The Devil is in the Algorithm

Alone,

It’s time to face this world alone for awhile. Nobody is going to save me. Nobody can fix what’s wrong except me. No matter how many thousand times per day I look at my Facebook pages or scroll through Instagram, no matter how many likes or pretty hearts or comments, no matter how many “friends” or “followers” or subscribers, finally I am alone, and no one is going to change anything about my life except me. No one is going to make it better or different or more meaningful and truly happy except me.

It’s like we just keep swiping, keep scrolling, keep hoping that somehow we will find that one perfect post that changes our whole life or answers all our questions, or fulfills our dreams or deepest desires. If we just keep watching and checking, we won’t miss anything, and we will be included and aware of everything, part of the group, part of something, part of anything. Whatever it takes to not be alone - and fuming about how everything is so messed up and wrong, how everything needs to change, but nobody can stop themselves, nobody can set there phone down and look up, and live, and think for themselves. Somehow we are all trapped in an invisible cage of our own making, made by our influencers and “creators”.

What are we hoping to find in our phone screens? What addiction or magnetism controls us to keep it next to us at all times, like an extra limb, like our most precious possession, our precious, to never be without it. Social media algorithms combined with our precious devices are killing us and at the same time pushing us to want to kill each other. These platforms, these tools, these oligarch owned information networks of Orwellian algorithms are not going to save us, they are not going to make us feel less alone, they are not going to bring us together. They are ruining our lives, silently and without dissent or revolt.

Facebook addiction, smart phone paralysis, with cell phone zombies walking down the street but really just stumbling along like the fentanyl addicts as they scroll through their “feed”. These are brainwashing devices, tracking devices, spying devices, even killing devices if you happen to be on the wrong end of a Lebanese party line. These machines are the most insidious form of propaganda promotion and mind control that this world has ever seen. It is more harmful on humans and society and children and families than any drug or any pandemic or any totalitarian regime we have ever known. It’s more than just a tool, it’s the mark of the beast, it’s death to all free men and women in the shape of a boot stepping on your face for the rest of eternity. It is the ultimate tool of domination and control over the free and curious mind of humanity. It is the ultimate sheepdog, herding and corralling all of us into little tiny boxes of our minds, using pretty little videos and cute little pictures, and poignant quotes, little tidbits of emotional and psychological advice and relationship cliches, political tropes, so called moral truths and “pushes” in the right direction. We are slaves to little tiny hearts and smiles on a screen the size of our hand.

Our women have become narcissistic Queens of a snow white dystopian fairytale - constantly filming themselves and filtering and photoshopping themselves until their screen mirror tells them that they are indeed “the fairest of them all”. And our men have become porn addicts and eunuchs with wigs, constantly swiping or “liking” through the endless reels and images of tits and ass. We have become slaves to the tiny little pricks of dopamine that we get with every heart or every share. But the hit and the high fade almost as fast as we can scroll down to the next image, as we look for more, as we beg for more. More validation, more attention, more reassurance and gratification that we are part of the “good side” the cool people, the popular and rich and famous; that we are special and liked and loved and important and wanted. We just keep scrolling, keeping tapping, keeping “liking” and waiting for the next little hit from our needle of the attention drug, the dopamine bump that we so desperately need.

The algorithms are not your friends. They are not there to promote you or help you or make you famous or loved, or improve your life. They are there to trap you and rape you and take away your free will and pollute your thoughts. They are created to increase the amount of time that you spend on their platform and only that, even if it kills you. They are there to make sure that you stay there spending your time and money and energy and creativity for them to make money. They have absolutely no other true function except to make themselves and their shareholders more money. Facebook and all other social media corporations and all of the algorithms and AI that go along with them are for the pursuit of profit, pure and simple. Your job is to both produce and consume content on their platform to keep you and all your friends on their platform, basically forever, and to control how you all view the world and think about the world. The algorithms control outcome of the conversation and we are the slaves that fill in the content.

The devil is in the algorithms and they are leading us down the path to a technocratic totalitarian dystopia. In fact we are already there, and it doesn’t matter if you think you are on the left or the right, because the algos change the definition of what is “left think” and what is “right think” in the blink of an androids eye. We have a “Hobson’s choice” or basically no choice at all finally, because both sides of the artificially created conversation lead to the same resulting dystopia under the guidance system of the omnipotent Orwellian algorithms. And when it becomes clear to the oligarchs, who control the algos, that society needs a new enemy or some new distraction to focus on, they just tweek the algorithms until the desired effect is registered in terms of activity and likes and comments etc. The algorithms are an infinitely adjustable tool which is used to keep us all either asleep or fighting with each other while the masters of the algorithms do whatever they want.

Yet, somehow, for some reason, we all think that AI is going to save us, or help us or change things for the better. Who do you think owns the AI? You guessed it, the same oligarchs that own the algorithms. It’s not your AI, it’s theirs, and its programmed to work for them, at your expense. AI and robots are not going to set us free, they are going to enslave our minds and bodies. Just look out the window and check out the people on the street. How many are already zombies? How many have their phones glued to their hands or ears or faces or windshields? How many cannot walk in a straight line because they are too busy looking at the screen? We are already robots, slaves to the screen. Wake up and kill your phone before it kills you. Or maybe it’s too late already.