Recently at Americana UK Towers we set up the cine projector and had our weekly ‘film night’ where we come together as one and enjoy a movie. We had a high old time each with their bottle of over strength spirit in one hand and vegan snack of meadow grass flavoured chickpea crisps in the other. It was truly remarkable – holding hands and disavowing the existence of an interventionist god as a precursor to the main event, smelling each other’s hands to check for ‘that’ hand sanitizer aroma and knowing therefore that we were free from virus spreading guilt and promising to love one another regardless of what we had said about our fellows via private messaging in the preceding days of the week.
Our movie of choice was “The Social Dilemma”. It was a nice little thing. We were very much in favour of ex-employees of big tech companies dissing their former employers. Those guys have got it coming after all, no? Yes they have. Are there axes to grind? Maybe. Was the piece correct? Maybe not – essentially what was being implied was that tech companies (you know the ones) were complicit in all sorts of bad stuff from suicide rates going up, general levels of mental well being going down and support for dodgy groups be they state actors or terrorist groups was a fundamental part of the business model.
Now these companies are worth billions due to the advertising revenue that they get. This is (or should be) understood. It’s how come the ‘service’ they provide is free. Surely everyone knows that when a link is clicked and an advertisement displayed then the dollars come in. I can’t see how more nefarious it is than that (leaving aside the tax avoidance issue which is a separate case). What it does show is that one should have one’s own filter or filters in place. Sure there are lots of gullible folk out there, yes there is increasing polarization in political thought/discourse and of course you can’t believe everything you read (you never could). What we would suggest is that you maybe shouldn’t shoot the messenger. In a modern age where politicians seem to be able to lie with impunity maybe you should turn your (metaphorical) sights on those people.
