"You get what you pay for." The late Kurt Vonnegut gets the credit for this American idiom (though I suspect someone older and wiser originally coined the phrase). Within the context of the 1963 satire, Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle unmasked ignorance and apathy. His warning magnifies the post-modern pursuit of ourselves.
Is free always better? Making the case against social media, the answer is no. In return for a zero-sum return on our investment, we've sacrificed more freedoms than Facebook, Instagram, or X have given to the world. The perceived value is inflated. The benefits do not outweigh the cost. Data capturing, mined by the gamers, knows us better than we may willingly admit...did you know I was a mafia boss in another A.I. life? Have your First Amendment rights been met with the cold slap of The Thought Police? The horse is out of the barn, as Nelly was exposed by evidence of election tampering in 2016. Yawn. My friends respond to countless other intrepid interferences of bias with passive contempt for those who dare to bring it up. It's football season, go away! What's the point, after all?
Truth is redefined on social media platforms, where the costly consequence of tampering with right vs. wrong manifests as a tawdry substitute for real value. As if that were not a legitimate reason to jump ship, the answer is a vehement, 'hell yes: we did not get what we paid for!' I am blue from posting antidotes to the madness while mainstream media, disguised as a lap dog for partisan politics, blathers on like a broken record. Most "friends" are frequently unwilling to "like" a political post. The risks are inherently unpopular, as the unknowing believe ignorance is bliss.
Today, the first child - aged 14 -- died from playing a TikTok game.
Suppression of the facts relating to recent elections is still mysteriously buried somewhere in the D.C. swamp. Ditto about the medical apartheid and leaky vaccines.
Expanding that exponentially to the grand global scheme of intellectual fraud, deception, human trafficking, religious martyrdom, and the delusion of socialism will be the last poor fool left standing. All this is free, remember? All this, after 247 years of independence, a nation that rebelled against tyranny and won comes crashing down. Such a paradigm is hardly getting what we paid for.
I have had a blast reconnecting with the past. But my parents taught me the foolishness of wasteful spending. While Facebook is free, my time is better spent on a private website. (Did you know WIX is an Israeli company?) Free from censorship, unbeholden to the stunned silence of an apathetic culture, I will not salute The Zuck. There are more ways to speak than through the schemes of a filtered lens. He won't notice I'm gone; and the feeling is mutual.
Would you, miss me on social media? When curiosity or angst jolts your sensibility, or you just want to rehash the past, do drop into CARRINGTON. You'll find me at the library, surrounded by real books if we can keep them. If the truth is told, Facebook did not pay great dividends in advancing my endeavors as an author. From Day 1, I was not woke enough for mainline publishers.
And yet, I land on my feet, where the door to this American life and liberty is still open. Write-me-back: www.sevendaysincarrington.com