Look at this, sent to me by a friend who subscribes to Life 360, an app that allows parents to keep up with where their kids are via their smartphones:

What? What on earth does an app that lets anxious parents keep track of their kids have to do with the war in Ukraine? Nothing, actually: it’s a branding opportunity. It’s just like how all the corporations sought to sign on to Black Lives Matter, to show that We Care™ about the cause du jour.

This is really astonishing. Along those lines:

As the crisis in Ukraine has escalated, millions have turned to TikTok for information on what is happening there in real time. TikTok videos offered some of the first glimpses of the Russian invasion and since then the platform has been a primary outlet for spreading news to the masses abroad. Ukrainian citizens hiding in bomb shelters or fleeing their homes have shared their stories to the platform, while dangerous misinformation and Russian propaganda have also spread. And TikTok stars, many with millions of followers, have increasingly sought to make sense of the crisis for their audiences.

This war is a pop culture and consumerist phenomenon. We are crazy people. This is a conflict that could lead to World War III, and even a nuclear exchange, but the great pop culture machine is taking it in and turning it into a consumer emotional experience.

It is impossible now to think clearly about what’s happening, and what is the right thing to do. Who knows where this is going next? Remember how all the public health orders about how to deal with Covid were thrown by the wayside after George Floyd, so everybody could enjoy the pleasure of protesting against police brutality and racism? Here we are again — but this time, with nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, a friend in Romania, which borders Ukraine, writes:

So everybody — me included — is freaking out fearing that the war will soon be here. Nobody really wants war with Russia, because nobody wants war. We are just a relatively small country at the NATO border (a proxy target). Of course, media and “influencers” are in emotional implosion over it and the climate is toxic, much like in US, but we don’t have any Carlsons or Greenwalds in here, just trumpets fomenting gross propaganda, in sharp contrast with the feelings and fears of the regular guy. On top of that, it’s bewildering to see an (almost?) inescapable chain of escalation coming from the both sides of the conflict.

And to think that we all thought that the pandemic madness was over, just to be thrown in the trenches of the WW3… What signs do we need more to understand that we are at the edge of the apocalyptic abyss, and the abyss is looking back at us?