Millennials: Privacy No More
Why are we so hell bent in baring it all?
A hundred years from now, humans and humanoids will remember us not through scrolls but through scraping the vast entirety of the Internet Archive. Bare-naked. Exposed. Vulnerable. No mystery for an archaeologist to investigate and no digging required. Now, our very humanity on the cusp of the ultimate, unnecessary, information sharing era. It is morally damaging not because of the deep, darkest secrets lurking beneath your browser history, it deprecates the essence of everything, of all things that you don’t know yet will matter at the end. Privacy is an inherent choice, not an expectation but do we know that? When did we stop fighting for it? When did we cede control of our lives for the sake of a better shopping experience?
Facebook is an epitome of man’s loss of consciousness when it comes to the labyrinth of their lives. It’s a tool but we treat it like an omnipotent being that deserves to know it all. We regret, for a while. We stop, for a while. We never look back as the scandal of your life is exposed but.. you feel terrible for a while, then it sucks you in to consume more. We were conditioned to be gullible on what has the most likes that it has lost an entire generation’s future and the great feat in human psyche merely obliterated for no good cause. We regress to being sapiens who intellectually have leaped forward only to stumble into stone age mindset, nomads who do not even know where to wander.
“For awhile” became the norm. The norm is scary. Not everyone feels scared and that is the scary part because Facebook’s inept view of an open world is flawed, as its apparent innocent vision is in polarity of its eerie intentions veiled in a Messianic slogan. The fleeting urge to get influenced by the world wide web is no new concept but it has escalated to remarkable heights that it is almost impossible to grasp it back. Facebook has been operating behind the guise of “Making the world open and connected” until it unveiled its true purpose to be a platform of misinformation and the utter disregard for people’s sensitive, non-criminal personal information — for the purposes of greedy capitalism and the mantra to keep the company ahead of competition by “moving fast and breaking things”. It turns out they broke lots of things and they still do. Things that pertain to basic human rights and civil liberty, hiding behind the curtain of freedom of speech as the “tool” has gotten haywire.
The bluish hue and friendly Facebook logo have succeeded with the most sophisticated psychological warfare in our history. It’s the digital version of Skinner’s Operant Conditioning which involves the concept of providing reinforcement or punishment for a voluntary behavior, such as by incessantly posting statuses for the euphoria of “likes” and the depreciating effect of being ignored. Today, the frightening scenario is that Facebook has transitioned into Classical Conditioning effortlessly and it has transcended across generations. We barely notice it due to the fact that this concept relies on involuntary behaviors, reflexes that have become innate — automatic behaviors to instinctively expose, consume and share. Facebook has perfected this, you don’t have to be a psychologist to piece it together.
This article is titled for the millennials, however, that is not truly the case. This problem has traversed all living generations. Baby boomers, generation X, Y, and, including the overarching repercussions beyond. It’s an arms race to bridge the gap between the debate on regulation but eclipsing that is our responsibility. Self-determination, a right we fought and still fighting for but at certain scores in history, we irresponsibly misused and ignored when the consequence is not at face value. A prime example is baring it all in social media at the risk of your data being compromised and abused. As everyone strives for an everlasting impression at an age where we can only be famous for 15-minutes, do not wander and get lost in the present. Live life as it transpires, moment by moment. Maybe it’s old-fashioned but connecting people without empathy, what’s the point?