Three Simple Questions: social media

Friday, February 5, 2021

CULTURAL ACQUIRED IMMUNE DEFICIENCY SYNDROME (AIDS)

WHO AM I?

I am 1-billion Facebook users, 5.5 million Twitter users whose Tweets or posts flow through our Technological Social Media arteries. My virtual friends “share” items that flow through my Social Media accounts. Because my “friends” are “friends” to others who are “friends” to others, and so on to others; I imagine the sense of “self” of this largest group is a giant cultural bloodstream of real-time, unedited, and uncontrolled messaging. After all, the theory of “3-degrees of separation” might be in play here. Friend-to-friend, post-by-post we “share” with one another good things and bad things: nice celebrations, reports of wrongs by governmental agencies, pictures of my vacation, death by cops, violence and corporate greed; incidents which none of us individually, our family, or friends, can control in any way. We are really sharing cultural powerlessness. We are powerless over what technology reports, and in some cases causes to happen in and to our culture.

In many ways, we are powerless over our own bodies as well. In the physical disease of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) the body’s capacity to resist “foreign” cells or “infection” fails because the number of white (defensive) blood cells is diminished. The white blood cells defend the overall system by going to all of the cells in the body and determining which are “me” and which are “not me” (foreign). The white blood cells destroy the “not me” cells (the infection) and protect the integrity of the body.

What plays out day-to-day in Technological Social Media are reports of political gridlocks, terrorist attacks, protests, fear over anger, and hatred which go against our personal values, ideals or morals which once we shared with genuine friends before “virtual friends”. That’s what made them friends. We shared values and priorities. Once it was genuine and real. Now it is pretense.

There is no technological “white blood cell” mechanism (no Technological Immune System) to test whether or not the things flowing along via Social Media are “me” (my values) and they go unfiltered and unchecked directly into my consciousness. Many are false posts. Some are real ads. Some are lies consciously planted by provocateurs who wish we would buy their “remedy” to the fear they promote, support their “cause” so they can “save” us, or work for someone else.

This media stream is overloading my heart. Sometimes I feel revulsion, sometimes my “friends” say they are going out to buy guns, sometimes I get a dose of fear, my heart grows hard, my capacity to know my community as genuine “Friends” is compromised, my life is gerrymandered away by foreign (“not me”) forces. I am losing my strength. Am I suffering from technological Social Media AIDS?

WHY AM I HERE?

The French Revolution happened within a society when one sub-culture within that country was overwhelmed by the values and priorities of another, more dominant culture. The peasants got out their technology – the guillotine - in order to eliminate the overly pernicious, fiercely greedy, aristocracy. They performed “Cultural Surgery”. It was a revolution that instituted the “rights of men.” “All the Kings horses and all the Kings men could not put Humpty-French-Monarchy together again.”

We don’t have Monarchy – we have Corporatism. Technological Social Media serves Corporations and the message flow down the technological arteries show that the “old order” of “me” values like citizenship, brotherhood, equality, and civic power is being swamped or infected by economic priorities, partisan values, and sectarianism. Regardless of which cultural values you treasure, you probably rarely see yours reflected on technological Social Media. We are unraveling.

When you treat actual AIDS you may find that the amount of medicine and its power may kill the patient. Treating technological Social Media AIDS, if such a thing were possible, maybe so painful and require such sacrifices many citizens would object, the same way “loyalists” defend the “crown” in previous revolutions.

Those in control, sometimes called “tyrants”, never want to lose control, and so respond, gain strength and push back against any attempt to curtail their power. The AIDS virus actually degenerates all parts of the body to feed itself. The Social Media AIDS will do the same.

WHAT DO I WANT?

Resist the urge to blame: we are not the only “Social” who have chosen to use “Social Media”. The Media serves multiple corporations, governmental agencies, international states, and their paid provocateurs, who are your and my friends and relatives. Data gathering, based on words we use is shared to marketers and Governmental Security agencies. So, there are very large, powerful entities who value technological Social Media and they arise from multiple directions at once. But, this is only technology. You control all technologies by using the “off” switch. Or, you can change the dynamics in the technological stream by flooding social media with messages of other principles and values. You as an individual choose to change the message.

The U.S. was founded on universal spiritual principles: religious liberty, economic brotherhood, and equal rights. If we, each of us as individuals, reclaim these principles in our own non-technological, human lives; our own personal actions with one another, we can, from the inside, build a new Human Social Media which will create Cultural White Blood Cells and our renewed Culture will reject the forces of greed, fear and hatred, the “not me” forces of the oligarchy and their supporters which flow through the Technological Social Media.

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Wednesday, October 8, 2014

TERMS OF SERVICE (TOS) FOR CANCER

WHO AM I?

I am a part of two writers groups in which are a number of cancer survivors – myself included. It seems to be the case that we receive cancer without a clear statement of the Terms of Service like what was recently released by Facebook. Cancer may be extremely aggressive and pernicious. Social media is an extremely pernicious software – so pernicious that they are willing to publish just how pernicious they actually are in their Terms of Service, and then take action against any user should they communicate the details of those Terms to others. I recently witnessed this happen in "real time" to a user whose identity I will keep secret.

What do I mean, “pernicious”? Please read the Facebook Term of Service or look at my Facebook page. I posted them - and they were there a few days ago. By using Facebook give Facebook permission to take over your computer, change your computer settings, you accept any financial charges for any actions Facebook takes while using your computer, and you accept the fact that they do not have to tell you what they have done, nor ask your permission before they do so.

When I published this on my Facebook page it is entirely possible that Facebook will delete this post. In addition Facebook may delete my blog.

This means that Facebook acts in your social body in the same way that cancer acts in your physical body - attacking, removing, damaging your systems all without permission or even informing you until you have the lump, mole, or lesion. I know.

WHY AM I HERE?

The fact that all computer and Internet operations have to publish their Terms of Service is a gift from the God’s of Internet and electronic oversight. Without this knowledge, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) could take action without informing us. They may but keep it under our level of knowledge. This is precisely what happened and the reason that Edward Snowdon is so vilified by the CIA, NSA and other “spying” agencies of the U.S. and partners.

Now Facebook is able to do all of those things Snowdon claimed the government was doing - and more - because they have published the Terms of Service to you and because you have continued to use your Facebook account, you have agreed to grant them all of those rights and powers. They simply make those rights and powers available to any spying agency they choose for whatever price they wish. Because Facebook is private enterprise at work, and you are a client who has free choice, it is not like anyone is doing anything against your will. Right?

WHAT DO I WANT?

As a cancer survivor I know that the only reason I have survived having two bouts of cancer is because I got information and realized that I had the disease; and I found a great team of doctors who understood exactly what to do in order to strengthen myself, and deal with the cancer: have surgery, take chemotherapy or radiation and survive.

What I want is to get more information about the Terms of Service that are given to us by Social Media providers. And I want Social Media doctors to make suggestions about what we can do. We are infected. There is nothing we can do to stop the disease because our Social Body, like our physical body, requires a brain to take appropriate action.

And how is our Social Media body feeling now?