How's that for a clickbait title? Pretty good, right?
Many people think "mind control" is some spooky, tin-hat-wearing, conspiriacy theory thing. To me, it's a pretty straight forward form of social engineering from a materialistic determinism perspective. There are maybe a half dozen to a dozen major worldview frameworks most people operate under (with various flavors and mixes, of course). Within those frameworks, it's pretty straightforward to know what will trigger someone or gain their enthusiastic support. The inputs, given a known mental framework, create predictable outputs.
"Mind control" might be nothing more than understanding people and how they will react to certain inputs to generate predictible outputs.
I think Facebook is better positioned to do this than almost any other company. What mainstream media used to do with the nightly news, Facebook does with notification icons designed to release feel good chemicals in your brain and stimulate a response.
I'm not the first to consider this idea of President Zuckerberg. The idea has already been seeded by the mainstream media:
Mark Zuckerberg probably isn’t running for president - New York Post
This one basically gives evidence that he will, but says it may be a bad idea.
Will Mark Zuckerberg Be Our Next President? - Vanity Fair
"He wants to be emperor" is a phrase that has become common among people who have known him over the years.
Why People Can't Stop Talking About Zuckerberg 2020? - WIRED
And it didn’t help that, a month before he announced the tour, unsealed court documents revealed Zuckerberg had attempted to restructure Facebook stock to allow him to retain voting control if he served in government for two years, or served indefinitely, with a few stipulations.
Why Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg won't be president - USA Today
Zuckerberg’s election would mean handing over the leadership of an already privacy-violating government to the creator of one of the world’s most invasive surveillance platforms
-
Mark Zuckerberg is randomly touring small towns in Iowa...
More signs point to Mark Zuckerberg possibly running for president in 2020 - CNBC
May 2017 Zuckerberg Quote: "Some of you have asked if this challenge means I'm running for public office. I'm not."
With his $71B net worth, the White House photographer he hired, the political strategists, the 50-state tour, etc, etc... His actions sure seem like those of someone positioning for a political campaign. As for the flat denials, they are still accurate statements. He has not, publicly, declared an intention to run for president so these things can't, by definition and as far as the public is concerned, be part of running for office. If he were to change his mind (*wink, wink) and make a public announcement, then all the same activities would now be considered "running for office."
I started thinking about this more seriously when I happened to catch a tiny bit of his recent Harvard Commencement speech. It wasn't just about the content, which was very presidential, but it was the delivery. I remember Zuckerberg's first public speaking. It was bad. REAL bad. Like, it was painful to watch his early speaking. This? This was completely different. He almost even seemed human.
I know, right?
He was funny, smiling, engaging, excited, and passionate. Give it a watch. If the office of the presidency of the United States is a popularity contest, he's got a nice head start with 100,000,000+ followers. Trump got less than 62M votes in the last election.
So why am I thinking about this today?
Here's what I saw on my Facebook mobile app this morning:
Facebook is deeply inolved in this government game. Did we already forget what Snowden taught us about NSA programs like PRISM which allow the U.S. government to get direct access to data from companies like Facebook in ways they can't freely discuss?
Since 2014, we've known how Facebook Tinkers With Users’ Emotions in News Feed Experiments, according to the New York Times:
But last week, Facebook revealed that it had manipulated the news feeds of over half a million randomly selected users to change the number of positive and negative posts they saw. It was part of a psychological study to examine how emotions can be spread on social media.
The future is going to be quite interesting with the rise of AI and discussions of a universal basic income (which Zuckerberg mentioned in his speech). If we're not paying attention, those who are will define our future. If we don't maintain control of the media we consume through decentralized solutions provided by projects like the STEEM blockchain, then we'll just be cogs in the machine, reacting to inputs controlled by others.
Stay woke. :)
Consider voluntaryism. We have cryptocurrency, decentralization, morality, peace, and love. On that note, I'll be at anarchapulco.com this year (finally!). You going?
So what do you think? Will we see a Zuck POTUS in 2020? Maybe 2024?
