My Facebork timeline is full of bile and anger in a way I’ve never seen it before. I’m wondering if, no, convinced that, Facebork is contributing to the anger and unrest that’s infecting people’s brains. YOUR brain.
I’ve mentioned before that the algorithms employed by Facebork to decide what appears on a person’s timeline will bring forward ‘re-affirming’ articles, posts, or items.
Put another way, if a Facebork user has shown a devotion to Donald Trump and a hatred of Hillary Clinton, either in the things they have posted, or, more likely, in the things they have ‘liked’ or clicked through to read, then Facebork will fill their timeline with more of the same, helping build a feeding frenzy. The user will read more and more about how Hillary Clinton is the devil and about to kill everybody, whilst Trump is a saint, a saviour.
Likewise, showing a devotion to Hillary Clinton will fill that user’s timeline with articles and posts proving that she is the saviour whilst Trump is the anti-Christ.
The problem with this is that the user gets no objective perspective whatsoever, just their own subjective ideas ‘re-affirmed’. The more they see ‘re-affirming’ posts the more rabid they become, convinced that the candidate they don’t support, has designs on killing everybody, and eating their babies.
Humans have always been a bit like this, but before social media they were more likely to be exposed to rational and impartial articles. True, they could refuse to read them, listen to them, or watch them, but they would not be exposed to so many of the outright lies and deliberate manipulating that they are now. There would be gaps during which they could calm down and rationalise a bit.
We have so many blogs and posts written without any fact checking, full of bile and lies, yet given equal billing with legitimate news and fact gatherers. Indeed, people will prefer to ‘believe’ a completely fabricated ‘clickbait’ (paid money when you click on them, so will do and say anything to make you click) site because it has ‘re-affirming’ articles (usually written by people with a very strange propaganda and conspiracy agenda), rather than a trusted investigative news source. And of course, the articles these ‘clickbaiters’ publish just make the reader angrier and angrier.
Within the UK, this Facebork timeline ‘re-affirming’ action has been active on the issue of the vote to ‘Brexit’ (is that word in the dictionary yet?). Those who didn’t understand the question and so voted to remain in the EU, are fed a constant diet of prophecies of doom and gloom because the majority voted for independence. It makes them angry and fearful and encourages them to fight and be in constant denial of the choice of the majority, and to be angry with them. They are not fed articles or posts that might calm them down and help them understand the path that the United Kingdom should take. Instead they are encouraged to live in a volcanic state of denial, with the hope and promise that suddenly everything will be saved to their uninformed way of thinking.
They are a bit like a relative who won’t accept that the body crushed flat under a bus is actually dead. Instead of confirmation, they are surrounded by mumbo jumbo about how despite having a severed head, they aren’t really dead.
Indeed, ‘Remoaners’ (is that in the dictionary yet?), rather than accepting the will of the majority and working together with them, will be surrounded by articles encouraging them to be angry and do whatever they can to spoil, heckle, and interfere in the process. They are given ‘re-affirming’ articles to read about how they can, indeed MUST, reanimate the corpse of EU membership.
At the same time, those who had properly researched everything and logically arrived at the correct conclusion to leave the EU before it collapses taking the UK with it, are fed posts about how the ‘Remoaners’ are out to get them, out to stop the will of the majority, and can’t be trusted.
So, the non-acceptance of the result, the suspicion and anger of everything about it, has kept people from both sides polarised and angry at each other.
Unrest is what is wanted by those who believe in divide and conquer. Unrest is what they’ve got.
We are being conquered, and we are submissively helping them conquer us.
England's England 