So you didn't finish Mark's article...here are some juicy bits; "Even if we wind things down to merely human levels of commitment, devotion and constancy, it still seems to me that our culture’s valorising of ‘loyalty’ is just one more of those highly-thought-of bad things — like being meek, being humble, being forgiving, being satisfied with little — whose real function is simply to make life easy for those who, since they own and control everything, expect to be top dog and treated as such in every abusive power relationship they can impose.
All of which means that I am definitely not about to describe ArtyHetty as ‘a loyal reader of this blog’ — something which, just for a thoughtless moment, I did consider doing while reaching for the chocolate digestives. https://media-assets-01.thedrum.com/cache/images/thedrum-prod/s3-news-tmp-980-ch4newsteam--2x1--940.jpgTo break free of an abusive relationship, one must first recognise it for what it is. Are you a ‘loyal viewer’…?
And, in any case, the situation is surely even more cut-and-dried in the case of writers and readers. For while a writer must be totally faithful to both the addressee and the topic, the truth is that the reader owes the writer no debt of loyalty whatsoever: the moment a writer goes bad, the reader should be off, searching out someone better. Only by behaving thus are we — all of us! — going to avoid the kind of, yes, abusive relationship in which the ‘normal’ consumer of electronic and print media is trapped: the ‘mainstream’ provider lies to you; hides things from you; gaslights you; manipulates your admiration, your contempt, your very conception of the possible — and, after it has done all these things to you, you obediently go back and allow it to do them all again…" https://markdoran.wordpress.com/2021/01/15/friday-film-15-01-2020/
"Try using a screwdriver, a SONIC-screwdriver"
"He said; "Quack doctor!" "I said; "Do you Skwark as-well?"