This just came across my Blue Sky feed…

Back in 1973 Frank Zappa did a song called I’m The Slime, which was a hilariously brutal take on commercial TV, the essence of which was you, the viewer, are the product not the customer…

You will obey me while I lead you
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don’t need you
Don’t go for help, no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold

Television was, and is, a one way street. You sit in front of one as a passive receptor for whatever it, that is to say the networks or the local station operator, decides to feed you. For a while the personal computer and modems, and then the internet changed that relationship. We no longer had to be passive recipients of information about our world. We could speak for ourselves.

Well…we can’t be having that can we? A good rule of thumb is if you’re getting it free then you are the product and some corporate investors are the customer. Also, if your social media is owned by billionaires, then you really can’t trust anything much you read or hear on it, and especially after today, because if our billionaire overlords don’t like it they will make it disappear from your feed and worse, if they Do like it, if it does serve their purposes, then prepare to be inundated with it whether it’s factual or not.

That’s right folks, don’t touch that dial…

What we need to do going forward is log out, and stay away as much as possible, or only log back in to check for messages from family and friends, and to remind them that you have gone elsewhere.