Media

Monitored and Manipulative Media: Creating the Borg

~It is the Character of individuals that makes a society great, it is the folly of identity that fuels fascism that destroys once great societies.~

Table of Contents

Conflict of Interest
Consider This
Individiuality
The B.O.R.G.
Media Changes
Segmentation
Perspective
Labels
Business Case
Data Whores
A.I. Augmented Ignorance
Stop playing
The Product Is You
Postscript

Conflict of Interest

I believe in Democracy and Individualism. The opposite of individualism is having an identity. Being a person of “whatever” leads you to be manipulated by the owners of data. Your “pride” makes you a useful idiot.

I declare my lack of impartiality. I do not trust the owners of monitored and manipulative (social) media. Democratic governance is difficult at the best of times, impossible under our current system of surveillance capitalism.

Consider This:

At no time in the history of the development of search engines, social media or applications for your digital devices has your interest ever been considered. Like bait set in a trap, its for the benefit of the hunter not the hunted.

The sum total of all activity relating to you on-line is for one purpose. That purpose: analyse of your personality. Peg you into an array of personality types to which custom messaging can be targeted with the intent of controlling your behaviour.

That behaviour could be the chocolate bar you eat, the gender you choose, the political ideology you hold or the subject of your fantasies and dreams. As long as you are connected you are herded into a group of easy to identify identity and personality types and then your behaviour is shaped thru overt advertising and subtle manipulations. It is impossible for a “Digital Native” to be an individual.

The stress and angst you feel is the disconnect between who you are and what you have been made into. The difference between how you should unfold as a person and how you have been moulded and shaped by your on-line experience. This anxiety is not a by-product of your digitial experience it is the planned outcome.

Individuality

The definition of individuality and identity is simple:
Individuality: noun; qualities that make a person different from others:
Identity noun; a person’s name and other facts about who they are:

On a street corner in Hong Kong I am spit at and I hear the word “Gwai Lo”. It literally means “White Ghost”; a white foreigner. A slur. To ghost a person in all cultures is an insult. You are invisible. Before I could process what had happened another approached me and in broken English asks how could they help and to ignore ignorant people.

It is true you will find what you are looking for in people. Some see a person and spit at the identity, some see a person and offer compassion.

My career took me around the world, always on business off the beaten track, never as a tourist. In Hong Kong, Mainland China, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia and Macau, I was an honoured guest, but always I was the other.

I was constantly dealing with assumptions about ethnicity and nationality. What I saw was similarities rather than differences. It was interesting to contrast the importance of Character and Relationships vs issues of Identity and branding. Relationships always superseded. In the end your identity had no meaning.

Character

Character does not simply exist but is created and shaped by YOUR actions. Not the actions of your forefathers, siblings or peers. I believe Character is the defining aspect of individualism. The opposite of the Character building actions of an individual [individualism] is the soul destroying and disheartening conformity of those wrapped up in a personal Identity. It matters not if that identity is imposed or assumed

The building of character is a complex process and can be understood by reflecting on Marshall McLuhans statement “First we shape our tools, then our tools shape us” In the post 1990 world of digitial everything we have created our tools of conformity, the Face-books, Twitters and Googles are now the tools that shape us into identifiable groups and our behaviours once clearly identified are reinforced. As identity is created continually reformed and shaped by the on-line discourse of the individual those monitoring and categorizing our likes and comments have incredible power. Character once formed is difficult to change.

Before the printing press we did not see identity beyond the distance we could walk in a day. In feudal society everyone knew their place, they knew thier collective identity and it was their personal identity. Our concept of identity is recognized as being created by not only the written, but most importantly the published word. As the spread of the published word moves faster and faster the fluidity of identity moves faster and faster, becoming dynamic. As the definitions of who you are becomes dynamic every political and religious charlatan and every corporate power brokers puts great effort into trying to understand the categories that we all fall into.

