Coping: With the “Scam” of Social Media

Here at UrbanSurvival.com, we like to be ahead of the trends. One of the ways we do this is by working 10-14 hours per day, seven days a week following pertinent trend-evolving news. The other way is sitting back with a solid generalization process in order that we truly understand the business implicates when a “grand new thing” comes along.

We did this a long while back for our Peoplenomics.com subscribers when we explained that social media is a time-circular business model. It depends on giving away HUGE amounts of product in the beginning few years and then imposing large costs on customers on the back-end, after the “grand new thing” has established itself as “necessary for the conduct of business.”

In fact, it is not.

If anything, and as I pointed out in last Friday’s column, it seems pretty clear that while Social may provide about 50,000 jobs there are plenty of downsides.

1.Social media costs perhaps several trillion in lost job site productivity.

2.Social encourages texting while driving.

3.Social holds private company’s customer-base hostage and rents back those customers who were sucked in – at no charge – the the social social network.

4.It’s even more sinister: It provides for GroupThink and is how ideas once comfortably “in the closet” where they were accepted but not marketed, into vast new engines of gender and sexual-preference marketing.

5.Can it be worse? Oh, sure. Many of the Social(ists) have back-end connections to the US government agencies which are building connection maps. This will, over time, allow the government to infer (whether true, or not) who has been “exposed to radicalizing concepts” and who are therefore more at risk of becoming “terrorists.”

6.If that’s not plain enough, Social is the ideal way for sundry terrorists and subversives to “pimp their shit” and if you don’t understand how, you know little (or nothing) about the finer arts of cryptography – including steganography. Click, read, and learn if you dare.

7. Any idea how many HR departments have NOT hired people because of their social posts?

The announcement that “George Soros Finances Group Helping Facebook Flag “Disputed Stories” should raise red flags, which if I do say so myself is a fine double-entendre considering whozzit.

It should also explain why – after almost 15-years of being soundly beaten by website colleagues who love social media that I have consistently warned (and I’ll paraphrase that sociology genius George Carlin here) “It’s all bullshit and it’s all bad for you…”

But look, if you want to start writing articles pro bono for us, we’ll call it something and post it where the HR Department will never get around to looking. 

Specialization isn’t for insects.  It’s for smart people.

Social is a Lynch Mob Looking for a Target

The movie “Dumb, and Dumber” captures the essence of social.

Yes, you can put a picture of your nice kitty-kitty on the social pages and you will get approximately zero traffic. You can always “boost your post” by paying the social operators additional fees to send out notes to people who were once your direct friends and customers.

But you see what has happened? The Social operators steal YOUR FRIENDS AND CUSTOMERS and all you get in return a few years later is?

A BILL!

And so it is that UrbanSurvival.com has its own little discussion space in our comment section at the end of each story.

But we NOT have our fine (upscale and generally college-educated) audience b e held hostage by a group of revenue schemers who are wrecking productivity, causing accidents, and oh yeah… Taking us down the Orwellian Road by purporting to tell us what it True (warming, racism, gender discrimination) while telling us what is False (anything Trump, all things Russia, and God help us, anything white straight hetero).

Will it break my heart to see the long-expected decline is Social to be roughly coincident with the top of the Market in 2017 – or 2018 if the Fed pulls off a Miracle on Wall Street?

See if you can figure it out without help.

Oh, and without posting it on Social.

If you have to post something in order to “poll your friends” so you can avoid learning the high art of critical thought, then you have already moved into the Camps. The ones where instead of ovens, then burn souls by wasting all their precious time on Earth.

Slick, ain’t it?

You are welcome to Boost this Post to your friends. And because we’re in the Christmas Spirit, we won’t charge a dime for it. Around here if you do the work, you get the rewards.

I can see why the technological Left is afraid.

Left to their own, markets will often tell us grand Truth without too much effort. If you were to roll back the clock to November of 2011 and could put money into the ETF SOCL or the S&P 500, it sure looks in this chart like SOCL has underperformed the broader market.

You might ask “What is the market telling us about Social Media?”

Think Hoola Hoops, CB Radio, and all those nifty Whammo products from back in the day. Then get back to me.

We’ll likely still be around – because making money is a pursuit, not a fad.

More than I think can be fairly said about Social Media.

Entertainer’s War on Public Opinion

The antics of the anti-Trump entertainers last week is still stuck in my craw. So much so that Elaine and I have been kicking around how it works.

Just so you know how divide and conquer works in politics, you need to see this: It’s a simple explanation about how political operatives segment populations in order to win elections. Oh, and by the way, taught to me by a no kidding – Democrat mayor!

Let’s say I am Candidate A and you are B. Let’s go down the left column.

I tell you I am for something most people want (safe streets) and against something really conservatives might not want (government-paid gender change).

Now we go down the right column. I charge that YOU, my opponent, “Doesn’t want Safe Streets” and I hope this covers “issue ownership” for me. I have “pinned the label” on you (running against me) as someone who is against what your interests are.

Then, being very careful to offend as few as possible, yet still wanting to label You as supporting government-paid gender change, I hint that You’d like to spend money on that but what about money for safe streets, better emergency services and all those potholes?

See how it works?

The problem – and where entertainers like the anti-Trump cast of clowns – and people who don’t grok this stuff – is that in reality few people really like politics. In fact most people are sick of it.

Enter the NFL players who have made a (bad) name for themselves by venturing into the political cesspool. And those wannabe’s lobbying Electors to be faithless and operate contrary to the will of the people in the home districts.

Only the weakest of minds, and those of least internal fortitude would take a third-party labeling effort seriously. Most would sit back and say “This is crap. I only deal with principals in politics, not the actors or hangers-on. Oh, and the grand jury…”

This is closely related to our discussion of Social Media, too.

It has to do with how we have gone from being the most inventive, hardworking, war-winning, rights-promoting, economic-opportunity-building country in the World to….well….whatever the hell we call it when Monday falls on Coup Day.

The Olde Farmer’s Learning Curve

(To borrow from Monty) And now for something completely different.

(click, go ahead, trust me)

Got that new 20V lithium ion battery powered pole saw for Christmas (*the timing is coincidental to it’s time to prune pine trees).

And the first lesson I learned was don’t just stand a few feet to the size of the large branch you’re cutting.

A 15 foot pine branch weighs around 35-pounds when dead and drying out. But applying f=MA and 32ft/sec./sec. we can now give a fairly good estimate of bruise size on my right wrist.

Monday Job Hunting Tips

Again, trust me and click here.

There, all better now. Rinse and repeat 94-million times and we’ll all be better.

Write when you get hired.  Eggnog?

George@ure.net