Gadgets and Brainwashing

When we utilize our gadgets, the internet will feed us with what we are hungry for. If we are interested in science, the algorithms used by YouTube, Facebook and other platforms will suggest more things about science. However, the internet can also feed our fears --are you in danger of catching internet cancer?

It is important to teach our children to become aware that behind almost everything on the web somebody is being paid, even when we simply look at the ads. This "free" information has a cost somewhere. Sometimes they are not after our money, but want to manipulate us.

The computer algorithms will suggest things similar to what we previously viewed. Eventually, our perception of life can become over-filtered, focused. This can be for good when following your positive interests, but bad if these interests follow fear.

As media channels our interests, over time this can alter our perception of the outside world. We no longer are exposed to the larger reality of everything in society and the universe.

If we are fearful, the internet will give us more of the things we are fearful about. The recent crisis in America was fueled as people became paranoid and victims of irrational ideas, including conspiracy theories.

Many people, especially if they have low self-esteem, will feel special, at least for a while, when they think they have discovered a conspiracy that other people don't know about.

QAnon, for example, is designed to help the users come to an intended misunderstanding of real events.

The puppet masters, the perpetrators, hint about the desired conclusions. They have "pre-seeded" the conclusions. These manipulators point out a meaning for events that fit the propaganda message they are delivering.

In the past, if you had a crazy idea, your family and friends would tell you "it's a crazy idea" and it would die out.

However now, you can connect with billions on the internet and you can easily find somebody who is even crazier than you. People can create their own alternative world and join crazy clubs, and go on a conspiracy adventure not that much different than playing a fantasy game (until they became so completely deceived they act on this misinformation, and then they are arrested for storming the US capitol).

This is how people became radicalized. You follow a fear, then the fear becomes amplified by your contacts in that circle of paranoia.

It could happen in any country.

Richard Baker

American citizen retired in the Philippines