As IF Times

Source: Why Snoop Dogg Is Urging Viewers to Skip Roots | E! News

It’s not often that I’ll agree with a guy like Snoop Dogg.  Here’s a guy whose entire success in life is due to his glorification of the black thug life existence, bemoaning the popular media’s fascination with the black slave experience of well over a hundred and fifty years ago.  Ironically, if he wasn’t black, he wouldn’t have anywhere near the kind of notoriety and fame that he’s achieved in life.  A dope smoking musician who runs afoul of the law; he’d be just another Willie Nelson without the nasal twang.  It happens that he is black and his hedonistic lifestyle is appealing to kids that identify with him.

But his essential point is valid and that is; enough of the moaning and chest beating.  That period in American history when slavery was policy is well past.  It has been documented, dramatized and institutionalized through commemorations of all kinds with reverence properly paid to the progenators of change.  Why continue to recycle the past as if picking at old scabs?  The answer lies partially in money.  There’s plenty of money to be made in continuing to push the narrative of a racially divided country through media sales in video and music.  In fact, to this day, many popular black rooted musicians play the race card during performances supposedly as a solidarity gesture towards their roots.  They pander to their audiences.  As far as I know, this is unique to black artists.  I’m sure Bono never pushes his Irish bona fides at his concerts, nor Blake Shelton condoning ‘go whitey’ at his gigs.  Andrea Bocelli has never shouted ‘go blind people!’ at his concerts.

Dogg is correct. The media powers that market entertainment have an agenda in creating products for a balkanized market. If you observe the offerings on cable and TV networks today, you can easily see this mindset in play.  The Kardashian phenomenon continues to swoop in that constituency of vapid people who just can’t seem to get enough of that family’s grotesque lives.  From Duck Dynasty to The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Big Brother and all of those dumbass derivative shows, media honchos will push whatever sells… the lower the common denominator, the better.

Society is lucky that in general, Jewish and Chinese mothers don’t have marketable music talent.  You’d never hear the end of moaning and tales of woe then.

Source: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

It’s incredibly ironic that at a time when communication to the larger world has never been more accessible, peoples’ exposure to it can actually be shrinking.  This doesn’t mean that people are unaware of things happening across the county or even across the globe.  Thanks to social media platforms such as the ubiquitous Facebook, people are able to snoop into the lives of people whom they would normally never hear from…and that includes relatives, from all over the world.

Now, you can be Facebook pals with any ‘celebrity’ who willingly leaves the door open for the public to ogle their lives.   This satisfies both the voyeur and exhibitionist elements of society.  Facebook has evolved from being a bulletin board of peoples’ actual activities, (essentially a year round Christmas letter), to one where people post cute cat and dog videos.  From this banal stage, Facebook is now moving to a more ambitious, possibly sinister stage, that of news dissemination.

Those of you who post or frequent Facebook regularly may have noticed the proliferation of ads and infomercials interspersed among the cat videos.  That is to be expected, since monetization of eyeballs is the raison d’etre of the company.  What is more subtle are the “trending” news stories that appear throughout the site which are then ‘liked’ and forwarded by your social network.  Since you are more likely to click on the referrals of your pals than to randomly read a story, the newsworthiness of the article gains exposure and by implication, veracity.

This is nothing different from the way that humans have long communicated: the tried and proven technique of gossip.  It’s the modern day equivalent of  “I heard from a reliable source that…”  This gets passed on throughout the community and the story becomes fact without regard to the validity of the story. Next thing you know, the neighbor is part of the JFK cover-up.

The problem is, as the linked story illustrates, the original sources of the story may have questionable facts and indeed may be promulgating a particular worldview.   If a story emerges about the plight of missing penguins caused by evil global warming (and especially if accompanied by doe eyed pictures of the little critters) is “liked” by Pamela Anderson, then every girl on that social net will ‘like’ and pass on that story on their sites and voila, global warming kills cute animals.  For some reason, they never use spiders or snakes.

It’s always good to be skeptical of the news stories foisted upon the public by the major commercial news outlets, but Facebook’s tack is much more powerful, because it creates a mechanism for people to get information from trusted sources, namely their friends, which may carry more weight than if they had read it from oh, let’s say, the unimpeachable Huffington Post.  People may appear to be more informed about things; until you find out that they are really just Facebook bots.  Deluding people with make believe friends is harmless: deluding them with make believe realities is not to like.