Tales Of Paula Sands’ Demise Have Been Grossly Exaggerated
It isn’t often that you get to comment on the story of your own death, but we live in a time of unreality, rumor and the aptly and ironically named Artificial Intelligence, so, here we are, and here is Paula Sands, erstwhile retired local media personality, confirming that tales of her demise have been, to paraphrase Twain, grossly exaggerated.
The wildfire of bullshit that stands for the pathetic ruin of social media began ripping out farts of disinformation over the weekend, protruding an odious flare that Sands had passed away.
Given that I was a regular guest on KWQC-TV6’s “Paula Sands Live” for almost three decades, and people know that I’m friendly with Paula, I began to get a number of messages and texts asking me about her well-being.
Aside from the rumors, I hadn’t heard a thing. I consider Paula a friend, but we don’t chat on the regular or anything, so I hadn’t heard anything from her family or close confidantes. I reached out to her, but I didn’t hear back. Still, I’m also friends with a couple of other folks who are closer with Paula and do chat with her more regularly, so I reached out to a couple of them to confirm or deny the rumor.
Paula Sands
In the meantime, I kept getting hit with messages. I will say all of them were respectful and people seemed genuinely concerned, so it wasn’t as if people were being ghouls about it, but it was still really odd.
But then again, as I said, that’s the way it is now.
Social media has created a massive cesspool of disinformation, and AI has exacerbated it. Nobody knows what’s real anymore, and it’s veering from the annoying into the dangerous. Social media has already morphed into the most potent division and distraction machine we’ve ever seen, poisoning and brainwashing people with the reinforcement of their most extreme and divisive beliefs and reinforcing those through the bubble algorithm that keeps them addicted to dopamine and cortisol, keeping them hooked up to the matrix long enough to sell them bullshit they don’t need so they buy bullshit they don’t need.
And the saddest thing about it is that people go into this with the best intentions.
Most of the people I’ve seen duped and drawn into the hivemind on so many topics are entering into this buzzing hysteria with good hearts, thinking and wanting to do the right thing, wanting to follow their moral compass, without knowing that its magnetic poles have been completely warped by their environment.
One of my many appearances with the one-and-only Paula Sands.
Thankfully, people have become more and more cognizant of this manipulation and have started to develop a healthy cynicism about most things. But that also leads to the fallout from the Boy Who Cried Wolf, where when something true does come along, it’s often ignored or marginalized.
It also leads to people being confused as to what to believe when something remotely plausible crosses their path.
Such was the case this weekend, when rumors of Paula’s death began to spread around. Could she have passed? The story became more and more elaborate and oddly specific and believable as it grew. People started saying she’d died of a heart attack in her sleep. People started saying that news of it didn’t get out yet because she’s not living here anymore. People started saying that it wasn’t confirmed yet and that the local media were keeping it quiet for now out of respect for her and her family.
Those are all somewhat plausible details. It’s not like people were saying she died wrestling alligators or on a climb of Everest, or that she was an international super spy and that the Illuminati were suppressing the details because they were replacing her with a clone because she was on to a forbidden cache of Epstein files that she was about to release. (Wrong media figure on that, you’re thinking of Candace Owens.)
Then-Paula Gillette debuted on then-WOC TV-6’s “PM Magazine.” She would become Paula Sands, the station would become KWQC, and the show would become “Paula Sands Live.” And now you know… THE REST of the story…
And in the end…
she was doing just fine, alive and well and enjoying the weather in a state far sunnier and warmer than this one.
“I just got off the phone with her and she’s lounging out in the sun, enjoying her day,” a mutual friend told me. “I can confirm she’s alive and well.”
As it turned out, a long-time guest of hers had passed, and there was a picture that was posted on social media of that guest with Paula, and people quickly misinterpreted the post and rumors began to spread that it was Paula instead who had passed.
I gave folks who had contacted me the good news, and they were relieved to hear it. There’s something heartening and positive in that, that they were both concerned and relieved, and I’m sure Paula is happy to hear that. Much happier that the rumors weren’t true, but, who wouldn’t be?
In the meantime, the deflation of the situation just acted as one more instance of people recognizing the widening gulf between the reality of our world and the unreality of the virtual one.
Except of course when it comes to those videos of a shirtless Wilfred Brimley devouring saucy hot wings while being interviewed by a drooling Larry King. Those scenarios are not only 100 percent real, but to be envied and aspired to by all.
Paula Sands celebrated her 40th anniversary on the air with a sweet treat.
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