There are a handful of podcasts I listen to regularly. I am subscribed to Wild At Heart, the Jocko podcast, Hold These Truths and the Minimalists, among others.
It was those keep-it-simple Minimalists who had a light hearted moment prior to the election where Josh and a guest decided they’d see how long they could go without news that would tell them who won the Presidency. No tv, no social media, nothing for as long as they could 😜. They were making the point that the rush and crush of news, social media and the like needed to be pushed back. (Little did they know how honest it would be to definitively not know who won, even a weeks later!)
At about the same time, the Netflix docu-drama “The Social Dilemma” was being highly touted. My wife, Sarah, told me to watch it.
I did.
It was unnerving.
I won’t spoil all the details if you haven’t watched it yet, but I will give a key thought and line from those interviews: “If you’re not paying for the service, YOU are what’s being sold.”
Whoa.
That ain’t cool.
The film went on to detail how each person, based on their profile and preferences, gets different “news”. Their worldview is being nefariously pushed, prodded, shaped and altered by a hidden hand and an unseen agenda.
Whoa.
That ain’t cool.
I’ve had the seemingly lighter experience of being on my laptop and ads scroll up of things me or the wife would be interested in. Maybe you have, too. It was a bit of a thrill at first as each ad caught my eye; it then turned to dread as I realized someone (or something like an A. I. algorithm) was watching me, stalking me, keeping tabs on all my clicks.
Whoa.
That ain’t cool.
Every cop drama on the tube has that scene where the detectives will back track the perps route by calling up the gps data from the stolen rental car. They always get the bad guy due to the savvy work of the show’s tech geek. Brains over brawn, right?
Well, yes, I guess anyone could track me the same way, as I do have a Texas toll tag, after all. And then there was the threat (or maybe attempt-we don’t fully know, do we?!) by the Kentucky Governor during the spring covid lockdown of 2020 to track residents leaving or returning to his state by warrant-less cell phone tracking. (This ACLU article should make us all pause on that thought.)
Whoa.
That ain’t cool.
The Social Dilemma played out its hour-and-a-half of insight and its scare-the-be-gessus-outta-ya data, and I was suddenly more aware. Again, my laptop ads, the cop dramas, cell tracking Governors and even general intuition have always told me to beware, to be careful, but I hadn’t yet acted.
After the documentary, I did.
Step one for me: sign out of and delete the social media apps I rarely use, in my case, Twitter and Instagram. Facebook and YouTube have a purpose in my life and family, but they will now be controlled differently. And, by the way, the whole “turn off your notifications” as THE way to control the socials just wasn’t gonna work with me, so...
Step two: I signed out of Facebook and moved the app to the back of my phone. The plan at this point is I will sign in when I feel like I can and should look at it for a bit, then I’ll immediately sign back out.
“Sounds like a solid plan, Joal.”
But wait, there’s more unexpected creepiness to share.
Not but about 3 days after I signed out, I got an email telling me that Sarah, my wife, had posted something on Facebook I should see. I asked her about it and she had no clue what it was referring to. The email was simply baiting me to sign back in.
Then 2 days later I received another email
Then the algorithm trio (watch the documentary and you’ll get the reference) amped it up another notch by TEXTING me with my wife and mom and friends Jason and Doug’s names in various text messages.
Whoa.
That ain’t cool.
Needless to say, The Social Dilemma is apparently being proven true in many, many respects.
A last side note about social media and their delivery of the news, as it were: I’ve ignored the socials for weeks now, it's been nearly 2 months since I last looked at FB. I’ve also skipped newsy podcasts, just deleting them and never listening. I’ve scanned a smidgen of news related emails, but just nowhere near the quantity I would read daily in the past. The funny thing is, life goes on just fine/
The Presidential race worked itself out without me: legal challenges, recounts, threats and recriminations galore.
I drank my good coffee this morning.
Work continues, school continues, family continues.
The world is still spinning.
All without “being social-media-connected”.
I get the irony that the way most of you will see this essay is by me posting it on Facebook. Take a minute to snicker, sneer, laugh and guffaw. It’s okay. In a real sense, it’s the world we now find ourselves in. But we can and must make an adjustment on the consumption for our own good and the common good.
Watch the movie, test the theory and see if life isn’t a little bit easier when you unplug from the Matrix.
Peace, my friends.
