Tag: Social Media

Let It Go

 

Following on the heels of the news story about Internet Service Providers (ISPs) astroturfing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to influence its decision on rolling back net neutrality regulations, and in some cases preceding it by several years, is the revelation that Monsanto, makers of Roundup herbicide and a world leader in producing genetically modified seeds, has allegedly been paying shills to post positive comments online about the company and its products, particularly on websites which portray them negatively. Even more disturbing has been the information from internal company memos which reveal its strategy for tilting scientific opinion in its favor by funding biased think tanks, funneling grant money to friendly scientists and academic institutions and even ghost writing papers for them, all of which are meant to appear as impartial efforts, while debunking contrary news articles and impugning the motives of the journalists who write them. Monsanto refers to its policy as “Let Nothing Go”.
Monsanto-siembra-muerte.B.A.2013
Anti-Monsanto stencil “Monsanto – Siembra Muerte” in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2013 reads in English “Monsanto – Seeds of Death”; photo by JanManu. Monsanto’s policies and practices have engendered large scale protests in Argentina, as well as elsewhere around the world. Strangely, in the United States, the land where Freedom of the Press is enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution, the mainstream media is largely silent about agribusiness misconduct. Test that yourself with an internet search.

 

Monsanto is not alone among companies in tasking their public relations people with promoting a positive image online in comments sections, forums, and social media. That’s a very good reason for taking such comments with a large grain of salt. It’s akin to what you may hear around the water cooler at work, only in this case one or more of your fellow gossips makes oddly stilted remarks in favor of the company way, as if speaking from a script. When one of those gossips dons a white laboratory coat and purports to speak with scientific authority on the subject at hand, the discussion moves magically from around the water cooler to around the executive conference table. There the discussion is not so much about influencing public opinion as it is about setting the parameters for debate and ultimately public policy.

Robert Morse learns under the tutelage of mail room boss Sammy Smith as they sing “The Company Way” in the 1967 movie of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

However, just because a shill wears a lab coat and has a list of academic degrees behind his or her name does not make that person any less of a shill than the one who makes a few dollars trolling comments sections on behalf of a corporation. The scientific high priest type of shill is morally worse because he or she exploits the respect and gullibility of the general public when hearing pronouncements from them. Not all of the science shills know what they do, of course, because they may be true believers. The others, who know what they do, but go on anyway because of greed and ambition, deserve no leeway from the public or their peers, and more likely deserve condemnation. Jesus knew as much when He denounced the Pharisees.

A scene from the 1970 movie Little Big Man, with Dustin Hoffman and Martin Balsam. Snake Oil Salesmen and their Shills by no means disappeared with the 19th Century.

For whatever topic you care to name that puts at risk the finances of large corporations – tobacco, climate change, Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and the herbicides that accompany them – you can find a corporate funded think tank with outreach to a handful of friendly scientists and institutions who scramble to debunk legitimate research and hold back a growing avalanche of negative public opinion. The agribusiness funded Genetic Literacy Project has nothing good to say about U.S. Right to Know, an organization largely funded by the organic food industry. Similarly, U.S. Right to Know dismisses the science of the Genetic Literacy Project. The organic food industry in the United States has about 5% of the market and is steadily growing year after year. Organic foods are by definition non-GMO. You are free to make up your own mind about who to believe, of course, and it’s a good thing then that to help you decide, many sellers of non-GMO foods have begun labeling their products as such. This was after giant agribusinesses successfully lobbied the government to scuttle labeling of products that do contain GMO foods. The big corporations apparently don’t trust you with the facts and with making decisions for yourself based on those facts.
― Izzy

 

Environment , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

They Can’t Help It

 

Price Waterhouse Cooper accountant Brian Cullinan has possibly tweeted himself out of a job after his distraction from handing out the correct envelopes to the presenters at the Oscars ceremony on Sunday evening caused an embarrassing mixup announcing the best picture winner. The kerfuffle that ensued amounts to something less than a tempest in a thimble in the scope of world problems, but it does serve to illustrate how far the obsession some people have with social media overrides their common sense. Here is a man who has built a career over thirty years with the same company, a rarity nowadays, and has been elevated to partner status, which means he not only must be pulling down six figures per year, but possibly seven, and he blows it all off because of a lack of self-control when it comes to his social media habits.

