As IF Times

Source: Facebook, Texas, China: Your Thursday Briefing – The New York Times

The recent Facebook drama has underscored the most sinister disease afflicting modern society.  E and O.  No, not Errors and Omissions, that boilerplate notice at the bottom of legal documents, I’m referring to Entitlement and Outrage, the drivers of most of the sensationalist news we see today.

A casual check of the day’s headlines will list various stories of someone’s imagined offences against accepted sensibilities, or of some concocted notion of a denied right.  Stories of people actually having their rights taken away, ie by being killed, are far less newsworthy than those concerning the horrific plight of those offended by an unfortunate choice of words.  It’s as if the entire population had been lulled into believing as children do, that fantasy trumps reality.

Look at the highly irrational debate on guns and gun rights.  While this is a topic for another discussion, there exists among many, a highly illogical view of guns.  For example, most of us have seen those decals affixed to the entrance of public buildings indicating no guns allowed on premises.  By implication, this means that the building is safe from guns. If this elegantly simple solution works, why not use the same idea and post “do not rob” signs on banks and 7-Elevens?

The recent outrage de jour is directed at Facebook, because apparently, data collected  from and freely submitted by users has been revealed to have been used for nefarious purposes;  apparently to help elect Donald Trump.  Some of us may recall that when the employment of social media techniques were used during the last president’s campaigns, it was characterized as innovative and brilliant.  But in the current context, people are outraged that their top secret images of cats, kids  and selfies at vacation spots and ‘dear diary’ entries are vulnerable to be used for commercial purposes!  Somehow, rights have been breached!

Let’s be objective and sane for a moment: People get a ‘service’ for free, Zuckerburg becomes a billionaire.  Wonder if there’s a connection there.  It’s like getting sandwiches for free and then complaining about the lack of mustard.

If only there was a way to prevent people’s personal stuff from being be pried into, spied upon and sold for financial gain; if only we could stop posting…if only there was an off button….hmm.   To stop using social media is of course, not an option.  Social media, internet access and NFL Redzone are now seen as rights. People now feel entitled to figuratively stand on their front lawns in their underwear and expect others not to look.  Mark Zuckerburg for his part, has been cowed by the indignant crowd by conceding that Facebook had failed their users.  Apologizing is a popular thing these days, whether genuine or not.  What he should have said was, “What did you expect for free? We’re not in the free lunch business.  If you want security, use paper.”

Source: Jailed Instagram model wants to trade secrets for freedom

Hardly a day goes by without some breathless headline about the tribulations of some ‘model’ or ‘rapper’. A detached observer will note that the ‘talent’ which these individuals purport to possess are rather marginal at best and likely delusional at worst. If every youngish woman who has ever posed with duck lips and a bikini are models then the USA must be overgrown with models.  If every black person who has ever managed to rhyme two words in verse is considered a rapper, then also, the US is filled to the brim with music talent.

That the media continues to characterize and glamorize the misadventures of very ordinary people as being somehow interesting is a reflection of the ‘look at me’ culture that has taken hold in the last decade of social  culture.  We can lay the blame partly at the feet of the explosion of media conduits that need to fill their pipelines with sensational stories, but really, the root is the proliferation of social media.  Thanks to certain infamous people with no useful skills other than to point a camera at themselves in various stages of undress, an entire generation of impressionable youth, mainly women, have been emulating that kind of narcissistic exhibitionism.

Young women are seemingly obsessed with posting images of themselves, usually in coy or provocative poses. Some are attempting to emulate the template of the Kardashians by pushing the boundaries of tastefulness in order to gain ‘followers’.  Yes, this is a real thing. As we know, much of this is clearly fake news.  A recent article exposed the resulting sad reality behind the fake world that this kind of delusion can cause.  The majority of people would never be able to emulate the kind of lifestyles portrayed by social media stars…including the social media stars.  In the linked story above, would anyone care if the headline read ‘jailed person wants to trade secrets’?  Probably not, but put the word ‘model’ in there and it captures a prurient audience.  If we want a more truthful headline, it may be, ” reasonably attractive woman wants to get out of jail by telling a story”.

Similarly with the liberal use of the label ‘rapper’. When a story emerges about the most recent criminal activity by someone who happens to be black, they are invariably characterized as rappers.  As if that would make their criminal activity less heinous.  Violence in the Black community is so rampant that reporting on it loses its impact day after day after day.  However, if the headlines somehow include ‘rapper’, it may cause some to actually click on the story.  Sensationalism and hyperbole sells and this truth has never been more evident than in today’s zeitgeist.  These days it seems as if people don’t as much make the headlines as headlines make the people.