Back to Character Identity Whims

Amiable, Driver, Analytical, Expressive

Any salesman first listens to his prospect to determine if his needs are Amiable, Driver, Expressive or Analytical. Once the personality type is known he then crafts his message to the needs of the prospect. In the same way Social Media crafts the message it is paid to deliver but with a much sharper granularity. It does this after years of listening and analysis of your tweets, likes and decisions creating a “herd” that is then marketed to advertisers. To the digital whores who sell you to the makers of chocolate bars or political opinions its all the same you are just 7 of 9 or 70,000 of 90,000.

You are told your privacy is intact, and it is. They do not care about you as an individual. They care about you as a mob. How a group of 100,000 of you will react and what can they do to switch your behaviour in thier favour 100,000 at a time.

We are taught to think these categories are ethnicity, gender, or nationality and that they are inflexible or “natural” But in fact your nature is the sum total of your character at any given moment and that is defined by your actions and that is easy to monitor by watching your searches, clicks and likes.

For corporations trying to sway your opinions from moderate to slightly extreme on any issue it is the people on the borders of social categories that are the most interesting, those who straddle or cross over social boundaries are the target demographic for manipulation. Understanding the flexible nature of peoples opinions, where their boundaries are becomes extremely important.

It is important that individuals are aware and continue to investigate the socially created nature of identity. Recognize that the transparency of your online presence means those who give you free services are tracking, not you, but rather your type, thru your daily actions. That online identity allows the owners of “digital capital” to control collective actions of the myriad of minority groups they create thru detailed meta analysis and by using your view of yourself as a tool against your own self interest. The majority culture then becomes what they socially engineer. Democracy has lost its meaning.

Once categorized people are made to feel some element of their identity is under threat, they are now vulnerable to effective manipulation. When a person puts thier social and individual identities on display, when privacy is flaunted they become open to easy control. An awareness of the strategies of social media and search tools and how they create and manipulate identity is therefore critical in any society but particulary in a diverse society constructed for ease of manipulation.

To say “I have nothing to hide so I do not care who is watching” is the mantra of the technological idiot. A fool so bereft of common sense who gives up thier soul for a pat on the head, a like, or a re tweet, little more than a dog seeking praise and a treat.

Examples of destructive Identities which makes a person open to manipulation

I am a Buddhist, Christian, Muslim or Atheist
I am a White, Black, Asian, Hispanic or Indian
I am a Nationalist, Humanist, Victim, or Victor
I am Trans, LGBQT, Strait or Gender fluid
I am a victim of school, sex, religion or bullying

Examples of Character that once embraced make a person harder to manipulate
I am honest, hard-working, practice Critical Thinking
I am open, caring, compassionate, patient
I am brave and cheerful
I am loving, comparable

The B.O.R.G.

~They will not understand until they rebel and they will not rebel until they understand~
George Orwell Animal Farm 1942

The BORG or B.O.R.G. are those Born or Bred on Reddit and Google. Digital Natives who have never not been monitored. They are the most studied, technologically dependent, emotionally crippled generation. It is easy to resist assimilation, use Linux, use a search engine that does not track you and avoid Monitored and Manipulative media. The downside of course is you become human.

Many things have changed since 1942 but one thing that has not is wealth can be made by understanding the population and then selling that information to businesses and political interests.

Most democratic theorists in the 20th century believed that more information would produce a more informed citizenry, and a more informed citizenry would make good on the core promise of democracy. They were wrong; More information lead to more monitoring, more distraction, tightly controlled partisanship, and more implanted ignorance. More of a new tribe of those Born on Reddit / Google; the B.O.R.G. The Borg truly living Plato’s allegory of the Cave

Media Changes

In 1922 Walter Lippmann’s “Public Opinion”, poses a question: Can citizens achieve a basic knowledge of public affairs and then make reasonable choices?

His answer: No, the gap between what we say democracy is and what we know about how human beings actually behave is insurmountable.

Despite Lippmann most democratic theorists in the 20th century believed that more information would produce a more informed citizenry, and a more informed citizenry would make good on the core promise of democracy.

