Can We Delete Facebook?
Listen exclusively on Bandcamp [https://ramannoodlescomedy.bandcamp.com/track/can-we-delete-social-media]
So if you’ve been paying attention then you’ve probably heard about the controversy surrounding Cambridge Analytica and Facebook mining our data to sway voters in the 2016 election. If you haven’t heard about any of this, that’s probably because a baby sneezing video hit the algorithm and it went viral and you been caught in a destructive feedback loop of cute. This is the natural escalation of our obsession with mining things we don’t need to. It was coal from a hundred years ago to now! And now that we’ve proven that mining coal is killing all of us, we will hollow our psyche using online surveys as the drilling equipment. We’ve replaced black lung with targeted advertising. And the canary in the coal mine is the number of likes.
There’s a lot of talk now about deleting your Facebook but I don’t think that’s a solution this problem. We’re addicted to social media. Some of you are checking your updates right now! We’re all addicted to letting the world know we are alive with our photos of food, puppy gifs and unoriginal political memes. The more likes we get the more we indulge. It’s a drug and they don’t call it going viral for fun! It’s because it infects every part of you body & mind and becomes a need for us, a way of life. It’s seeped into every facet of our vernacular to the point where everyday someone’s asking if “You be ‘grammin’ bro?” or “Where you chirpin these days dawg?”
With how much we give into our urges to share our lives on social media the harder it is to let go. As Edward Snowden says Facebook is really a surveillance company than a social media one, and now we have proof. So what do we about this if we can’t delete Facebook because we’re all addicted to jacking ourselves off with validating thumbs, metaphorically speaking of course. There are several alternative social media sites, from Steemit to Minds to Media Revolt, that all act more ethically than these mainstream social media organizations. And as the exodus happens, I’m sure Zuckerberg and the Twitter Boys will scream about how Russia stole their users. Which will assuredly give all mainstream media talking heads a chubby under their computer desks.
The other issue a lot of us have is that the app that Cambridge Analytica was using, took a personality quiz to find out all about you. And if you are sitting there thinking, “Well duh, that’s what a personality quiz is for! To eradicate your mind wishes, hopes and dreams to use them against you!” consider this for a second. Buzzfeed hasn’t really attacked you using your fears in the last decade that we were all taking these personality quizzes. It just told you what X-Men character you’d want to marry. And if it wasn’t the one you were crushing on, it made you realize maybe you’re not the true person you actually were.
It’s naive to think that our data isn’t being collected. This is the natural escalation is collecting things. Stamps, Hot Wheels, and now psychographic information. Good luck navigating my daddy issues, rage problems and irrational hatred for raisins, you elite bastards. But the major issue we all have is these companies selling that data to each other to get we the people to buy more shit, vote for their candidate, watch their propaganda or their home made porn. Using our minds as their weapons they’ve taken the freedom of choice away from us. The gift of self realization is stolen is from us and price we are paying the current history we’re living in now. They’ve automated our minds to do what they want us to. So a big way we can fight back is to keep an open mind, dig deeper and support each other with or without Facebook. Explore ourselves and turn our weakness to strengths before they can use them against us.