Convince Yourself

There has been an influx of censorship skepticism floating around on Spybook lately, and I'm not sure why. First off, this phenomenon is not exclusive to teens; I know, I have one. This is happening to grown-ups. It probably has something to do with Summer, or maybe the tilting of the Earth back in the favor of the Northern Hemisphere. I'm not really qualified -and qualifications matter- to judge the Earth's movements, so I will let others handle that. Most people can't believe it because they have never colored outside of Mark Zuckerberg's lines. It doesn't take much.

I was absent from this free social media site for about eight months due to mental illness. During this time I was extremely productive, and nearly wrote myself into the hospital; the regular hospital. So much changed while I was gone that I thought for a second that it was different. That second was glorious. The truth is that I was immediately reminded why I deactivated in the first place. The self help pictures, the deep thoughts, the mystical shit and so on, are all still there.The bible verses with little birdie pictures, the grossly misrepresented profile pictures and even those damned game requests are still there.

My reasoning for reactivating my account was two-fold. First, every time I read a more accomplished writer's blog, they are preaching social media. They say that an indie writer cannot be successful without it. I can't use Twitter for technical reasons and motivational issues, and Instagram is for pictures, so I was left with what I knew. I'm supposed to be building relationships so that when I decide to sell something, you will be there ready to buy shit, no, support me. I might not ever sell anything, so that reason is shaky. Money and my words will never be suggested in the same sentence. I am far more creative than that.

Reason number two; they say it's not healthy to sit in a dark room 24/7, writing, with no social interaction other than a frustrated wife. I love it. I could do it for the rest of my life. But they say it's not healthy, so I caved, or un-caved. Laugh out loud.

Then I saw something really cool. People who aren't mindless sheep scrolling through other people's lives. There are activists on there now. I even found a page called "Anarchadia" with whom I found common ground. Hooligans! It's wonderful. I have friends all over the world. Some of them have even been reading my propaganda too. Shout outs...

One day, not long after I dove in, the sinister side of social networking pounced on my fun. Out of nowhere my wife lost her ability to tag me, I was unable to like certain things and others couldn't even see comments a few seconds after posting them. For a week, I felt like it had to be a glitch, and no reason for hysterics. The problem persisted. We decided to conduct experiments to see if we were really being censored or not. It started on the most likely page to attract notice from the censor cops; Anarchadia. Yes, our inflammatory friend has a huge target painted on his page by who knows? Some think it to be the US Military, others think it's the CIA, I think it's some eight dollar an hour security cops with special access to Mark's joystick.

Whatever the case, our experiments have shown that censorship really is a problem. Some friends of mine have taken the time to observe the ebb and flow of their attention, and how it correlates with status updates, shares and likes. It's all about timing. My point in all of this comes down to belief. If you can believe that your time on fb is well spent, you can believe that someone or a bot is watching for certain words to fly out of your keyboards. If you think posting stupid memes all day makes someone feel better, you can believe that there is a censor machine.

I may or may not stick around, but while I'm there, I am going to test the algorithms. I think we can crack the code. The hackers shouldn't be the only ones with this ability. If you win their favor, they might be able to keep your page from being blocked out too. Today while you are scrolling through motivational bible verses, throw in a status that says, "Delete the Elite". Then ask your friends to like it. If you do this enough times you will notice strange things. To convince yourself is the only way to really know.

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