Echo Chambers: Abundance Year Episode 1940 (audio: noxsoma.substack...

Full Metal Ox Day 1875
Saturday 18, April 2026
Abundance Year Episode 1940
Noxsoma Life Camp:

Sabado Grande mi gente,

Welcome to one more weekend above ground.

As we ruminate on the title of today’s Ox Drop, we reckon that “Echo Chambers” would be a good name for an annoying chat show host. You know that human. The one that echoes you last few words. We decline to offer an example, because, as we say, it’s annoying, especially when over-done. On the other hand, “players,” it’s not only a compliment to the speaker, but a signal that she’s into you.

Ladies, I don’t know if guys do this with you or not. Some people do it as a memory device. There’s actually a word for this. Echolalia. Not surprisingly it contains the word “echo” within. This method is used to connect socially or as a coping mechanism when one struggles to produce spontaneous speech. If your language isn’t their first language, this could occur. I may have encountered this when I was teaching English one-to-one, but didn’t know there was a name for it.

In fact, thumbing through my mental archives, there are vague memories of this vessel practicing “Echolalia.” It happens when someone pronounces a word differently than I am used to hearing it. Also, back in the day when getting directions or instructions.

Speaker: “Walk down the street, three blocks, you will see a statue of a grizzly bear. At the next corner turn left.”

Me: “three blocks down, bear left.”

There’s also a popular technique called, “mirroring.” This has become more of a tactic than a technique, in which an individual will mimic your gestures and countenance. Pre-manosphere, mirroring may have been an unconscious behavior. A younger person might copy the styles, gestures and speaking patters of someone they admire. Jonathan Harris, the original Dr. Smith from “Lost in Space” had a natural New York accent, but practiced speaking “English” the way the Brits do.

Within a decade, your humble vagabond lived in Philadelphia, San Diego, New Orleans, and then Newfoundland. In each location I found myself mimicking accents, slang, and speaking patterns, out of fascination. Returning to Philly, my speech was a jumbled melange of accents, slanguage, colloquialisms and expletives that I’d collected from those experiences. Today, living in Cuban Florida, I’ve added a little bit more Spanish into that mix. The Newfie accent can be recalled occasionally, but it’s not as dominant as it was when I was there.

Before I’d ever heard of “mirroring” there was a memorable line from, “Tales of the City” (Armstead Maulpin). One of the gay male characters says, “Dress like the person you want to come home with.” I suppose this works a bit differently in the hetero community, but who knows these days.

There’s this classic Dave Chappelle piece about the guy who mistakes a woman for a prostitute, because of her outfit. Chappelle flips the script to describe a man dressed as a cop, but is not.

We are all sociopathic to a certain extent. Just a little bit. Some want to fit into the herd more than others, so they emulate the behavior of the flock they want to fit in to. They “dress for success,” they adjust their countenance to emit a certain message, they craft their notes, and posts to appeal to certain algorithms in order to reach certain audiences, which will yield expected results. However, it doesn’t always work.

Anyway, this went on a little longer than expected. I did not know the word “echolalia” when I started this piece, so it’s already a win.

One more example before I hype today’s episode. Remember that character from J 6 incident? You already know the one I mean. The “Q Shaman” (Jacob Chansley). It didn’t take long after the riot that merchants of merch were cashing in on dude’s look. I wonder how many little shamans are running around in the hills these days.

Check out today’s episode. Check out today’s audio. This ditty will be posted in its audio format this afternoon. Meanwhile.

Stay safe, stay savvy, stay strong, stay sane, stay serene, stay sovereign, stay subscribed.

PEACE

Echo Chambers

Sovereignty
96% Bullshit
One of the greatest lies ever told to the herd. “Crime doesn’t pay.”

Today's Episode: https://odysee.com/@Noxsoma:2/1875_full_4-18-26_1940_echos:4?r=47k2ScJsm9Uex9eETqgCCA8q1fukdST9
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Echo Chambers
There was this episode of Superman, the black & white series starring George Reeves. Someone got kidnapped by the bad guys. I think it was Clark Kent’s boss, Perry White. Before he was hauled off White managed to leave a sliver of magnetic tape on the desk. [Note – this is how I remember it. It might have been someone else who was kidnapped.]
Anyway, when the gang got back they immediately realized that the couple of inches of tape on the desk “must be a clue.” Someone, probably Clark, spliced it into a tape recorder and played it.
“Hello-lo-lo-lo.” It echoed. And then, “boom!” An explosion. The gang is standing around trying to figure out the clue. It was like a game show. I shouldn’t give it away. If you remember that episode you already know. Plus I already gave you a hint.

I figured this would be a good way to dive into today’s audio, about “Echo Chambers.” Regular listeners will know by now, your boy is almost like James Michener when it comes to putting these things together. I can’t just dive into the pool. I must find the land, architect, contractors, dig the hole, fill it with water, text the Ph, and then ease into the shallow end, one step at a time.