Many things have changed since 1914 but one thing that has not is wealth can be made by understanding the population and then selling that information to businesses and political interests.

Over the last 600 hundred years our media has changed.
~Pre 1400: We were read the bible and or chanted around fires
~1454: The Gutenberg press lead to the publishing of the Bible.
~1517: The 95 Theses sparked the reformation.
~1600: Stories from Bards, the source widely dispersed and local.
~1650: 200 years of warfare that led to the first nations in Europe.
~1700: 10% could read, the source more focused, the message national.
~1800: Thousands of independent newspaper delivered by mail
~1900: Radio and records, the message became commercial.
~1950: TV, we became segmented as distinct targeted audiences
~1968: A watershed: opposition assassinated, revolt suppressed
~2000: Media now watches us, segments us finely, targets specific messages to to specific groups, edging our opinions one way or another in the process.

How does the media watch and segment;

1. Every cookie, click bait, tweet, cell call, post, search, purchase, what Alexis hears, travel, video views, contacts, keystroke, computer setting, its all broken down and analyzed by A.I.
2. Personality characteristics are identified and you are categorized, a clearly understood peg in an understood hole. As an individual you are irrelevant, but once grouped you have value. Yes they respect your privacy, you are grouped anonymously. You are 7 of 9, aspiring, business like, accepting in one group, and a dozen blunt, opinionated, gullible people in another group.
3. Millions of others are your twin. You activity is matched to a matrix of 600 characteristics into a few hundred types. Organized as a type, anonymous but cohesive, you are meta data.
4. Data whores have developed predictive algorithms and know what you will do before you do, its way beyond making you think one thing or another. You readily accept the process because no attempt is made to convince you that black is white. Instead, your preconceived ideas, the shades of gray, are brought into sharper focus. Your comfortable with the sharper label; you believed it anyway. Your fears are manipulated.
5. The buyer pays to stimulate you. To elicit a response, you are a Pavlovian dog. Prejudiced convictions are the starting point, the result a passionate adherence to their ideas. And incredibly you think they are your own ideas, because they are. You are so well understood by Amazon, Facebook and Google that they can sell your prejudices as a group, a million people that believe X can be made to believe +W or -Y fairly easily.
6. That is the incredible beauty of Facebook, Google, Amazon and Microsoft, each owned by one of the richest men in the world. They got rich by selling your soul. You are their bitch, they have contempt for you. The anger and division is not unforeseen, it is the planned for outcome.

press.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Print_capitalism

Difference between Linux-based and Microsoft full article at https://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/188

Segmentation

Your clicks reveal your true self, the aggregate of all those years of seraching, posting and tweeting creates, thru a well defined process, a profile of your personality, dreams and desires. The following table is a few of the traits tracked.

Perspective

Marshall McLuhan wrote about “Electric” media in the 1960’s. He saw the changes that would be invisible to a person born in an environment of constant manipulation. His was a perspective of a person who was free of corporate / fascist monitoring but aware of corporate / fascist propaganda models. We should pay attention.

~The printing press and television changed how we conceptualize reality, hence “THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE”

~McLuhan showed how the printing press led to the Nation State and the Industrial Revolution and predicted “electric” medias would lead to a tribal, angry, terrified world.

~Media frames how we see the world, not as it is, but rather in new ways, in ways others control. In the 1700’s the printing press created what we call nationalism today, what in effect was a public.

~Mere manuscripts could not create unified consistent publics.

~The response “how we use a tool is what counts” is the stance of the technological idiot. For the ‘content’ is the meat used by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.

~The digital “public” has surrendered to a centralizing brain that monitors and adapts to the audience. Our senses are now outside of us, unaware of this dynamic, the continuous monitoring and modulation of streams of data becomes like the unity of the tribal drums.

~Our total dependence on instantaneous, tailor-made, digital data is unprecedented.

~The human psyche was forever changed by print culture. It was the end of oral and patriarchal traditions and the beginning of freedom and breaking old styles of thought control from authoritarian doctrines.