 

Before we shed any tears for Mr. Cullinan, we should remember that considering his position within a prestigious, wealthy company such as Price Waterhouse Cooper, he will most likely receive a golden parachute before they toss him off the balcony of the executive penthouse, if they ever do. After a major foul up, being frog marched out the door and booted onto the street without a severance package or even a thank you for years of service is reserved for lower echelon types. In the Executive Club, however, membership has its privileges.

The Muppets always help with retaining a light, proportional perspective.

Cranial rectumitis. Don’t do this!

 

Does the compulsion to engage social media even when doing so can be self-destructive amount to a psychological disorder? Not according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, for which it is not heavy duty enough to meet the criteria. The compulsion Mr. Cullinan shares with so many others, infamously including Supreme Leader, is a lesser tier of disorder related to lack of self-control, or poor willpower, or even to cranial rectumitis. Whatever the cause, overcoming the compulsion starts with personal accountability and recognition of priorities. In other words, do you really need to be doing that now?

 

Throughout history, spiritual leaders like Jesus Christ, Moses, Buddha, Mohammed, and a select number of their followers have been an example for the rest of us of the difficulty in exercising willpower and the ultimate reward for doing so. The majority of us muddle along as best we can, quitting smoking and fatty foods and a hectic pace when it becomes absolutely necessary to our well-being or it just seems the sensible thing to do before it’s too late. We don’t usually call on the help of a twelve step recovery program for these things. Instead we perform a fairly simple cost/benefit analysis and then bring our willpower to bear on the goal, calling on our reserves of self-control to see us through day by day. Whether you’re an executive accountant, the Chief Executive of the nation, or a person struggling with difficulties that affect only yourself and maybe a small circle of friends and family, the demands of willpower, self-control, and thoughtful deliberation are the same. The social media sharing buttons are at the bottom of this post: Please tweet responsibly.
― Vita

Just because some folks are “loons,” doesn’t mean loons aren’t interesting birds worthy of our respect.

 

Disorders , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Nomophobic No More

 

Nomophobia is a term coined in 2010 by the United Kingdom Post Office, which commissioned research into the anxieties of mobile phone users. It stands for no-mobile-phone phobia, or the fear of not having access to a phone or phone service.

On February 3, 2017, New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton, responding in part to the antics of Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown, who streamed a post-game speech by his head coach, Mike Tomlin, on Facebook Live from his smartphone, vowed to “scramble” social media sites in the Saints’ locker room in the future. It was unclear what Payton meant exactly by “scramble,” but perhaps he was referring to using a filter on the locker room wi-fi service. Players could still access social media sites using the signal from their cellular service, however, making the overall effectiveness of Payton’s ban doubtful. A cell phone signal jammer would be an option if it were legal.

Payton’s proposed ban was his response to players’ increasing inattention as well, since they itched to check their phones for distractions instead of devoting their full attention to the business at hand in locker room meetings. These are men in their twenties and thirties, some of them making millions of dollars a year, and they cannot be relied upon to disregard their smartphones for more than forty minutes at a time while their head coach conducts a meeting. But then, considering the behavior some players exhibit during games, perhaps it should come as no surprise they are selfish and immature in other areas of their lives. We would more usefully order our priorities to not give the players and the game as much attention as we do.

 

Arrecife - Iglesia de San Ginés in 18 ies
No cell phones sign at a church in the Canary Islands.
The message in English reads “Sacred Place – Silence Please”.
Iglesia de San Ginés in Arrecife, Lanzarote, Canary Islands;
photo by Frank Vincentz.

