Admin For Online Anti-Vax Group Having Difficulty Making This Shit Up
BROOKSVILLE, FL—Bill Rittenhouse, Communications Director for the anti-vaccine group Antigen Generation, has admitted to encountering problems selling his organization’s regressive, batshit campaign of misinformation regarding COVID-19 vaccinations to the public.
“Our mission statement is very clear: forget about the vaccines and rely on your body’s natural defenses to fight this disease,” Rittenhouse said of the group, which consists only of himself and maybe his mother (she's still on the fence, but he's working on her). “That’s why we call ourselves ‘Antigen Generation.’ Get it? Unfortunately, it looks like our usual tactics have hit a wall.”
Rittenhouse explained that Antigen Generation’s standard approach in their practice of knowingly spreading blatant falsehoods is to create a graphic with a shocking image, paired with bold text that draws attention to a seemingly underreported vaccine side effect, or an obscure fatality attributed to it.
“Social media is a treasure trove for this kind of thing,” Rittenhouse said. “People are understandably scared, and they take to their phones for some comfort, and maybe a clearer picture of what to do. So we do our best to exploit that, even at the cost of worsening a once in a century public health crisis."
Rittenhouse took out a notebook and began to free-write words surrounding g a central word: "vaccine." He closed his eyes and wrote words like "shot," "viral," "pox," "fake," etc.
"The problem I’m having, among others," he continued. "Is that it’s getting harder to attribute this crap to a credible source. The truth is, there are no credible sources. We’re pushing stuff onto people that runs the gamut from misconceptions to outright lies. Worse yet, there are sites like Politifact and Snopes that have the temerity to call me out on it. I admit, it gets frustrating. Especially when you live in a state like Florida where escalating infection rates are proving me patently wrong every day.”
The memes that the Antigen Generation creates usually cite articles on other anti-vax websites as evidence of their claims. These articles are often blog entries authored by Rittenhouse under a pseudonym, which in turn link to another article written by Rittenhouse under a different name, and so on. All of the articles, he said, cite virtually nothing in the way of valid, peer-reviewed scientific evidence that shows COVID-19 vaccines to be harmful. Rittenhouse also says there has been an “annoying uptick” in people willing to do the extra work and discover this façade for themselves.
“Throw in the fact that I’ve been banned from Twitter and suspended twice from Facebook and it makes my job that much harder,” Mr. Rittenhouse said. “Some days I ask myself why I even bother.”
When specifically asked why he insisted on pushing misinformation that is prolonging a global pandemic and indirectly leading to preventable deaths, Rittenhouse shrugged the matter off.
“Just how effective can vaccines be if one little variant is causing so much chaos?” he said. “Never mind that a big reason the Delta variant has been as harmful as it has is because of people refusing to vaccinate, which is due in no small part to people like me. I’m not going to let the government cram its agenda of saving lives down my throat! I’m just going to do everything I can to elevate my public profile and move my way up in the ranks of the small number of people perpetuating this bullshit. I crave attention even more than my independence!”
As of publication time, Rittenhouse was putting the finishing touches on a new graphic that likened both the pandemic and Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 Presidential race as “two of the worst works of fiction in the past year.”
“This is sure to get some shares before it gets inevitably taken down,” Mr. Rittenhouse said. “Lousy social media Gestapo. Oh, I have to write that one down!”