~We are no more prepared to accept the consequences of the digital age, a place where everything quickly affects everything else all the time and a new kind of contrived state of terror results from all thoughts and feeling being controlled outside of the self.

For more read McLuhan “the Medium is the Massage,” along with Buckminster Fuller’s “I seem to be a verb“. McLuhan also wrote the medium is the message, not as interesting as “the medium is the massage“

Labels

Business Case

Powerful people do have secret plans, they have what they call business plans and once defined business people are enthusiastic and relentless. The goal is always to increase market share, eliminate competition and control pricing.

Successful business people rarely engage in any activity that does not provide a return on investment. Nothing they do is for the common good, they are motiveated by amassing money. This is only a bad thing when one person has all the money.

As useful idiots spread rumours about “QAnon”,“9/11”, or Hillary a reasoned person might speculate: why? The answeris, it does not matter. You don’t have to engage. Don’t be distracted. Focus on 2 issues;

1:Overpopulation, it is destroying the labour market and the biosphere, the market correction is going to be brutal.

2: Tax Law, Yes the game is rigged, rigged by tax laws. The hidden hand of the market picked your pocket legally using lawyers and accountants.

The goal is the have no hereditary billionaires and lots of new millionaires; change the rules so you have a chance to become rich through hard work.

Think deeply about creating verses aggregating wealth.Aggregation benefits the famous 0.01% and has negative social value.

Wealth creation is done by organized workerswith effective representation and benefits many more people.When workers can not win, they tend to storm the Bastille.

Follow the money.

Data Whores

Jeff Bozo	Amazon	Destroyed more infrastructure than allied bombs
Gates and Balmer	Microsoft	Makes bad software easily monitored by design
Mark Zuckerberg	Facebook	Really you need an explanation
Larry Ellison	Oracle	Makes the databases used to file you
Larry Page and Sergey Brin	Google	Irony of ironies their motto was “do no evil”

How did they get so rich? As the rich have always been…

“Private information is practically the source of every large modern fortune.” Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

7 of the 9 richest men in America are data whores

The story of these men is all the same

1.Start a small company with strategic interest.

2.Receive massive funding from state backed Venture Capitalists when there is no clear path to profit, but a clear path to access to private data or the opportunity to aggregate data on the citizenry.

3.Continue to fund despite losses, continue to invest as the competing industry, be it newspapers, bookstores, or whole retail segments are decimated by a competitor consolidating a market, wiping out diversity in the process and at the same time creating mine-able databases that dissect and segment the population for manipulation.

4.Make the data whore a billionaire for his obedience, lack of morality, continued loyalty and subservience to a fascist state.

5.The billionaire, if he chooses can become
5A: a space explorer and claim a planet for his personal use, in the process become the new Magellan, only this time he has no king to report to.
5B: .a philanthropist returning a small percentage of what he stole, in the process become a sort of techno Mother Theresa, but one that raped you then consoles you.

A.I. Augmented Ignorance

Rampaging robots are not the danger we face from A.I.. In the same way that conservative radio has not come up with any good comedians, A.I. is not going to come up with a revolutionary idea or movement that is going to save or destroy us. What is going to happen is fairly predictable based on what access to unlimited but monitored information has resulted in.

Machine intelligence will enable our corporate masters to further thier strategy of manupulation and control by implanting ideas into the already segmented and emotionally crippled class of Digital natives called BORG. The need to make money by those who control the algorithms are the darker impulses that need to be controlled.

The evangelical engineers and data whores who push A.I. suggest it is a complement—not a replacement—to human intelligence. In the same way that machine driving is not about replacing truck drivers who make 100K per year with 20K robots to reduce costs nor is it anything like the “free” services of Google and Meta who sell you as a block to be manipulated and passed around to anyone who can pay for your profile.

