Fuck you, capitalism. Fuck you, Facebook.

I'm really angry right now. Really really really angry at the world and what it's become. It's as if for 19 years I was oblivious to so many disturbing things. Or maybe I noticed them but just didn't care.

Get ready, this is going to be a long one, there's a lot of little details.

Okay. There are so many fucking sheep people in the world, I don't understand. I DON'T understand how people can be so dumb, so ignorant. Is it better to live in ignorance? IS IT? NO. YOU ARE WEAK. YOU ARE WEAK IF YOU LIVE IN IGNORANCE.
I'm not claiming to be superior in any way, I just want to point out so many things that make me sick to my stomach.

Number one.

Facebook.
Facebook itself isn't bad. It's a good concept, and you'd expect something like it to pop out considering today's level of technology.
What's bad is what it's become.
There are so many horrible, borderline unethical things that occur on Facebook everyday, it makes me almost want to throw up, as I am repulsed by how much power corporations have in today's world.
It's easy to pinpoint one of the worst aspects of Facebook: The "Like" button.

At first glance, you think "Oh, okay, so if I "Like" something, it's like I get to be some sort of online groupie for whatever I like!". Harmless, right? Wrong.

Just like real classic groupies who eventually get fucked over with cocaine and heroin, your typical online Facebook "Liker" groupie slowly sinks into a deep, deep marketing trap.

Let's take a concrete example here, something that really pissed me off today. Hang on, this might take a little while to explain, you'll see the connection with Facebook in the end.

I was bored, there's this guy on youtube who's pretty amusing, so I figured I'd watch one of his videos. (Don't even get me started on vloggers with shitty cameras and terrible camera personality on youtube who spam people to subsc- okay I'll stop there). Edit 2011/02/27: I have nothing against these people, I'm pretty much one of them, as I've just bought my own shitty camera and I will probably start making shitty vlogs with it soon. But it's for friendships!

So I click on the video. Loading... loading... great it's done loading! Wait, what? What the hell? I can't move the slider, it's grey! WHAT? Who's that voice?! That's not Ray William Johnson's voice!

COME TO SWISS CHALET TODAY AND TRY OUT OUR FRESH ROTISSERIE CHICKEN!

That's what the voice started to say. Apparently, the volume control was messed up too because I couldn't turn it down. WTF. So I just buffered, get this, not the video I wanted to watch, but a stupid ad for a piece of shit "restaurant" that serves chickens that have led an incredibly inhumane life, pumped with antibiotics and locked inside cubicles that can barely hold them. Whoa whoa, Gabe, don't get into that either, let PETA take care of it. Wise advice my subconscious tells me, I should listen to it, because I will go insane if I start examining everything that makes this world stink.

See, what annoys me with this video thing is that I just wasted some of my precious internet bandwidth to watch an ad. Essentially, I'm paying to see something that will encourage me to pay a corporation some money for food that isn't even healthy, despite all the bullshit they try to feed you (pun intended) about how "fresh" it is. Okay, admittedly, a 15 sec ad on youtube isn't going to make me go over my bandwidth limit, but it's obviously all about the principle here.

Alright, it gets worse. At the end of the ad, it doesn't say "Call us to order delivery today!". Now I don't know about you, but back in the day, that's what you did, you called a place and they delivered food to you. Usually pizza. But this time, they don't want you to call. Well, I lied, of course they want you to call and order, but they're not emphasizing the calling part.  Believe me, their number was there during the whole ad, but at the end, what you get is this giant blue F that pops up, all flashy and shit, and that fucking generic male commercial voice saying something like:

Become a fan of Swiss Chalet on Facebook! Tell us why you enjoy Swiss Chalet for a chance to win free Swiss Chalet delivered to your door for you and up to 10 friends!

They don't even bother mentioning their website anymore, they just want you to go to their beautiful little corporate Facebook page and "Like" Swiss Chalet. Once you "Like" it, you gain access to the contest, where you can write your bullshit story about why you'd want to eat their crap for free.

