Looking The Monster In The Face(book)

THE ONLY PROBLEM WITH FACEBOOK is that it is a huge, heartless corporation whose only motive and purpose is the quest for ever increasing financial profit, and which goes about achieving this purpose by heartlessly exploiting people, feeding them their product in small, then gradually increasing does like an addictive drug, which Facebook in fact is, by catering to the lowest common denominators of human nature, making people angry, making people self aggrandize, feeding their prejudices and fears, and setting various groups of people against each other like fighting roosters or ravenous pit bulls forced to do combat over a piece of raw meat in a steel cage. But, other than that one minor flaw, no problem; Facebook is good to go. What the great Satan does is to turn personal information into weapons of mass destruction, gathering up data like a shark sucking plankton into its perpetually open maw, organizing, sorting, and selling bundles of information to the highest corporate bidder, to lure hapless, unaware "customers" into becoming voluntary targets of economic exploitation through advertising. The one point seven billion Facebook users in the world most likely, for the most part, believe themselves to be "customers" of the social media giant, in total control of their computer screen destinies. And that is precisely what the mega-giant inhuman entity wants you to believe. In fact, of course, we, the Facebook users, are the merchandise, willingly positioning ourselves like sheep or cattle walking passively, ignorantly towards the guillotine, just as surely as if we had walked into a department store, strode sheepishly in a tawdry pseudo triumphantly arrogant gait, into the display window, and stood frozen, lifeless, like a manikin without a heartbeat, and, motionless, stood holding a sign reading: "I am for sale. purchase me". A more thorough description of how this amazingly surrealistic situation has to come to pass and remain with us can be found in the January 28 issue of the venerable "Time" magazine. For long I refused to sign up for Facebook for these (the above) reasons. Then, curious, I relented. I decided to give Facebook a try. I did, and I am, admittedly, to an extent, hooked on it, like a needle pusher just beginning t olike the feel of heroin laced with cocaine coursing through ye olde blood stream. I have collected the requisite long list of friends, learned how to message, read notifications, make and share posts, all of it, unless I am leaving something out. Since I don't have a smart phone nor camera I do not post pictures, and in fact I leave my actual Faeebook page completely blank, for the above reasons. On my Facebook page is didley, zilch, squat. And thus shall my page remains, till deletion do us part, which might happen at any time. (not) I have already begun to reverse course, and to "unfriend" people. (god, talking about Facebook is like being in third grade, which is another deliberate corporate marketing tool). I have come to understand that having five thousand three hundred and forty two friends, almost all of whom I have no idea who they actually are - is beyond meaningless. I have decided to instead create and live within my own little Facebook bubble, just the way Mark the Zuckermeister wants me to. From now on, only left wing progressive non religious intellectual friends for me. I reached the point where I saw enough "Christ is King" posts, and deep sixed the Jesus freaks. Ditto the right wingers. Anybody who even remotely implies that Donald J. Trump is a decent human being or that Republican conservatives are anything but the scourge of the Earth is out the proverbial window. And so I spend my days, in my own little made for myself bubble, reading post after post of save the planet impeach Trump cultural and religious diversity economic equality now posts, lapping it all up like a kitten with a brain the size of a walnut at the warmed milk bowl, adding on my clever, sarcastic, deeply intellectual little comments, and enjoying every self aggrandizing self absorbed addictive drugged out minute of it, just the way I am supposed to, in accordance with my corporate masters. I am merchandise, willingly. Hell, maybe I should put up a pic...nah... All hail Zuck.