and where to find me.
“Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay.” ~Gandalf
Have you noticed that blogs are dinosaurs? Yah, me too. Everyone jumped into Instagram and Facebook and slowly blogs became ghost towns, silent halls ebbed with cobwebs.
As we began living in these faster-paced zip-codes with zillions of images and hashtags, we learned to stop reading. We learned to skim. I don’t remember the last time I slowly nibbled at a blog post myself, to be honest. There was just too much to see–to much to devour–across social media platforms. Answers and inspiration with every scroll. Like quick fixes for an unsettled junkie.
And then suddenly: WE ALL LOOKED UP FROM OUR PHONES to see changes happening in the world around us, exposing the hand holding the puppets behind the curtain. Something that seemed an innocent and endearing waste of our day ~ scrolling ~ was the wind turning the gears of a dark and sinister machine. A machine churning swipes and clicks into… power.
We watched as suddenly we had to be careful what words we used. Profanity passed all sensors but certain vocabulary triggered traps that could land an account in banishment. Thankfully I own this space and can say terrible things here like mask, vaccine, and covid without being sent to cross the river Styx.
Suddenly there were gestapo, I mean fact-checkers, with no medical background…censoring everywhere. One mom I follow posted her little girl’s fairytale on IG stories and a misspelled word triggered alarms that attached fact-checkers strong as leeches to her post and knocked it senseless, spiraling into unseen, deep-space algorithms within 10 seconds of her hitting publish. To find it, you had to don a space-suit and rev up your rocket for mission impossible. Another mom, entirely innocent, had her account turned off for several months and she STILL doesn’t know why. She’s told it could be that someone didn’t like her content (about breastfeeding?) and reported her.
Have you noticed yourself morphing? Changing your vocabulary to sneak between these lasers? We are kidding ourselves if we think our content is ours in those spaces. It’s not. Not only are the gestapo bosses making profit off content they didn’t create… our content could all disappear. And for creators–that should be frightening.
Instagram and its twin Facebook are no longer happy, joyful places. Those zones now feel akin to stepping into a suppressive, communist country. An angry country. A country where I go about business-as-usual while they track my every move across the web, access my camera, microphone, photos, and data — and sell it for profit to third parties. And to other COUNTRIES. Wait–huh? What do other COUNTRIES want with our American data? I don’t know but I am pretty sure it’s not for sending us holiday cards.
After watching friends and family decimate each other in these spaces, fighting over… everything… our relationships with one another crumbling into dust: we saw the tech giants’ pockets swelling, and they juuuust recently took their well-earned thrones in political places.
We’re the wind that built them, friends.
(((But wind can change direction.)))
That’s a secret they don’t want you to realize. They make money off of our just being present. They sell advertising based on quantity of users. They make ongoing money from tracking us–they sell us without our knowledge to foreign shores. Staying a user in these spaces is not complacent. It’s compliant. Staying feeds the beast.
Think about it. If we’re not THERE, they can’t sell us. If we’re not THERE to sell things to, their advertisers will move elsewhere.
Here’s where it gets HARD. They’ve bought many off with MONEY and FAME. Compliance in the face of corruption is a germ that claws deep and burrows and hides, even within good, honest hearts. And its ticket through our door are seemingly innocent justifications that we choose to not wash off. There are those with large platforms with thousands of hard-earned followers that bought into the Facebook and Instagram enticements. Innocently–because NONE of us knew better. We never could have seen how far these vast social empires would reach. And now, many will feel the pull to stay because leaving will mean rebuilding. Leaving will mean redoing WORK. Leaving will temporarily mean no more free products, affiliate links, sponsorships or kickbacks. It’s a big business. It’s the bedrock the machine sits on, and it is –unfortunately for so many– brilliant.
If we aren’t making money on these sites we’re enjoying our reach and our pedestal — we naturally enjoy that people like us. Having ten thousand people signed up for our content gives us our own little world of fame where we’re the star. It’s exhilarating, an aphrodisiac. I’m not exaggerating — I know this hit, I have felt it– there’s dopamine involved, it can be measured.
Yet: HERE WE ARE. We’ve all come to this same modern crossroad of realizing we’ve seen too much and we have a decision to make. Continue forward or take a sharp turn? It’s true that some of us arrived here ‘wealthy’ according to social media standards and some of us have just our little hobo sack to dump off. So prepare for a lot of posts like this: “I’m staying here on IG / FB ‘for now’ because…
“I already own a smartphone, so my information is not private anyway…”
“The Instagram privacy policy has NOT really changed, it’s been this way for years.”
Or my favorite: “Someone has to stay behind to be the salt and light in the darkness.”
2020 has opened our eyes to things we did not see in 2019. We know too much now to be innocent users. We know what our information is worth–it’s worth enough to make Mark Zuckerberg the fifth richest person in the world…all through offering us these FREE SERVICES. That’s because we’re worth more than we realize. We’re being sold. Never ever, not once– has corruption been defeated by financing and partnering with the corrupt. By offering our data, presence, and time: WE finance these oligarchs.
And because the kick-backs for those with large accounts (in advertising, affiliates, sponsorships, fame, followers, dopamine) have some users in bondage… change will start with us little people. When the everyday-little-guys leave, when people like you and I stop scrolling, stop showing up there ~ influence dwindles, and big accounts will follow US.
They will go looking to find WHERE WE WENT.
We the PEOPLE — we’re really the ones who will be followed in the end. And doesn’t that make perfect sense? In God’s economy… the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
“May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” ~ the Lord’s prayer
Zuckerberg is standing on a pile of squishy people, and we have to wiggle out — those of us who can get free first should run and pull out our friends, and eventually that pile will topple. (It’s science.)
Time to clean out the cobwebs. You’ll find me in here! I’ve also started dabbling in Parler. Look for me: @Saltboxcolonial. Rest assured, this adventure may lead to exploring new social spaces but I will always fight against evil. Even if it means leaving the gold behind, turning right around, and staying here in my cozy Shire.
Let’s learn to slow down and read again, shall we? I hope you enjoyed this nibble. Be well, my friends. xoxo
Saltbox Colonial 