Missing airplanes, the societal crises in Venezuela, and the highly questionable events involving a hammer that transpired at Nancy Pelosi’s estate, these are all examples of trending headlines that the collective conscience has forgotten.
As the information age looms and social media gravitates towards TikTok and social media existing as an organ of a dissident government, the :12 second attention span only decreases and reflective thought is further attenuated through a relentless bombardment of subtly pleasing distractions. The modern precursor in grooming the younger generations to experience mental fatigue over simple tasks was first apparent in the late 1990’s, as the first multi-CD player was unveiled, offering the simple convenience of not having to change a disk in experiencing different albums on the same device. Skip forward three decades and with information literally spoon fed to the majority of the population, discerning or questioning the validity of a post or an aggregate news blip has become a psychological anomaly.
While the social networking arm of the Chinese government and Communist party continues to captivate Western audiences with drive-by selfie productions of which defy any intelligence quota aptitude test, the YouTube brand name has gravitated to what the platform labels as “shorts”. Owned by parent company Alphabet Inc., the illuminated walls of the Silicon Valley corporate campus are a real time canvass and covert surveillance tool to every man, women and child in the free world. This makes Beijing’s effort to subdue citizens like child’s play. And this is only at the surface level.
The lightning flash streaming videos featured within the online community are catered for the impressionable demographics and feature topics in a manner in which Wikipedia seems like the Encyclopedia Britannica in comparison. With the inception of AI chatbots already mesmerizing a growing audience of tens of millions, the abbreviation of one of the most prodigious and traditional digital communities is something to keep an eye on.
The formula for control from a corrupt and insidious governmental perspective is to abridge information and to an extent where mainstream understanding is merely implied, as in Maduro’s tyrannical dystopia across the Caribbean, where unfortunate citizens starving and in ill-health face a tirade of propaganda enhanced by a widespread mistrust among the population. Similar tactics of subversion were enacted in the post WWII era, as the Soviet state obscured much of Eastern Europe through directives forming the Iron Curtain. Foreign nationalist baby boomers who survived the initial onslaught of cultural lobotomy by Stalin and his cohorts are still cautious and reserved as members of a “robot” existence, as any social interaction is viewed with wariness and the threat of ultimate vaporization. As much as Orwell is plagiarized and quoted, “1984” was not supposed to be a manual for effective nation building, except for providing guidelines in perfecting a nanny state.
Fast forward to the onset of the information age and the preponderance of tech firms foisting dreams and visions within microseconds and along with billions of dollars in buying branding and credibility, the fate of the future is simply a cause and effect of corporate warfare. The fact that YouTube has decided to sell its soulless business model to the highest bidder, or in the context of the 2024 Presidential election to the most rogue of governments is an indictment to stability the entire basic construct of free will.
While Elon Musk has cryptically and disingenuously attempted to rehabilitate Twitter as an operative for misinformation to a somewhat legitimate destination as a wavering information source, modernizing and reviving the pioneer dinosaur of the streaming through convoluting posts already diluted by the vapid and the visceral is like watching a slow motion self-driving vehicle wreck in progress.
As tech morphs at speeds that defy light, the average brain processing power and the legal system respond glacially which provides a hefty advantage to those who code and those that pay the exorbitant pay rates of the coders. The irony is that specified lawyers still cost the most in reliably plodding at a turtle’s place, while the bargain to having software jockeys at one’s disposable is a bargain in both speed and time.
Unfortunately, evil has identified that influencing the present has certain lasting connotations for dictating tomorrow, and the impending sunrise is ominous at best. The comic book and lighthearted reputation of YouTube and similar electronic sites only disguises the sinister ulterior motives and agendas of intellectual property that is tainted by special interests and underlying greed measured on a myriad of levels.
As the innocence of on-demand entertainment and engagement dissipates, there is no recourse for the permanence of fostering ignorance.
