Your blood may be boiling at this point, for which you may or may not exactly know why. If I may ask you bear with me a little while longer. Im not calling you out to criticize you, to belittle you, to hurt, or promote a sense of superiority or rant pedantically without purpose. If anything, I am trying to be a mirror for what is, to bring your awareness of where we all are in this space, and what we have all bought in to, either knowingly, or not.

You may think this is harmless, “social media” that is, that is has no consequence outside of your own desire to share, or be ‘connected’, but I implore you, with every fiber of my being, to please, please consider what I am writing to you today. The fabric of our own selves, our society depends on it, and our very future.

Everything you share, every word you write, emotion you express, everything you do on this platform, and any of these platforms is being used to sell you ideas, and spread those ideas. You are a product, as much as you are a consumer of these ideas. It is also being used to mold you, and reinforce a reality that is not of yours to control, but for which you feel strongly convicted agrees with every part of you. If that doesn’t give you pause, it certainly should.

What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me? Into us? Clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly because I can't any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone's sake the scanners do better, because if the scanner sees only darkly the way I do, then I'm cursed and cursed again.

- Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

You may think that everything you do on these platforms is your choice, and all of these things you identify with are you, but that is a lie, disguised as a truth. Everything that takes place on this platform is carefully calculated, consumed, summarized, and fed back to you to keep you engaged, and to keep the narrative rolling in whatever way that suits those who wish to profit from it. So you continue to plugin, motivated to say or do something a little different to get ‘engagement’, each time, the cycle continues you are fed a suggestion, a different view, and the cycle continues.

The very best lies are truths that have been disassembled and reorganized, so that it appears authentic, and yet… that is the supremacy of deceit. You are paying with your identity, your ‘soul, and your true sense of self. You are selling out your friends, and neighbors. We are at war with each other, where facts become meaningless, and the us vs them grows stronger every day. You very well may now believe your 'neighbor' is your enemy. You may smile at them and have a good chat when you see them IRL, but online you show your ‘true selves’, secretly harboring contentment, as the ocean between your selves and your ‘ideals’ grows exponentially every single day.

We have been turned against one another, all because we have been manipulated in to believing these ‘truths’ about ourselves, wrapping our identities in things beyond ourselves, incapable of understanding who we truly are, and flocking to these platforms to reinforce what we perceive (by what were fed) our (un)sense of self. Yet all they do is profit from our misery, and further distract us from truth and authenticity. But… Why?? Why?

“One of the most effective forms of industrial or military sabotage limits itself to damage that can never be thoroughly proven - or even proven at all - to be anything deliberate. It is like an invisible political movement; perhaps it isn't there at all. If a bomb is wired to a car's ignition, then obviously there is an enemy; if public building or a political headquarters is blown up, then there is a political enemy. But if an accident, or a series of accidents, occurs, if equipment merely fails to function, if it appears faulty, especially in a slow fashion, over a period of natural time, with numerous small failures and misfiring- then the victim, whether a person or a party or a country, can never marshal itself to defend itself.”

- Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

I have spent years studying these platforms, trying to shout, to speak quietly, to do anything I can to raise awareness about what is happening. I started this journey 7 years ago in grad school. Our research project on 3Bola using semantic analysis, predictive modeling, and network analysis (in other words, data science wizardry) opened my eyes to an unfortunately grim future. What I learned then, what I saw coming before the election in 2016, and everything since, horrifies me to this day. No matter how many facts I give, no matter how strong my argument is, it has fallen on deaf ears. All I can do is hope these words have some impact, and may stir your sense of independent being.