Is Facebook a modern day cult?
Characteristics of a cult:
A cult has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which causes conflict for those”outside”.
The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members and making money; leaders dictate how members should think, act, and feel.
Typically, members are expected to devote large amounts of time to the group, are encouraged to live and/or socialize only with other group members.
Facebook exhibits many of those same characteristics and the huge amount of time that people dedicate to the world’s largest social network is eerily similar to that demanded of members by cults.
Its leaders game the application to encourage more and exclusive interaction within its digital walls, offering many inbound but few outbound connections in order to maintain control of user engagement and content. This is by design; the strict control enables it to drive more revenue.
And it’s working. Over 75% of Facebook members log in daily.
Facebook is a digital walled garden.
Between marketplace,messenger, (not so) private chat, “groups”, they even tried to develop their own digital currency!
The have full control of what you say as well. “Community guidelines”….Which have dramatically tightened over time.
They have a police force who will slap your wrist – or “jail” you if you dont “comply”. Your sentence is based on your “record”.
Redefining Relationships
Facebook has a dramatic effect on our definition of relationships
Our society has quickly moved from living mostly private lives to living life in the public, digital sphere.
Facebook uses gamfication tactics to encourage and reward those who share more thoughts, behaviors, and activities with the world.
The activities and thoughts that we used to consider private or too mundane to share with other people have become our new base vocabulary.
Just like cults…
Facebook has devalued traditional friendships .
You can meet someone once and become “best friends” on Facebook the next day.
Best-friend-type relationships, as evidenced by the personal information we share with our peers online, are often established on Facebook among people who have never met in person.
Those heavily involved in “living on Facebook” are “afraid” to leave the community.
Afraid to lose touch with “friends”. Afraid of being an outcast. Many say “I could not live without FB”.
Just like cults- those who break free from FB feel a loss, guilty but over time FREE.
Our privacy, once held sacred, is now a cost we willingly pay for access to a larger community of over-sharers. What’s amazing to me is that we’re unsure of exactly what or how much personal data we’re providing and how they might be used, yet we blindly accept privacy statements and jump into Facebook engagement and apps with little apprehension.
When Facebook started taking off Zuckerberg’s reaction to FB users oversharing once private information
just to get attention was “HA, Dunb Fucks” .
With the world’s population quickly becoming the domain of Generation Y or Millennials who are “digital natives,” we must ask ourselves if their brains are being rewired. And if so, to what effect?
Hooked!
FB has carefully created a new addiction that parallels alcohol, cigarettes and cocaine.
All lure you with momentary pleasure that you want again and again….. The you feel weak and want to stop.
You know its destructive. You feel worse AFTER “using”.
You realize your hooked and nearly powerless to simply walk away from what started as “pleasure”.
This writing may cause you to agree, disagree or most likely get “upset” with me for such a “radical” comparison.
Consider your emotion, your reaction carefully. It will truly speak to your attachment to a voluntary community
that has made history for its blatant disregard for privacy and deliberate tactics of creating addiction to itself.