A.I. will give you complex answers. It will suggest things to you, quickly and often with incredible accuracy. And why not, you are so well known by the data whores that they can now predict your behavioiur with almost total accuracy 3 and 4 days out, now with A.I. providing you with answers they will be able to subtly direct your behaviour with incredible precision.

Thought you were going to shop for soap. No your going to go buy the soap Galen Weston just bought a container of. Thought you want change, no you will vote for the same fascist who picked your pocket last week, but this time it will appeal to you more because it will be just what you happen to be looking for. You will be so happy.

Look at the history of technology, it has always been used to either replace labour or control labour. The rich use technology to change the way we work, live, and interact to thier advantage. it is the how, the 1% own 80%. Now A.I.will make you think that this is all your choice and it will all be possible because of every click you give to Meta, Goggle and Amazon. You are constantly improving what the rich already know about you and now with A.I. they will have a more powerful tool where you are not just fed information but fed their plans that become your actions.

Wikipedia describes intelligence as “the ability to perceive or infer information, and to retain it as knowledge to be applied towards adaptive behaviors within an environment or context.”

However, a more relevant definition of intellignce will be based upon the reality of monitored and manipulative media ” An operationally effective method of controlling our ability to acquire, evaluate, and apply information to achieve the objectives of the corporate [fascist] class.”

The true measure of human intelligence is the achievement of objectives we establish for ourselves. Human intelligence is capabile of sustained attention to achieve the longer-term, goals serving not just for your self-interests but also for your community, especially the well-being of others. Such intelligence is not natural because we are human, it is embedded in our genes and human nature.

An interesting exercise is to find an old encyclopaedia and read the history of Taiwan (Formosa), Tibet and the the Ukraine. Tabulate 10 salient points from each account and then go on to the internet and read what is said about each of these regions in the context of today’s news.

What you will find is that the news feeds today feel safe in telling any story about the development of these regions that supports the need and justice in terms of invading and upholding the rights of modern corporations to do business as they please. “Believing they are wizards of information management, they have become even more ignorant than their theories. Believing the market validates truth, they become complicit in the spread of ignorance.” But it is ignorance that serves the purpose of the war machine.

The policy objectives of the owners of A.I. are going to be the same as the poliscy objectives of the owners of Monitored and manipulative media. To be an individual, to live in a democracy you have to stop playing their game.

Stop Playing

How do you stop the madness? Stop feeding the rich data whores. Abandon your identity, focus on character. Do a little lateral thinking and surprise the algorithm, be an individual less concerned with sharing with strangers to feed your narcissism and a little more concerned with your community.

At the extreme some see themselves as an individual because they have some variation of orange hair, long hair, short hair, a nose, nipple or other ring, declare themselves bipolar, Hindu, Asian, white or black nationalist, gay, gender fluid or a tongue talking fundamentalist christian but today they add the epitaph influencers. Thier individuality based on character dead. The identity strong.

They failed to realize the lesson on Tyler Durden and that is that “Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken!.” (Thank you Tyler Durden) . If you identify as anything as opposed to being a person of good character you are a dupe. So how to free yourself from Dupedom?

The 12step program to free yourself of Dupedom

1: Recognize that Corporate Fascism is attempting to manipulate you. Be on guard. Your mind is the prize.

2: Admit you are a Sheeple or Group Thinkers and that you need a serious digital detox. If you think your not, you most certianly are.

3: Use a search engine that does not track you, if you are not tracked your inner thoughts will not be for sale, your inner vulnerabilities will not be in plain view.

4: No Shoes, No Apps, No problem. Applications, they profile you, that Meta data is used to craft a message to manipulate your behavior, to distract you, to sell you.

5: Linux beats Microsoft, it is less susceptible to viruses and monitoring. Microsoft based operating systems are easily hacked and allow eavesdropping.

6:.Hey Hey, You You, Get off of that cloud! You emails, texts, photos, are no longer yours and are subject to criminal, commercial, state and peer monitoring.

7: Encryption is of no value if you bought it from a CIA funded start-up that hired NSA contractors. Yes they did!