The irony of the over-used term “echo-chamber” is built right into it. Someone talks about “echo chambers” and it echoes throughout the herd in a matter of time that can only be measured by atomic clocks. We wondered, what are echo chambers really? What and they used for and why was there ever such a thing?

Here is the story, from a concrete room at Abbey Road to your 21st Century surreality.

The Literal Box (1931).

The first echo chambers were not metaphors. They were rooms. Ugly, utilitarian, rooms.

In the early 1930s, broadcast engineers discovered that “dead” studios, perfectly soundproofed, as sterile as a surgical tent, made music sound like it was being performed inside a coffin. So they built echo chambers: small concrete or tiled spaces with a loudspeaker at one end and a microphone at the other. You played a dry vocal track into the room; it bounced off the hard walls; you recorded the lush, muddy ghost that came back.

Abbey Road Studios had its famous Echo Chamber 2 by 1931. Without these rooms, “Sgt. Pepper” would have sounded like a high‑school gymnasium recital. So the echo chamber was, originally, a tool for making art less flat.

The Figurative Spark (1924–1934).

The metaphorical use of “echo chamber” appeared almost simultaneously with the physical one. The earliest known figurative sighting comes from 1924, describing Ellis Island as “that echo chamber of Europe’s tragedies.” By 1934, a newspaper columnist was already rolling his eyes at society: people, he wrote, “are but walking through an echo chamber where their own voices are drowned in the platitudinous sentiments of their fellows.” Writers sure had a way of turning a phrase in the 30s.

In other words, within three years of the invention of the concrete echo chamber, we had already invented the social version. They just forgot to add the microphones. Clearly, they were not needed.

The Internet Remembers (1990s–Now).

Fast‑forward seventy years. Social media arrives. Suddenly everyone is shouting into a cave that shouts back. The algorithm notices you like outrage about pineapple on pizza, so it feeds you more pineapple‑outrage. You block the pro‑pineapple heretics. Your timeline becomes a perfect circle of righteous anti‑pineapple fury. Bias confirmation. E C’s Siamese twin. (I know it’s not politically correct.)

Here is the cruelest twist, which by the way, you completely deserve. The modern echo chamber is not a place you fall into by accident. It is a place you build, brick by self‑righteous brick, and then proudly label “everywhere else.” The person who spends three hours a day tweeting about echo chambers is not standing outside the chamber. They are the chamber’s most enthusiastic interior decorator.
Academics, who love nothing more than splitting a hair into two thinner hairs, distinguish between:

Filter bubble (algorithmic): Gaggle is showing you kung-fu cat videos because you clicked one cat video in 2017.
Echo chamber (social/psychological): One podcaster says DJT is crazy and the next guy has to escalate the lexicon. “DJT is a crazy, psychopath.” The next one, not to be out echoed, declares that “DJT is a crazy, psychopathic, convicted felon”, calls him the “P-word,” goes viral and gets deleted. (The channel, not the podcaster. Just sayin’.)

The filter bubble is a passive trap. The echo chamber is an active sport. And like any sport, it has cheerleaders, referees, and fans who accuse the other team of cheating merely by existing.

The Over‑Use Paradox

The term “echo chamber” has been repeated so often, by so many people, each one convinced they are the brave truth‑teller and everyone else are the sheeple, that the word itself has become an echo. You can watch it happen in real time.

Podcaster A shares a dubious meme.
Podcaster B replies, “You’re trapped in an echo chamber .”
Podcaster C replies to Person B, “No, you’re in the echo chamber.” (They turn the volume up to emphasize this point.)
Podcasters D through Z weigh in, all using the same two words, until the thread is a hall of mirrors made entirely of the phrase “echo chamber.” And don’t forget to follow the links to their online stores where you can buy a coffee mug, with their mug on the mug and “echo-chamber” printed on the other side. Of the mug.
This is what we call, “Trickle-down podcasting.” (Thankfully this term has not echoed across the echo-system, yet.)
If you designed a machine to illustrate the concept of a self‑reinforcing feedback loop, you could not build a better one than a social media argument about echo chambers, stolen history, the lunatics in 1600, the collapsing western hegemony, or which podcaster sells the prettiest coffee mugs.

The Uncomfortable Truth.

The recording engineer’s echo chamber was a finite box. You walked out when you were done. The social echo chamber has no door, no filter. It follows you. The moment you accuse someone else of existing within an echo chamber, you have just confirmed that you are inside your own, because only someone who has spent years listening to the same four opinions would believe that “echo chamber” is a devastatingly original insight.

By the way. The gang finally figured out what the clue was on that sliver of tape. The first part was “echo.” The “boom” was from a cannon. These kidnappers absconded to. Wait for it. “Echo Canyon.”
Why do I remember this? Because even as a little kid, it was inconceivable to even consider that a quick-thinking captive might be able to cut a random sliver of recording tape with the exact location of where she, (I think it might have been Lois Lane), was being taken.
Sleep well.

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