Mark Zuckerberg’s Notions of ‘Truth’ and ‘Reality’ Are Setting the Stage For 2022
Are you onboard or as baffled as I am?
2020 became the year that an all-too-familiar Warning sticker became a regular feature of the Facebook newsfeed.
“Our Fact Checkers have determined that this post contains misinformation.”
Accounts became disabled through “spreading misinformation” and the Fact Checkers sought to cleanse the feed of a bombardment of just opinions. Fact checker’s sites became shared among the community to put right any misplaced opinions that keyboard warriors tapped out nonchalantly.
And then, a couple of weeks back, Mark Zuckerberg admitted in court (yes Zuck was back in court again for Facebook’s usual dastardly games) that the Fact Checkers employed by Facebook were ‘just opinions’.
No flipping way, Mark! I would never have guessed!
The thing is; for years, all we have seen, over and over again, is how Facebook has either been the driver, or complicit in manipulating the behaviour of its users. Call me a genius but I never, for one moment, believed that these Fact Checkers were there doing their fact-checking for our benefit.
Fact-checking Facebook is all very well
The work that the judicial system is doing to highlight the manipulation happening on Facebook is fantastic, but it doesn’t get away from the fact that, no matter what we consciously know when we log onto the platform, the subliminal messages are still being given to us. And you would have to have superhuman awareness to be immune to it.
Those subliminal brain-training techniques are working away every time we go there. Helping to form our beliefs, morals and thought processes. If you don’t realise the extent to which this is happening then I highly recommend that you go and watch the film Social Dilemma.
Honestly, for years, I gave Mark Zuckerberg the benefit of the doubt and thought that he was just making a few flunks. I saw it all as pretty mild. But since the revelations of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, when we discovered that we were literally being played by governments and corrupt elites, and numerous other scandals that have made the headlines, I no longer even believe that the guy has a drop of human goodness or integrity in him.
Its transformation to ‘Meta’ is creating another warp of ‘reality’
Ever since I joined the platform in 2007, I have received emails from Facebook containing notifications of one kind or another.
“Terry Dactil has invited you to his Discover Palientology Event.”
Or…
“Elly Nor tagged you in a post in Don’t Worry Be Happy Community.”
I don’t really care for these kinds of emails filling up my inbox, but I realise that this is just part and parcel of being on a social media platform. However, since the birth of Meta, these emails have changed.
They are now actively prompting me to spend money by purchasing the new Portal devices and enriching my video calling experiences with Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered features.
There is talk that, in this new Virtual Reality world, you can go and hang out with your friends, dance together to music, and watch movies while cuddled up together on the sofa. Only, you’re each in your own living rooms.
Or, you can remedy the cabin fever of working from home by virtually popping to the office for the day. Work meetings can happen in virtual person again, and the truth of the life you are living can be suppressed forever.
Genius!
But doesn’t it give you the creeps, as it does me?
I am all for the development of technology to serve society, but I do have a problem with the psychological games being played.
Existing through social media became a norm but it’s shown itself to be destructive to our general sense of well-being and reality. Do we really want to encourage another dimension to become ‘normal’?
The last two years have been traumatic for many. No matter how emotionally stable we are, and how self-aware we are, there is no denying that the loss of control, and the inability to predict and plan for the future, affects us all profoundly.
As if being manipulated by so-called Fact Checkers wasn’t bad enough, designed to shape our beliefs about the world, the climate, politics and health, we are now being offered the opportunity to numb out the truths and reality that we perceive in our physical lives by shaping it using Meta’s AI software and devices.
I would say that we are all currently suffering from PTSD to some degree. And this virtual reality world nonsense solves nothing when we are dealing with that. In my mind, using fake ways of trying to feel normal only exacerbates the trauma each time we return from that virtual experience, rather than enabling us to come to terms with our current predicament.
The online world already offers us a diversion from our own four walls and our own internal thoughts, and much of it is really healthy and nourishing, offering a wholesome form of community care and support in these troubling times. It doesn’t solve everything, by any stretch of the imagination, and any additional support should be real, concrete, in-person, or nothing.
Yet, this Virtual Reality is perfectly fitting with what Facebook has slowly but surely been drip-feeding over the years — a gateway between a physical existence where we relied on other forms of media and real-life people to learn facts, and a shaped-just-so reality based on cherry-picked information that posed as true facts. Both existences are subjective, yet one is controlled by a governing body while the other cannot be controlled by one entity alone.
Closing thoughts
These are my opinions, and you may not have the same thoughts around this new virtual existence Meta is pushing us into as I do.
However, I will say that nature has done a very good job of creating a true continuity in the history of Planet Earth so far. We may be going through a tough time right now, but this too shall pass. Nature will still be there.
As long as we care for her too.
With everything that we have faced over the recent years, be it health challenges, financial struggles, or political confusion, If I do nothing else, I would love to encourage people to get back to basics; to take more time out in nature to ground and heal.
Before numbing out your reality by escaping into virtual worlds.
I believe it’s time to appreciate nature and start making changes to the way we live in order to help preserve the beautiful Earth we live on and love on.
Facebook aka Meta has proven itself to be self-serving over community-serving. Rebelling against it has felt like the natural choice to me.
Therefore, taking control of our own environment, leaving Facebook be for periods of time, focusing on what is physically around us that we can appreciate and impact — and seeing how much our personal truths and reality change in that time — are the best kinds of rebellion we can embark on.
Thanks for reading. For today’s shout-out, staying on the theme of ‘connectivity’ please read this fabulous short poem by Amanda Laughtland:
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