Facebook Opioid
Here’s some breaking news for all you addicts out there. Facebook was designed, so say some of its founders, to dig deep into your brain and reward you with instant and constant gratification. Likes, dislikes, tweets and pinging. They want you to keep in touch, they say, with your ‘friends’ and relatives. Ho ho. Just trying to help you.
Can you say Ennabler? Can you say Pusher? They do want you to stay in touch, all right. They want you to chain yourself to your phone, your computer, your device and let the ads wash over you like a soothing shower. Just like the tobacco boyz, they’ve studied you and they’ve designed a delivery system you won’t be able to resist after a very short time. The cigarette pushers took some tobacco leaves, chopped them fine, then added everything from formaldehyde to the pancreas of endangered species, put them with 100 chemicals known to the state of California as carcinogenic, made a slurry, then dried the toxins into a compact little roll that resembles real tobacco. They made these neat little filters they perforated so that you had to pull very hard to get your dose and called those Menthol Lights, less tar, more flavor, that kind of ad rubbish.
Facebook, they took some behavioral research from B.F. Skinner’s monkey experiments and Pavlov’s dogs and applied them to you. We always knew social media was addictive, I guess, we just didn’t know the folks upstairs had manipulated us. Just like tobacco. Just like McDonalds. Just like Coca-Cola even after they took out the cocaine. When sugar was under investigation, the sugar daddies blamed heart attacks on fat. Facebook, we’ll have to wait and see who they blame. I’m betting the Russians. Parents who don’t do proper supervision. Video games. But the truth is a lot more sinister than those pesky Ruskies. I’m afraid I have to unfriend Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow gangsters. Your social media is a social destabilizer. Big thumbs down, Mark. But I hafta admit, you won. We lost.
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Tags: facebook addiction, Zuckerberg the Pusher Man
B.F. Skinner + Pavlov + Zuckerberg = just what I’ve always thought, but with a better name:
MonkeyFaceDogBook
Remember those Vilas Zoo monkeys? I’d like to put some of these social media guys in with them. That, or use them in some new and far more humane experiments. Maybe hire Dr, Moreau to design some. Instead, we’re the experimental subjects. Monkeyfacedogbook indeed.
Ah yes, the Vilas Park Zoo circular mini primate cage.
Sophomore year my roommate (psych major) volunteered to care for the critters over vacation break when everyone else had left town. He asked me to tag along one day, pointed out when they displayed fear grimaces and other monkey shines, but what always stayed with me was feeding time. I don’t know what I expected, bananas? peanuts? It certainly wasn’t something packaged in a 50 pound bag printed with a red & white checkerboard pattern, giant letters emblazoned across the front announcing – Purina Monkey Chow.
I suppose Purina made more sense than Kellogg’s though.