See, but they don't give a fuck about your lame story about how you just graduated from high school and you would just love to have a party with 10 of your friends to celebrate, by eating slow poison that's delivered right to your door!

No, what they're after is something called SNP. The more SNP, the better. What is SNP, you might ask? Well, if you were taking any current Marketing courses at college or university, you would know. But I'll safely assume you don't have a marketing degree, because then you wouldn't be my friend and thus wouldn't be reading this. SNP stands for Social Network Potential. Basically, there's this system, pretty complicated, full of algorithms, that can calculate each person's SNP, and then organizes it in a nice list. Those with higher SNP are at the top.

Having high SNP means that you have a lot of influence in your social circles on the intarwebz, or that you are pretty popular. For example, pretend person X writes various Facebook statuses, and every time X posts a status, there's a bunch of people who always "Like" it. Or they comment on it. That right there is having influence. Person Y never has anyone around them, they write statuses, but no one ever notices. Well, person Y will have less SNP than person X. Capiche? Here's the definition on Wikipedia if you still don't understand:

Social Networking Potential (SNP) is a numeric coefficient, derived through algorithms to represent both the size of an individual's social network and their ability to influence that network.

Okay. Back on track. Swiss Chalet is after your SNP. You know what happens when you click that "Like" button? It's like that red button, you know the one that you're never supposed to push, 'cause nuclear weapons are going to fall and destroy earth. Except it's a lot more subtle. There's no explosion. Nope, all that happens is that suddenly, every single fucking person on your Facebook is now aware that you "Like" Swiss Chalet, because that pops up on everyones News Feed. And that's just perfect. Bingo. They've got you.

Now, you're basically an employee for Swiss Chalet's Marketing Team. You're advertising Swiss Chalet to everyone on your Facebook, and it's the best kind of advertising, because it's more personal, it's person-to-person, almost like word of mouth (which any Marketer will know has always been the gold standard in achieving good advertising results). It's not corporation-to-person, which is a lot less efficient, because you're on your guard already, you know you're watching an ad, and part of your brain realizes that and shuts off. Of course that doesn't matter, because advertising is about repetition.

I know, some people don't care what information they share on Facebook, they just want to win the frigging dinner because, well, it's free food. I don't blame them. But it's tainted food, tainted with the horrible stench of corporate malevolence. So many people who go online are ignorant. I don't mean to be ageist, but think of all those seniors who joined Facebook so they could add their grandchildren and keep in touch with them (which is just adorable, right?) that are now being exploited by corporations who see money in infiltrating peoples social circles.

One last thing about SNP. People who are high on these SNP lists are being watched by marketing departments everywhere. They're being monitored because they're incredibly valuable to whatever company is interested in this viral marketing. It's very cost effective to suggest to a person on an SNP to promote a product. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that people with high SNP are actually getting paid to stealth promote a product.

What the hell happened during 2000-2010? The world evolved at an incredibly fast pace, except it wasn't so much in the physical realm as it was online. The net boom. Everything we do now is all linked to the internet. There is so much information being created and shared online, so much communication, I would not be surprised to learn that the average north american spends more time communicating on various forms of media online, or on a cellphone, than they do in person. If you want to take a look at how much life I've created online, it's actually quite interesting, just google "Kaleidoughscope" and you'll see the massive trail of information I've left behind for marketing hound dogs to pilfer through.

We're around machines more than people. I haven't quite painted a dystopia for you yet of what I think will happen in the future, but expect to see a future blog post describing it, based on some of the information I've provided for you here.

Okay, there's a lot more to this, I've only grazed the surface. But I think I've made one of my most important points clear.

So I ask you: Are you ignorant like the rest of them? Or will you choose to stay Above The Ignorance and live a more genuine life. I know what I pick. BEP said it best: If you never know truth, then you never know love.

2010
© Gabriel Gervais-Houle

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