Your ego is in plain sight on social media. There is no silence of ego. Your shining profile speaks for you while you sleep, in others scrolling your story is told. That sweet drone is sung through all hours. Like a songbird whose chest has been broken open and song has become a twinkling tone played by a small electronic speaker.
This procrustean animation of ourselves could never imitate us, but it can design us. It can fill our mind with easier paths of thought, bucketing our behaviors into habits of mind. These algorithms induce anger, fear, outrage, lust, pride, and shame for the sole endeavor of capturing your attention, for there are many things to grab your attention in the modern world. Your attention and time are zero sum assets that are being manipulated away from your control. They auto-play videos as you scroll, they blast bright red bubbles with numbers that gamify social interaction. If Facebook has your attention, something else in your life does not.
They are hooking every emotional connection they can to have your eyes, to serve you ads. They mine your data, all of your interactions, every source or pipeline of data that can be suctioned onto you (whether it is your Roomba in your room, your MyFitnessPal; or even worse your credit card purchases sold by credit companies or location data sold by your phone service provider). They use your habits and weaknesses, the things that make you tick to build a replica of you. A digital human with predictable habits modelled on years of data monitoring your past behaviors much better than you do yourself.
This digital twin has a different drawing in your own mind than the surveillance capitalists’. The misunderstandings begin small and localized, but as we lend more of our lived experiences to surveillance, more data will grow in algorithms that do not serve your interests. Algorithms that represent the financial interests of massive companies, not the local needs of the lending human.
The modern digital human does not desire ads for products. They desire truth and understanding. In a world broken in communication we are forced into feedlots of ideology. Facebook groups that do not represent a natural gathering of people, rather a mob. We exist digitally in mob webs, always on edge for a perceived threat.
In summary: Go outside and live well. Eat well. Think well. Surpass yourself. Make the world better by being better. Maybe delete social media, maybe make the journey to health in this new digital evolution.