I can 100% agree with the social media being used to manipulate the crowd. No one is veryfying what they consume online, they just believe it as if it was a fact. It's been reckognised and put to a use for sure. There is always a flood of nonsense just before election, or other major event. My facebook is full of our current PM being ridiculled there and back again. So the bad adversories don't seem to want him in there anymore. Same was happening around Covid time. So many non-sense posts about vaccination. It's all there just to make us argue, and devide. I like to think I know better than just jump the bait, but I fear majority of the human population just swallow the bait whole, and feel good about their meal. It's just mad, isn't it... USA military for the longerst time reckognised 3 spaces for military to cover. Land, air, and sea. Might be space in there now as well, wouldn't surprise me if they had some weaponery in there already. Not counting satelites for intel gathering. So maybe 4 spaces now. But they reckognise the online world as another space for military to worry about. Now with the AI (its not really artifical inteligence, we not there yet, more of a machine learning, but people love calling it AI...) it's eaven easier to craft BS content for social media, and your common folk couldn't tell it apart. Scary stuff, the longer you think about it.
Killing Time by Caleb Carr circa 2000 makes some rather prescient observations on these topics in his work of fiction...
Amazing how much fiction (stories) ends up less fanciful than fact…. And now fiction (feelings) are more beloved than facts.
I liked the sound of that book, but didn’t buy it in the end after I read a lot of negative reviews. I think the best up to date dystopian novels are The Circle (2013) and The Every (2021) by Dave Eggers. They’re about a company which is a kind of amalgam of Google, Facebook, Tik Tok, Amazon and Apple, a sanctimonious pseudo-fascist utopian corporation, which works its way into every aspect of people’s lives, effectively outlaws privacy and turns everybody into rigidly conformist slaves to the algorithm. The second book is a particularly prescient and darkly funny satire. They made a film of the first book, but it’s not a patch on the novel. The Red Men by Matthew De Abiatua is also very good and gets bonus points for being set in the UK. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-Men-Seizure-Trilogy/dp/0857667556
My Dad raised me with the mantra ...."Don't believe anything you hear..... and only half of what you see". He's gone now, but it's served me well for my 71 years
One of my best ever motoring friends, long-gone now, made me aware that "trusting no-one" was the best approach to life overall. I reluctantly agree now that he was right.
Funny I work on the opposite with people I meet. Trust until proven untrustworthy. Worked for me mostly. But the opposite with any institution, ruling body, corporation. What’s in it for them is the first question I ask when being told something. I was often abused on here during Covid for asking questions like ‘do we believe the science? Do all scientists agree? What if those that don’t’. Regularly by those who claim to be against the Man…. Sheeple
Indeed it is. I’ve read and re-read it several times. In fact I wanted to call one of my kids Helmholtz, but my ex-wife was having none of it.
Probably needs explaining more in detail as not as straightforward as the words used, "overall" being a clue.
Apart from the fact that you’d forever be explaining to people that its name is not “Summer”. It could get quite tiresome. I have a similar issue as everyone assumes that my Iggy is named after Mr Pop, when in fact he’s named after Ignatius J Reilly, the main protagonist in my favourite novel “A Confederacy of Dunces”.
"So long as they continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern...Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbours, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult." Proles huh...
My tin foil hat is strong....from personal experience (people ive spoken to, stuff ive seen) - even got photographic evidence of....at the same time my bullshit meter is still strong as well... Love a good conspiracy theory i do.! Edit - if anyone wants to read it ill type out my first encounter with a guy i met about 30 years ago in the place i worked at, at the time...purely by chance...
If you shout it out loud in the park, 99% would think Mr Pop as the influence, unless you shout Ignatius, not sure it trips off the tounge as well.
only quoted my own post because someone disagreed - that's the lovely thing about a Forum and a "debate" - we can all disagree or agree and neither can impose or take away each other's right to an opinion, only time and experience might help towards making a decision. People can also feel free to jump to a conclusion without knowing the full details.