8:Your cell phone is a public place, everything is on view, from texts to notes, contacts to your exact location.

9:. Reddit and Popurls are both “Consensus web filters” that devalue reason, misrepresent themselves and monetize our behavior heightening extremist opinions. Best to avoid them unless you like to be watched.

10: Create your own social media site, there are dozens of easy to use Word press appliations for your and your peer group or family to use, why use a CIA backed monitoring tool?

11: Do not pay for content, ever. And do not use sites or media supported by advertising. A whole new world suddenly becomes available, but like everything else thats great and free you to have to look for it.

12: Cookies: ”What will we call them”? Well they are embedded tracking tools, lets call them cookies. Very Orwellian. Turn them off, no upside. Go elsewhere.

The less time you spend on-line the smarter, happier and the less likely you are to be Sheeple or Group Thinkers.

The Product Is You

In Conclusion:

~ Once bottled you are sold, by any two bit huckster with a math degree, flooded with V.C. funding on the promise of market domination or the ability to mine your mind.
~You are living in an age of unprecedented monitoring and manipulation. Your narcissism is your kryptonite. A prisoner of your own vanity.
~Your thoughts are being categorized and sold to the highestbidder. Your “identity” a product. You are tribalized as characteristics that decide what tailored ads you will receive.

But that is the most superficial understanding.
~A dissection is done, laying bare your hopes, dreams, yoursoul. Now we teach what we feel you need to know. Predictive algorithms, personality profiles and targeted content shapes your opinions and the output of that processis for sale.
~ If a million people need to think Hillary eats babies, or [x] products are best that outcome can be ordered.
~Identity politics and angry division is not a side effect, it is the goal. A strong reaction about [x] can be implanted if you are not trained to think.

The four steps are as follows:
~1.Every search, document, cell call, email, text and videoview is processed by A.I. You are sorted and labeled
~2.Meta Data profiles are constructed; you are grouped.
~3.Your “identity” or online persona, (soul) is now for sale.
~4.Strongly held beliefs are hardened and focused to the buyers ends. Of course Hillary eats babies.

To avoid the cycle, turn off cookies, use Linux, delete,Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, data subscriptions. Only accept plain text email, never use apps, replace Goggle with a search engines that does not track you.

Fear is unfounded, ending the monitoring is easy. You are not an “identity”. As you learn you change, allow yourself to grow by exiting your echo chamber and be more than your data type, the labels and resulting indoctrination.

Enlightenment does not came from sitting under the banyantree, it comes from never giving out information to flagitious people trying to shape your opinion or tell you what to think.

Bonus Rant

Adbusters gets some of it right

Find Adbusters, the journal of the mental environment. Since 1989, a collective of artists, designers, writers, musicians, poets, punks, philosophers and wild hearts, fighting corruption and speaking truth to power.

Into funding activist campaigns. From Buy Nothing Day to Occupy Wall Street. The aim is an all-out Metamemetic Insurrection, a total reinvention of the cultural and political playbook — to discover new ways to live, love and think.

Find out more about activism at the Blackspot Collective

Thish page is mostly on this PDF

~End~

Postscript

Fox, MSNBC and NBC are all owned by General Electric, one of the major nuclear weapons manufacturers in the world.

The Frisker in Chief, the Floridian Fondler, Scooby Coup, The Lard Father, Girth Vader, The vanity manatee or perhaps theNew York Dork or my favourites Hair Force One, Old Yeller, Jabba the Gut, drum roll please Jack ass o lantern….Thank you Stephen Colbert.

Anyway “Jack ass o lantern” today anounce he wanted to kill even more criminals, with firing squads, hanging and of course public beheadings.

Why not burning at the stake, or as Scooby Coup would say, “We need to burn them at the steak!”

Independent Journalism, Pravda, MSNBC, NBC Нет: Pronunciation: nyet

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February 2021, Digging out from a late winter storm, battery low, power out, generator on. No power in study and heading to bed making the last edits before stoking the fire. A brisk evening.