Hungry Rats At That
It's true. Social media turns us into hungry rats. Especially if you pay attention to who is disliking what or how a post is getting responses. Influencers might be the worst variety of social media junky one could become.
The fractious nature of public discourse following the events of 2016 sort of paints a picture where a whole bunch of us who are on social media are in turn incredibly vulnerable to being manipulated by bad faith actors. When you look at the fact that Facebook essentially allowed itself to be the implement of choice for an outfit like Cambridge Analytica (special emphasis on the Anal there), who were in turn paid by Vladimir Putin to fuck with the UK vote on Brexit and the US Presidential election which led to the Trump Administration, tells you enough about how little social media companies think of the average punter. In some ways they don't even care about the politics or how they look in light of all this as long as Congress can be talked out of regulating social media as a media industry.
So that's on one side, and here we are tapping on our bloody mobile phone apps liking and laughing and whatever else responses they give, and handing over gobs and gobs of data - and all the while our brains are impoverished by the cumulative experience of just being on social media. It really isn't a fair exchange. They sort of have you over a barrel in the sense that, with some people, social media is the only way with which to keep in touch. It's a frightening world that we've allowed ourselves to build. The conscious architect really balls-ed up that one.
No comments:
Post a Comment