The Social Dilemma Is Just The Beginning

For everyone shocked at The Social Dilemma, you really shouldn’t be. Data mining and user manipulation are overt purposes of the various social platforms. It’s basically printed right there on the front of the social media box.

But what you don’t see if you just watch The Social Dilemma (and you really should; it’s a fantastic documentary) is how much worse everything is, how much of your data is mined by websites loading your browser to the gills with tracking cookies, banks, apps you install on your phone, and even your own ISP. (ISPs have been selling user data for ages, and they have a lot more detail on you than Facebook or even Google.)

Besides, data mining is just the start. The pipeline works like this: data is mined then analyzed to produce predictive analytics that are then used to programmatically select and serve not only the most influential advertisements but also the most relevant content that could motivate you toward making specific, favorable choices.

And they’re good at it, too.

It’s why people think their microphones are listening to them after they mention a product to a friend and then see ads for that product the next day. Your microphone doesn’t come into it. The various systems just know you so well (data mining) they can predict (predictive analytics) what advertisements and content you’ll buy and click with alarming accuracy, often before you even realize you want them.

Advertising itself is only the most recognizable, overt, and relatively benign goal, anyway. The real purpose is user manipulation. Being able to accurately predict a population’s reactions to various events and policies has long been the holy grail of any system of control because if you know how people will react to something, you can run models to find the best reactions for realizing your ultimate goals. There are different terms for it – years back we called it forecasting – but it’s all the same in the end. If you know how people will react to anything, you can figure out what you need to do to get the reaction you want.

This is all big money at high level stuff, though. Most people just put a little money into the machine and tell it what they want to happen. Want to find people interested in buying your handmade whatever in your Etsy ship? Just toss a couple hundred bucks to Facebook, check off a few demographic tick boxes, and algorithms will take it from there. Data is the new oil, and the people who can most successfully mine and process it are ridiculously wealthy and, consequently, ludicrously powerful.

It’s not conspiracy. It’s just how the modern consumer technology landscape works at the most fundamental level. It’s surveillance capitalism, and it shows no signs of slowing. Sure, it started mostly innocently, with ideals of personal digital assistants curating content and advertising to your interests so you could dial back on the cacophony of information noise in your life, but it didn’t take long for the powers that be to realize the unprecedented level of control these systems offer.

These forces are the cause of the disease that leads to The Flat Earth Society, Birthers, 9/11 Truthers (who have obviously never watched the blacksmith at a renaissance festival and simply can’t understand you don’t need to melt steel to bend and break it), anti-vaxxers, and QAnon. They are what made Brexit and Trump possible, and they’re what’s keeping progressive policies from making any, well, progress despite the overwhelming majority of Americans favoring most of them. They’re the reason we can’t agree on climate change or economic policy or anything at all anymore, really. They’re why we have All Lives Matter people who genuinely believe the majority gives a damn about their racist, bigoted, ignorant ideology.

The echo chambers of social media and the programmatic serving of content and advertising are why a small minority of toxic assholes mistakenly believe their outmoded, outdated, toxic views are still somehow the norm. That most people really do think like them in 2020, rather than the relative handful of walking anachronisms who actually do. That anything they think matters to anyone other than the aging population of their peers that’s slowly dying out right alongside their Cro-Magnon politics.

But they won’t see any of this, not unless they come looking for it. The various algorithms running the internet today aren’t likely to show my little website to any of them, which is just as well. They’re the type of people who like to leave comments, as if this is site is some kind of diary blog from whatever past it is they live in. Nobody reads the comments anymore, Karen. Nobody cares, least of all me.

So yeah, watch The Social Dilemma and be horrified. Just understand it’s only the tip of a very large, very deep, very dangerous iceberg, and our captains of industry are steering us right into it, full steam ahead.

Cool.

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NOTE:  I know times are hard and yeah, I need to make a living too, but if you want to read any of my books but can't afford to buy them right now, hit me up.

I'll take care of it.

Humor | Nonfiction
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Have you ever made a decision that seemed like a good idea at the time, but you're still living with the hilarious consequences years later?

If so, then grab a snack, get comfortable, and prepare to have all of your own poor life choices seem just a little bit more bearable.

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Short Stories
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The nine stories of rage and sadness collected here range from the most intimate of human experiences to the wildest realms of magic and fantasy. The first story is a violent gut-punch to the soul, and the rest of them just hit harder from there.

Those who tough it out will find a book filled with as much hope as despair, a constant contradiction pulling you from one extreme to another.

Life might knock us down, over and over, and will the beat the ever-loving snot out of us from the time we're old enough to give it attitude until the day we finally let it win and stop getting up.

Always get back up.

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This isn't just a book. It's a portal to other worlds where there be magic and dragons and hilarious pirates. Okay, not really. But this book is about those portals, except they're called video games.

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Part One starts way back in 1975 and meanders down various digital pathways until, oh, around about 1993 or so.

If you're feeling nostalgic for the early days of gaming or if you just want to understand why the gamer in your life loves this hobby so much, take a seat in your favorite comfy chair and crack this bad boy open.

I'll try to not be boring.

Horror
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What you are about to read is not a story. There is no beginning, middle, or end.

What follows is nothing more than a series of journal entries involving shadow people, sleep paralysis, and crippling fear. It’s not pretty, it doesn’t follow story logic, and nothing works out well in the end.

You've been warned.