Operation White Dove is a famous military-grade invasion of Kansas many people are learning about through their phones literally right now, as they sit on their local toilet or desk chair, the first of which is a function of necessity, and we suppose the latter of which is also a function of necessity given everyone must look busy at work, especially if they “do social media” for whatever company or brand pays them to do social media.

This clandestine operation – “doing social media” (which is vernacular for social media marketing, and has nothing to do with Operation White Dove, as, again, Operation White Dove is a famous military-grade invasion of Kansas) – involves, first and foremost, obtaining the coveted position of Social Media Marketing Manager, Digital Marketing Specialist, or Head of Social Content for some business, then basking in the warm, loving glow of the (hopefully company provided) iPhone all day, occasionally furiously typing away when people are around, but ultimately trying to figure out how to keep the job considering nothing seems to work in a really impactful way for a large percentage of businesses, at least according to the metrics, unless the point is of course to simply generate metrics. And carpal tunnel syndrome.

But let’s not spend too much time lambasting advertising revenue-generating social media platforms we can’t clearly see and certainly must have an upside somewhere. Instead, let’s drill down on what’s important.

Operation White Dove involves an elaborate proposal to a woman, who hails from Kansas, one of the few states in The Union, or places in the galaxy, that looks, feels, tastes, smells, and sounds exactly the way a human who has never been there imagines it to be, right now, in their head. To reiterate: Whatever the well-educated, charming, alluring and extremely financially-generous-to-newsletter-subscriptions-if-they-ever-go-paid reader thinks about Kansas in this very moment is EXACTLY how it is, in Kansas, this very moment. No joke.

For example, research shows the Top Seven Things About Kansas running through the Average American’s head as they walk through the park marveling at geese rummaging through garbage receptacles or otherwise appreciating the general overabundance of park-bound, trash-hungry critters are exactly the following…

In Kansas:

• Everything smells like barbecue
• People are weirdly nice excluding insecure 18 to 25-year-olds partying at bars in downtown Kansas City but that’s not Kansas’ fault, more of a maturity thing
• There’s lots of fields
• Aside from fields, their associated farm buildings, and any large structure within Kansas City proper, there is a surprising lack of stuff to look at
• The fields are grey/brown
• During any given 24-hour period the weather is alternatingly windy/calm, super-hot/super cold, crushingly damp/bitingly crisp, terrifying-for-normal-people/a-bad-storm-but-not-a-tornado-so-it’s-no-big-deal-for-local-residents

All of which is mostly entirely accurate to a degree.

On that note, there’s much to clarify about newsletter subscriptions themselves, or it should be said, the creators behind them. They exist on the same inter-dimensional plane as Kansas; meaning, whatever a given ruggedly handsome and/or demurely electric, fashion-forward reader thinks about writers, right now, in their head, is spot-on, even though this likely includes several borderline hallucinogenic ideations.

Research shows the The Top Seven Things About Writers (of anything, including social media marketing campaigns) in an Average American’s head as they walk down the street shopping for new can openers or center pieces for holding uncomfortably large volumes potpourri tend to be exactly the following…

Writers:

• Smell like alcohol and cigarettes
• Bask in fame, and thus drive really fast cars, like really fast ones, or just regular cars, but quite recklessly
• Possess functionally cool addictions like in the movies
• Hang out with European authors in secret, divvy neighborhood speakeasies
• Fend off legions of fans and well-dressed or at least recently hair dressed, power suit-wearing publishing company representatives
• Frequently cancel guest appearances at large, sold-out state-funded local university lecture halls because they “can’t handle it”
• Ply their trade with a general understanding of what exactly it is they are doing

Which, now that we think about it, appears to be slightly less than spot-on, so we here in the studio should clarify after consulting with our university-contracted researchers.

Yup, the associated researchers offered truly grievous oversimplifications and total fantasies about the writer thing as said researchers were so bored looking into this they stopped caring and simply cranked out yet another grant-funded study. A closer look reveals the following, more sobering yet accurate Top Seven Things About Writers, which the Average American should consider while strolling to their Alma Mater to see if they can still get into the cafeteria or biology lab…

Writers:

• Look for any excuse not to write, including petting the dog
• Can’t talk about ideas because the vibration of vocal cords through the act of discussion eliminates every micron of drive to write about said idea afterword as proven by several non-university laboratory studies. Plus they have no notion of where ideas come from and frankly, they don’t want to know
• Are sleepy
• Try not to think about how the other writers they know also prostitute themselves through social media marketing to pay for things like food and mortgages given the percentage of authors who measure success through the universally coveted metric of “cash money” earned by “selling books” is almost as low as (ironically) the percentage of impactful social media marketing campaigns   
• Are scared of people who studied literature in college
• Consistently try and carve out time to work on “personal writing stuff” in-between frenetic moments of normal life including making breakfast, vacuuming, walking the dog (which they do like to pet), celebrating major holidays, driving around, and the prostitute-ive work (see bullet four) that actually earns a federally taxable income given compromising this revenue would result in financial insolvency (also see bullet four) and anger their family in general. It would be like saying, “No, we’re going to work on this model airplane all day, it’s fine.”
• Are sweaty

Whoops, looks like we got carried away again and ran out of time. Perhaps this paints an accurate picture of the recluse down the street or why Instagram is dangerously addictive. Please stay tuned for the next installment, which will possibly involve Operation White Dove (a real thing), and Kansas. However, it should be noted the forthcoming recounting of this tale will be surprisingly adjective-free, since readers already know what Kansas is like, and writers are always sleepy.