 

Whether it is a compulsion or an addiction that many people have to constantly check their smartphone for text messages, emails, or social media posts, is something they need to examine for themselves. The rest of us just wish they would stop checking, checking, and checking again, because it is costing us time and frustration, and in some cases our lives. Besides the everyday annoyances caused by compulsive smartphone users disrupting the enjoyment of theater-goers and patrons at restaurants and shops, there is the now nearly constant problem of being held up at a traffic light by the driver in front being too engrossed in their smartphone to realize the light has turned green. Such drivers build up road rage in others, and that’s minor considering the dangers they pose once they get their car moving.

A majority of drivers sensibly acknowledge that texting and driving is dangerous and are in favor of state laws prohibiting it, yet many of them continue to do it. You can see these drivers everywhere on the roads, bobbing their heads up and down like mechanical dipping birds as they look up and down from the smartphone they hold down just out of view of others – as if they’re fooling anyone – to the road and back again. The danger comes not only while they are looking down, but also for the first few seconds after they look up, because in that time their minds are elsewhere.

The Green Eggs and Ham Cafe - panoramio
The Green Eggs and Ham Cafe at the Seuss Landing attraction
of the Universal Islands of Adventure theme park in
Orlando, Florida; photo by Panoramio user BihnX.
Since some people can’t seem to stop themselves from texting and driving, and since enforcement is lax, it appears the only thing that will get at least some of them to stop is the kind of social disapproval that has built up around smoking in public over the past twenty years. It’s incredible now to recall that up until twenty or thirty years ago smoking in most public places was not only acceptable, it was the norm. People smoked in theaters, restaurants, and on planes and trains. Like enjoying green eggs and ham, people had a cigarette pretty much anywhere they liked. Speaking of green eggs and ham, now there’s an excellent idea: shut off that phone, smart or otherwise, and enjoy an attentive meal with friends or family, put the phone to sleep in the glove compartment while you drive to the theater, and then leave it in the car when you go in to relax and enjoy the show. Your dinner companions, the drivers you share the road with, and your fellow patrons at the theater will appreciate it, and it won’t kill you.
― Techly

 

Devices , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Consider the Source

 

Fake news is in the news these days. There’s nothing new about that, really. We have always had to contend with dubious sources for our information, and ultimately we have always had to fall back on our own healthy skepticism and critical thinking to discount those sources. The difference now seems to be with how fast and how far lies can spread through social media, and how well people who believe those lies can insulate themselves from contrary information. Don’t confuse them with the facts!

 

A reasonable discussion of the issues confronting our society is not possible when different sides come armed with their own facts, all of which conveniently confirm their biases. Before discussion is even possible we have to agree on at least some facts that are, as it were, self-evident. If we insist on our own so-called facts to the exclusion of others, then we descend into tribalism.

What is truth
“What is truth? Christ and Pilate”
painting by Nikolai Ge

 

How to determine fact from fiction? Common sense observations are a good place to start. Gravity is a fact. Dispute it at your own peril. The Earth is round, as one can see when the Moon moves into the Earth’s shadow during a lunar eclipse. Despite that observable fact, because the conclusion requires a leap into abstract reasoning many people throughout history have not agreed the Earth was round. Some people still don’t agree. From celestial mechanics down to whether an ant can move a rubber tree plant all by itself, there is more or less room for dispute regarding the facts of life, depending on how well we can prove them ourselves or trust the proofs of others.

Think of all the common expressions people have used over the years relating to skepticism and the alternative, gullibility:

  • Prove it!
  • Show me!
  • The proof is in the pudding.
  • There’s a sucker born every minute.
  • Tell it to the marines!
  • I’ll believe it when I see it.
  • Falling for something hook, line, and sinker.
  • If you believe that one, there’s a bridge I’d like to sell you.

There are many more, of course. Another expression has to do with learning a hard lesson from gullibility:

  • Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

A twist on that with a nod to a rock song by The Who was coined by George W. Bush:


Currier and Ives Brooklyn Bridge2 courtesy copy
1883 illustration of the Brooklyn Bridge, looking west; by Currier and Ives

 

Facebook and other social media sites which share news sources with their members have promised to more vigilantly curate what they allow on their platforms, but ultimately the responsibility lies with readers to view all news skeptically, and question their own willingness to hear what they want to hear and little else.
– Ed.

 

News , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
1 2