Tech Tuesday: Is Facebook Just a Variation on the Chicken Soup Franchise? No, It Is Probably Worse, the Real Reason Trump Is Being Tarred This Week

In 2002 I attended what purported to be a three-hour success seminar by Mark Victor Hansen, co-author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. His presentation, demeaning manner and arrogance were more than annoying. For example, he bragged about needing to make two million dollars a year to break even. The experience, which an auditorium of people forked over $75 to each to hear, was so odious to me that I ended up writing a story for The Reader Weekly, "Chicken Soup for the Ripped Off Person's Soul," which I re-published on my blog in 2008.

During his talk he affirmed that he and co-author Jack Canfield were in the Guinness Book of World Records for the speed at which they produced books. But what is the process for feeding this revenue machine? The Chicken Soup books are generated by OPC (Other Peoples' Content).

Most writers have probably seen at one time or another announcements about upcoming themes that Hansen & Canfield are looking for stories about. In 2002 they would pay $100 a story, which has grown to $200 a story today (I believe). In other words, everyone contributes and is rewarded a little while The Machine (Chicken Soup Franchise) rakes in a fortune.

This past week it dawned on me that to some extent that is what Facebook is doing. Except that their machine doesn't pay people to create the content. We all contribute content because our reward is... sharing our photos, our ideas, and connecting with friends. And in the case of FB there are two billion contributors.

How Facebook Differs from Chicken Soup

Now where Facebook differs from the Chicken Soup Franchise (CSF) is in this. Facebook acquires all your information, everything about yourself that you have willingly shared. They have massive quantities of data on each of us, and they sell it to Marketers so that marketers can get very very targeted in their online advertising.

Here's one article: The Price of Free. In fact, here is a whole page of links to articles about how FB uses the info it gathers about us.

So why does the Washington Post make such a big stink about Donald Trump using Facebook data in his campaign to get elected? As anyone in the business knows, the Dems and GOP machinery have maintained data on everybody for as long as it has been possible. Those targeted ads that we see on FB don't show up in our margins because they are guessing.

When Billy Graham died this past month I wrote a blog post (that I ultimately didn't post) about a time when one of his writers gave me a tour of the Billy Graham Association facility in Minneapolis. He brought me in to the Rev. Graham's office and showed me his roll-top desk. I proceeded to do a Google search for pictures of roll-top desks and downloaded a specific image that looked like the one I remembered. From that moment on I have been seeing ads for roll-top desks both on Facebook and elsewhere. This doesn't happen by accident.

Someone shared with me how two years ago Trump's team worked hand-in-glove with Facebook and Twitter to learn how to optimize their marketing efforts in those two channels. It's what all the big businesses are doing. If marketers don't attend those big FB and Google sessions themselves, then they hire consultants who have been in California at the events, building ties to the smartest guys in the room.

The title of this post is my longest ever, and probably could have been shortened to "Much Ado About Nothing." But I'd done that, you might think I'm talking about Shakespeare, and when we talk about Old Bill we immediately go to thoughts about Bob Dylan, and that controversy as to whether he should received a Nobel Prize. So let's not go there.

Enjoy the day.


Related Link
FACEBOOK ALGORITHM UPDATE 
JAN 12—Zuckerburg says FB focus is the user's well-being.

Flat-Footed Flatheads

Part of my evening reading the past few weeks has included Ron Brotherton's Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories. So I found the following email from a friend more than a little intriguing.

We live in an interesting period of human history. One of the ruling philosophies of the Boomer generation has been "Question Authority." And because of our knowledge of history, of propaganda and the media (cf. Edward Bernays and Marshall McLuhan) we're not without foundation to take this stance, up to a point. It's the age of suspicion.

Being suspicious is one thing, but when we distrust everything it can put people into some pretty precarious places. Advances in modern medicine have eliminated many of the diseases that ravaged communities in olden days. In earlier times there were reasons families were large. Many of those children were never going to reach adulthood. But now, with conspiracy theories surrounding the very vaccinations that have made us safe from polio, small pox and other deadly diseases we're seeing a rise in some of these diseases that had been nearly eradicated.

Brotherton doesn't mock and dismiss people who believe conspiracy theories. His book's aim is not to catalog all those rabbit holes. Rather, he attempts to present new research on how the brain works and why we tend to be so susceptible.

This past week I once again watched Woody Allen's Zelig, a fictional documentary about a "chameleon man" who becomes like whoever he is around. It's a clever psychological study about our efforts to fit in. While serving as a masterful piece of entertainment it simultaneously affirmed one of the basic reasons the masses are susceptible to many of the most absurd assertions.

Here's a portion of yesterday's  email, which the writer titled, Flat-Footed Flatheads.

There's this growing phenomenon occurring on YouTube promoting a flat earth theory. They believe the Earth is a flat disk with a dome over the top they call the "firmament" that is described in Genesis of the Bible... separating the waters above from the waters below. On this dome the universe is projected to us including the sun and all the stars. Another claim about Antarctica is it's a wall of ice that goes around the entire edge of the disk. Underneath are the usual layers of earth, crust, mantle, core, etc. They also claim that the UN logo is an actual map of flat Earth.

As creative as it sounds, it's laughable how serious the followers are. I'm not going to explain why the earth is a sphere. Anyone with a couple of thumbs can Google it. What I am going to discuss is the nature of conspiracy theories and the people who follow them. I can be charged as guilty for being amongst this crowd for a sizable portion of my 37 years. The reason I fell into this stuff was I felt hopelessly disenfranchised as a disabled person. There was a theory and explanation for every injustice and corruption present in the world. It's almost a religious experience, the level of catharsis these theories bring to a lonely tortured person. So I get it. I understand why people fall into this tomfoolery.

This is where I have to turn my back on these people. There's definitely something bizarre going on in a possibly sinister way. 

* * * *
Some of my friend's observations here and Brotherton's assessment of conspiracy followers dovetails with Eric Hoffer's invetigative analysis and conclusions regarding people swept up in mass movements. His book The True Believer is a classic. Here are a few quotes.

"When our individual interests an prospects do not seem worth living for, we are in desperate need of something apart from us to live for." p. 24

"When people are ripe for mass movement, they are usually ripe for any effective movement, and not solely one with a particular doctrine or program." p. 25

"A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence." p. 44

"The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning, but from its certitude." p. 76

This should be enough to chew on for today. Let's see what happens next.