Keeping myself in the dark

I love new technology but at the same time am very cynical of amazing things that appear to be free.

Facebook, Instagram, Google and WhatsApp being good examples of products that we don't pay for that  have become part of our lives.

The old adage is.

If you don't pay for the product, you are the product.

I find it hard to avoid Google searches and whatsap as most of our business is done, using those services.

We draw the line at Facebook and Instagram. We can do without them so I avoid them. Facebook (Meta) has a dismal record of abusing the trust users place in them and they in fact own Instagram and whatsap.

So for now I choose to make a stand with Facebook and Instagram.

It's probably a case of too little too late. And closing the barn door after the horse has bolted but it's where we chose to make our stand.

We live in this fast evolving world where new technologies appear daily and seem to consume our time until we are all zombies. Working for the man. The aim is to benefit from the technology without losing our soul. Not the spiritual biblical soul as much as the essence of what makes us human.

If we spend all our time battling to keep up with the influencers and their antics we find ourselves not living our lives. Living vicariously through the influencers is a shallow existence, given that most of what we are fed is fake. The smiles, the good looks, the humour and the joy. All staged to increase user engagement.

Responsible journalism is when there is a mission to find the truth in the most responsible way.

Facebook, Instagram and most of the social media that we feed on are optimised for engagement, only.

The truth is not consequential. The protection of privacy and the rights of minors less important. The truthful reporting of human rights violations is the only way we have to hold ourselves and our society to a higher standard as this is the only way to improve our humanity. The algorithms that feed us our daily bread have no such compunction. The only currency is eyeballs and they feed us more and more of the drivel that we appear to like.

Anger and fear too are really good drivers of engagement.

The shock value of graphic images and the conspiracy theories of how we are being played by the illuminati are huge drivers of engagement.

The algorithm cares nothing about the truth or the content, or the consequences. All it feeds on is the numbers.

If feeding our insecurities gets the numbers up it will. People who are comfortable with their bodies and not afraid of things that go bump on the night are terrible for the business of mass engagement.

The ideal population is easy to whip up into a frenzy over the side effects of the vaccine, hates their body with a passion and lies awake at night worrying about things that will never happen.

This is who the digital masters need us to be. And when we are really scared and outraged and suffering from FOMO we take up arms (our credit cards) and we fight back (shop till we feel better).

When the last thing we do before we close our eyes and the first thing when we open them is to check our phone to see what the influencers are thinking we have outsourced our thinking to the machine.

When we end up living their lives we don’t live our own. And are not present. This is the real price of free social media.

Is it good, or is it bad.

It could be either or neither.

The point is that in the past we went on tours and were accused of looking at the sights through the viewfinder of our cameras. Of missing the moment in the attempt to document the moment. The influencers themselves are guilty of this. Their need to make everything larger than life, better than is possible makes their experience look amazing but hides the torture that makes it possible. 

We who are influenced by the influencers end up looking at our bodies and lives and hating ourselves and our situation to the extent that we are vulnerable to the miriad of beauty products and diets and glitzy holidays that will make us happy. 

So at the end of the day the influencers themselves are miserable while appearing amazing, the followers desperate to lose some weight or wrinkles. 

The only happy ending here is the moguls who own the game. Their stock prices increase exponentially and they end up the richest men and machine in the history of the world. 

𝓜 𝓟𝓪𝓻𝓪𝓴

Nov 2021