IF you’re ike some of us, people not so attached to social media who just browse around as recreation and then share about life, you must’ve been wondering what all those “wokes” were all ranting about, rigid in their belief that theirs is the voice of the majority.
I’ve never seen that level of unfounded conviction, and I can’t help but wonder where it was all coming from.
The obvious answer: social media and the Internet, and yes... the algorithms that we generate every single day that we engage the Internet.
Just as I posted on Facebook a few days ago, my attention was caught by a reel about volleyball sensation Deanna Wong and I watched it. I found another and watched it again, and now I am flooded. Although, I also believe that some media handler of the volleyball player is deliberately pushing hordes of Deanna Wong videos to fan the already overflowing fanbase because that’s how to increase popularity, merchandise, ticket sales, and everything. Anyway, these days, I’d deliberately choose “Stories” except that when you’re on your mobile, the default mode of those on display is the “Reels”, so I have to repeatedly change it to “Stories”. Yes. It was that kind of flooding, it has become irritating.
For those invested, the shrieking screaming fan base, they love it and love to see more, repeatedly. And that is what could’ve happened just a few weeks back when the wokes were totally into their thing believing they have the numbers — spurred on by dubious crowd estimates fitting in close to a hundred thousand in venues that can hardly accommodate 10,000.
In a world designed to give more of what interests us, we unknowingly become blinded to the realities of life. Except that, social media is insidious. All the time you think you are in full control, but you’re not. This kind of addiction is so pervasive, but just about every person is afflicted, no one notices the addiction.
As addiction draws us further into this web, each one creates his own bubble and that bubble merges with like people creating echo chambers, eliciting affirmations, confirming all our beliefs, unfounded or not. The algorithms we generate online give us more of what we clicked on, shopped, watched, listened to, played. As the addicted works lift their eyes from their gadgets and their echo chambers and they see dissonating views, they quickly tag these as bots.
Since PRRD won, until now, the constantly affirmed by like-thinkers still believe the noisy supporters are bots, canceled as non-existent in their world as like-thinkers affirm that indeed, these noisy supporters are not real.
But they are and they are voters. And so the canceled voted, the wokes lost.
Growing up, dad had this self-help book that is now regarded as a classic.
It’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. I grew up with that book. I think we had that since I was in grade school. It was first published in 1964 by Simon and Schuster, and continues to be published today by different publishers. Its lessons are that enduring, lessons the wokes most likely brushed off as “boomer” and thus they got hit when their self-righteousness boomeranged. The shortest summary of the book you can find in the Internet is it “teaches you countless principles to become a likable person, handle your relationships well, win others over and help them change their behavior without being intrusive”.
The wokes intruded by saying, “Let me educate you,” ... and lost ... as they did ... when Digong won. Now BBM won ... and then the next ... Lessons not learned, after all, return to teach the same lesson. saestremera@gmail.com