Sometimes, I wonder whether the people (yet to be replaced by AI) in legacy media believe what they are typing. In some cases, they have to be malicious, because there’s no other way to explain what passes from their fingertips, into their keyboards, into the ether, and from glowing display screens to the disappointed eyeballs of those who have yet to move on to more relevant information sources.

I don’t mean to put words in your mouth, but right now, I imagine you might be thinking, “Oh boy, now what did they do?”

Only writing hit pieces on a new film bringing attention to one of the worst crimes taking place today, child sex trafficking.

What’s amazing about the Twitter snippet above is that all that it gets right is that Sound of Freedom is about child-trafficking.

Every other data point was wrong. QAnon had nothing to do with it. It’s not a superhero movie. The implication of conspiracy theorism without using the term conspiracy theory is intellectually dishonest. And I prefer not to speculate as to why brainworms feature prominently in the thinking of the Rolling Stone author.

I’m noticing a trend where if a person expresses opposition to the real problem of child sex trafficking, then that person is called a part of QAnon, as if to suggest that being part of QAnon is a bad thing. I think it’s about time we handle such petty name-calling by deciding that we don’t care.

You think I’m with QAnon? Go ahead and think that. I don’t care. Think I’m pedophile-phobic? I don’t care.

Because of what Rolling Stone has to say about Sound of Freedom, a film opposing child sex trafficking, let’s see what they had to say about Cuties, a film about sexualizing minors:

Oh.

But, you know, that’s just Rolling Stone. Let’s see what Washington Democracy Dies In Darkness Post has to say about it:

The use of the term low-budget to describe Sound of Freedom is designed to get you to dismiss it out-of-hand, as though you’re supposed to think a film is not worth seeing unless it a big-name production with a budget in the hundreds of millions.

Now, I admit that I didn’t look into the star of the film, or his opinions on QAnon. That’s simply immaterial to the quality or content of the film itself, which mentions nothing about QAnon.

What I do know is that the film is based on a true story about a man who was on a sting operation to crash a pedophile island party and arrest the predators who were participating. During the film, the man embarks on a journey to reunite a family with two children who were abducted by a fake talent agency. It basically watches like a crime drama, but makes the point that child sex trafficking is a very real problem.

Impressively enough, this low-budget indie film has gone on to rival the summer blockbuster, Indiana Jones! That goes to show that there’s something about Sound of Freedom that resonates with people.

In writing it off as a QAnon film (as though that’s a problem), Washington Post risks alienating themselves from the few readers that they have left in this social media age. But at least they didn’t pull a Rolling Stone and call it a superhero movie, right?

But hold on, they had an opinion about Cuties, too. Let’s see what they had to say about that, presumably before painting their toenails black and lamenting democracy’s death in darkness:

You can tell a lot about a person by what they think is normal. Apparently a movie about sexualizing minors is “an unflinching look at what it means to be a preteen girl”. And if you have a problem with that, then the problem is that you “can’t handle it”.

Of course, if you’re of the opinion that sexualizing minors is not a biggie, then you’d probably have a problem with a movie that depicts child sex trafficking in a negative light.

I heard about Sound of Freedom, not by marketing, but by word of mouth. I was already considering seeing it when a fellow patriot offered to see it with me, so I accepted his offer.

It’s a film I recommend, but with the warning that it’s not for the faint of heart. There are no graphic depictions of abuse, but there are strong implications.

Having seen the movie, I can understand the strong desire to do something about the problem. If a person were to “go vigilante”, they might end up creating more problems than they solve, and perhaps even disrupt investigations already in progress. Perhaps the better course of action would be to contact representatives about legislation that could combat child exploitation. Also of benefit might be researching which candidates might be tougher on child exploitation prior to casting your vote in an election.

Of course, you can also tell other people about the movie, Sound of Freedom, and encourage them to see it. It would seem that word of mouth is still effective in bringing attention to media designed to heighten awareness.

When it comes to vigilantism, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.

Apparently now we’re supposed to conflate any opposition to child sex trafficking with QAnon, who we are supposed to think are bad guys, even though their main deal is opposing child sex trafficking. What is legacy media’s stake in this game?

Thanks for making it easy to take the moral high ground, I guess.

EDIT: Not The Bee already published an article somewhat similar in tone to this one, with a similar title. I wasn’t aware of it when I published this article, but credit to them for publishing their opinion first.