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Simon & Schuster Gives Racist Troll $250K Book Deal: Why Banning Them Makes No Sense


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Well the lack of control is just a function of knowledge and technology.  Controlling brains will come first because, as it is child's play compared to controlling the weather.

 

I've seen people hypnotized, I see how easily we can be deceived and manipulated, and of course the owners of social media  with access to tremendous amounts of our data have taken this type of control to a new level.

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Add more. I was responding to your question about spirituality. 

Hypnotism is suggestibility. I would make a difference between influence and control. You can amplify a tendency . However it is much harder to control the mind. The reason is i believe in the conscious subconscious and unconscious mind. So mind control advertising and hyonotism work better on some people. 

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I agree.  I doubt I could be hypnotized, but I can be, and have been, influenced by marketing, which is why I try to avoid the efforts of corporate marketing--which is virtually impossible unless you live in a cave. 

 

Even in a cave, in some far flung country, Facebook is coming for you; they are going as far as building infrastructure and giving away handheld devices to accomplish this.

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@Del, you can;t use yourself as the benchmark for the masses. We were born before marketing was so pervasive and effective. Remember we only had a few TV stations and they stopped broadcasting late at night. 

 

Today kids have handheld devices and are targeted nonstop by marketers 24 hours a day--every day of the week!  They never knew a world different from this.

 

You and I can go without out cell phones and TVs.  The average person under 30 would probably have actual physical withdrawal symptoms if they with without a cell phone for more than a few hours.  Their minds are never still... it makes a big difference in how we think.

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Education.  Full stop.

 

If you really want the full solution; stop consuming most forms of media and go back to reading books and newspapers.

 

That is it.

 

---------------------------

 

I think we need to seriously consider the media we consume. There is some media that I simply do not subject myself to.  Social media is one.  Sure I post a link to AALBC.com on most days, but you will never see me scrolling through my own feeds.  There are no social media apps installed on my phone.  I say this because people lie, misinterpret things, or just make shit up.  I prefer to consume my news directly from reputable sources --even then you need a variety of reputable sources. 

 

Speaking of cell phones. I do not keep it next to me.  I don't even sleep in the same room with it. I primarily use it as a wifi hot spot, to text family and friends, and to look stuff up.  I barely used the telephone ap. 

Whenever I'm in public I see people fully engaged in the cell phones, they could be driving, walking down the street, at dinner with friends, or just riding in an elevator.  The thing never seems to live their hands.  At the airport, I see people sprawled on the floor slavishly tethered to an outlet because their stupid phone can't hold a charge for a full day.

 

I think cell phones are one of the easiest ways for corporations to get into our heads and manipulate us.  starting with getting us to buy a brand new one every two years--at least. I use the devices accordingly.

 

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Young people also grow up without a sense of PRIVACY like those of past generation.

They don't have a problem with all of their business being made known to the public, including their phone numbers, address, and even social security number.

You can't go into a Macys or Norstrom or any other high end department store without them trying to get as much information as they can out of you while making your purchase.
And most people just blurt all of their personal information out into the open without so much as taking a look over their shoulders to see who may be listening.


Infact, this so-called "information age" has made a lot of young people just down right naive.

If you go into a grocery store or a coffee shop you'll notice that most of the time you have to ASK for a receipt because the attendant will just NOT give you one.
It's become the norm not to get paper receipts for your purchases and most young people don't seem to understand the need for one.....UNITL.

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Yeah Apple and Google keeps tabs on your every move, where you go, what you buy, who you talk to, what sites you visit.  The people who used these products simply do not care about privacy or what the implications of it being eliminated mean.

 

The information age has not served people.  No one will argue that the pubic is more informed, smarter, or any wiser as a result of all of this technology.  The performances of our students compared to other countries will tell you that.  45 in the whitehouse is obviously a consequence.

 

On a global scale despite of our technology, global literacy is half of what it was just 40 years ago down to 17%!  SO much for technology.

 

Information technology, and the vast amount of data we prove has benefited corporations.  We are easier marks for anything they have to sell.  Much of we don't need and some of it does is harm.

 

And I'm someone who is fundamentally for technology--I just don't like the way it is being used against us today.

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I would say that people were best served by the internet perhaps during the first 10 years it became commercially available roughly before 2005.  We emerged from a period, not unlike today, when corporations like AOL and Compuserve controlled everything. 

 

When the web emerged we were liberated. Anyone could establish a website and create a unique platform that catered to the needs of an audience. For Black folks this was particularly good news because we were underserved by corporations.  Most importantly it created economic opportunities for folks to create business or just earn money r just earn extra money on the side.

 

Today we have completely regressed.  This economic opportunities are largely out of reach today and we are back to paying corporations for access. If we are not paying them cash we are paying them with all of our personal data. Black cultural content is not back in the hands for corporations, largely run by white men motivated by greed.

 

Today, on social media, information that is made up crowds out journalism, so people are woefully completely misinformed.  This is worse than being ignorant in my view. 

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On 10/14/2017 at 9:36 PM, Troy said:

Education.  Full stop.

 

If you really want the full solution; stop consuming most forms of media and go back to reading books and newspapers.

 

That is it.

 

@Troy

 

Unfortunately that's not it.. Reading comprehension is a becoming a lost art.  Most people don't even have a grasp of semiotics...  I included  few symbols in my novel that modern Americans would (should) have understood right away  but they didn't have a clue.  And my symbolism was basic - really basic!    Today, people read a few words that tap them emotionally and believe they understand the composition.   Recently I had to diagram a essay  beginning with the conditional statement .   I agree education is the key... but now we have to figure out how to help people become educated.  

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Mel we are taught to consume media that way.  In fact we are taught to produce media in that fashion for the web.  I took a week long course that Stanford University gave on publishing for the web.  We were taught to "webify" our content.  I called it dumbing down;  Basically reducing the complexity of sentences, lowering the vocabulary level, and shortening paragraphs etc. The idea is to optimize content for consumption on the web.  There are application that will dumb down you content.

 

I know I have encountered a good article when I feel compelled to print it out.

 

The trend has only increased today. It is big pictures, graphics, and short video that have substituted for depth. We are expected to be able to communicate complex ideas with memes optimized for delivery on Instagram. They say a picture is worth a thousands words, this is true but those words are different depending on the person. 

 

One reason we fail to communicate a coherent consistent message is that we do it in a webified or dumbed down manner which is less clear and open to interpretation  Sometimes complex ideas take many words to relate.  The economic of the web, driven by social media is not optimized for log form content.  

 

Many of us are simply not accustomed to consuming the type of content, so we don't.  Education is key.

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You were fortunate @Delano, to be encouraged to think for yourself at an early age.  Most of us are not. 

 

The culture is designed for us to seek conformity and to do what everyone else is doing.  This is in my mind is why most people are not happy.  They never purse what makes them happy, or even bother to try to discover what it is that makes them happy.

 

Our corporate driven culture tells us that consuming more things will make us happy, because they profit from propagating this belief... 

 

I read somewhere that the racist Troll married a Brother.  I did not try to find the source; I saw it in passing somewhere on the web.

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