a game where myself and a few other friends tried to coordinate our characters to play a variety of in-game musical instruments at the same time.  We were all on Ventrilo and it took some practice because we had to account for varying lag between the players on the side of the game and also lag due to the Ventrilo program, itself.   It wasn't easy but we finally did it and had our near instantaneous unison going in game to other players' delight.  Despite my own experience with this, it's hard to imagine that 5 human beings would be doing the same to spam twitter all at once with the same message and video.  Can you imagine that they were on a Ventrilo program or conference call, all waiting for the other to hit "tweet" at the same moment?   To do so would be highly ineffective and transparent of motive.  What you see in the above image was somebody's mistake in their usage of sock puppets.  Sock puppets are supposed to seem like real human beings in aiding the spread of information or disinformation.  What happened above is aberrant to human behavior.  There was definitely a human being behind the message being spread but it's highly likely that there was only one human being doing the spreading--not 5.

The moral of this trip down the rabbit hole is this:  question everything.  Just because you see a number of people saying similar things does not mean that a number of people actually believe it.  In today's world, it's so very easy to utilize bots to promote specific ideas, thoughts, or even generate controversy.  If you see something get repeated over and over again, keep in mind the above statistical anomaly and be suspicious.  Your mind should be your own.  Don't let it be swayed.

Edit:  Mike found this.  One of the accounts hasn't apparently slept in the past 24 hours.  You have a one hour break in posting between the 12th and 14th hour over the last 24 hours. Doubt it was sleep because bots don't need sleep. https://twitter.com/#!/Snarky_Basterd