Playing with algorithms
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Generally, I avoid Facebook. However, a significant subset of my readers find me on Facebook. Thus, my value proposition says I should give Facebook minimal attention - to attract an audience is to find meaning. From the perspective of someone who writes as a hobby and profession.
Facebook is bad for your brain (and mine). It is also addictive. It gives users little hits of dopamine, which is to say: validation.
Facebook reminds us of a basic human desire: to matter. It hammers us with reminders that people want us. There are a million rabbit holes you can dive into on Facebook. There are also a million scammers per acre.
I like to figure them out. It interests me to investigate the scams they try and run.
Which leads to this rabbit hole by “Joyce Weaver.” I do not know who I am conversing with, but I do know it isn’t the person whose picture is below.
Hi “Joyce!” I am on to you.
There are so many tells.
Wants me to pay for a flight to my hometown for sexy times after five minutes of chatting
Asks a lot of questions that seem scripted because they are scripted
Does not ask my age, does not care that we have different worldviews
Has a backstory that tugs at human empathy (parents died in car crash, lives with grandma, ex-boyfriend cheated constantly, wants to settle down with someone like me without knowing me at all).
Suggests private camping time (hint, hint)
Doesn’t know anything about “her” own hometown or various U.S. regions
Has a dog that shape-shifts into different breeds
All Joyce’s Facebook posts are vapid. Most are gambling sites, and there are only a few posts total.
I would be amused if the consequences of Facebook allowing this weren’t so devastating to the people who get scammed. Don’t worry though: Zuckerberg is a nice guy with the best interests of humanity at the forefront of every decision he makes.
Valerie, 73, one of the many victims, handed over £2,000 to someone pretending to be her son, a small business owner who had borrowed money in the past. Ill with long COVID, she said she would “never get over” the humiliation of being caught out this way.
Oh wait, I was being sarcastic. The algorithms could care less about you, the human victim. I am lucky enough to have a background in tech that spans decades. I also have a psychology degree.
Therefore, I know that tech is a double edged sword, that scams are as old as our species, and that if it seems unreal it is. Please, if you read this, don’t fall in love with a Facebook profile. And don’t give a buck to Zuck.
Facebook does not enhance any human’s condition, and most certainly not the human condition as a whole. I worry about “Joyce” because I go to dark places when I come across these scams. What if the person I am talking to is being coerced into “seducing” me? The nightside of the planet is dark and full of terrors.
Playing with algorithms
Interesting piece. Here is my experience with Facebook. On the positive side, I connected with friends and family. I got involved with local community discussions. I joined a couple of pages devoted to growing food - my favorite subject. All healthy engagements. But after a while I also got sucked into political combat. I was spending too much time arguing with the equivalent intelligence of an asphalt parking lot. I actually argued with a guy who thought Ivermectin (animal dewormer) would cure Covid.
At some point I evaluated the value of my time. 24 hours. What am I going to do with it?
And I had discovered Substack via Heather Cox Richardson. That led me to Hubbell, Craven, Vance, Rosenberg, Hartmann, Reich, Rather and you. There are others. I said good bye to FB. I have not missed it.
The damage done to society, our nation, our social norms and our election process by FB is unforegivable. Fuck you Mark Zuckerberg. You are a narcissistic mad scientist from the movie we never wanted to be real. You actually see yourself as some sort of hero. But you are only slightly better than Elon Musk. The two of you reinvented the world and made it a mess without morals. Hope you both find yourselves on a one way Spacex trip to Mars.
That’s a very interesting final paragraph, something I had t thought of. An excellent conclusion to an interesting article.
I am inundated with scam attempts - phone, text and computer. (I’m not on Facebook though). There are times when I pass them by and just kind of wave in recognition. There are other times when they infuriate me on a meta scale. For one, they pollute the Internet and I find that depressing. For another, any bandwidth of mine they occupy annoys me. Every day I get a call from a Chinese scam. I never answer, but it’s an interruption. And then I have to deal with the inevitable message.
It’s such an uncivilized turn in society, perfectly aligned with the drain we are spinning down. And I heard in passing lately that the advice from experts is to just get used to them aka “We’ve lost”.
We are brittle. And the Internet era opened with such promise, which I fully believed.