Punk’d

Do you remember that show Punk’d? If not that’s okay, you know what it means to be punk’d I’m sure. I’m here to tell you, and you may already know this, but we have all been punk’d. Let me start by giving you an example of something that happens that we all see. You ever search for something online and then suddenly you see ads for that item for months on your social media? We all see this right? Big tech companies collect our data, they sell it, they know everything about us and they even use that data to try to shape our preferences as consumers. At the end of the day that’s what we are here folks, just a bunch of consumers, buying a bunch of junk. Everybody know this goes on, people that I have had conversations with about this all think it’s spooky, or a little invasive, somewhat creepy maybe? Well what if I told you that it isn’t just Amazon and Google doing this to us? What if I told you that in addition to being viewed and targeted as consumers, we are even more viewed and targeted as VOTERS. Has it ever occurred to you that everything you see on your phone or device concerning politics is basically sent to you or funneled to you based on data collected about you in the past? I’m not talking just about advertisements. I’m talking about everything. New stories? Yes. What does this mean? It means that if you ever wondered how someone could support a certain candidate, it’s because they only see positive things about that person every single day on their phones. Trump supporters only see pro trump stuff, Bernie supporters see pro Bernie stuff and so on and so on. The problem is what you are seeing is mostly misinformation, you are being targeted by groups to receive a certain message, and that’s what you see on your phone. When people say, “Russia didn’t convince me to vote for Trump.” I am sure they actually believe that, but many people are influenced daily by the managed flow of misinformation people see every day. If a Trump supporter and a Bernie supporter switched phones for a week I am sure both of their minds would be blown by what they see. They see different sets of ‘facts’, they see stories spun different ways. This should be scary to folks who understand what this means or could mean. Many people wonder how others can believe the things they do…the answer is on their phones. They believe what they see every day. Truth holds no value in digital ad campaigns, NONE! Digital ads gives the person sending the message enough distance from it, that they can literally say anything, no matter how crazy and get away with it. Our country is literally steered by misinformation campaigns. Those who control the information control everything, can we all agree? I think everyone would agree with that. Where are you getting your information from? Some web page you never heard of plastering some crazy story you would never believe, but it supports your candidate so you help them by spreading it out over the internet? We are all responsible for making sure we have the best information we can get so we can make informed decisions. Stop letting strangers you don’t know dumb you down, simply question everything. If it doesn’t seem to make sense then it’s probably fake. We have to catch up to technology, it outran our ability to learn about it’s pitfalls.