Saturday, September 10, 2022

OUR BUSY ALGORITHMS

 

One day, YouTube presented me a new Browse By Topic: "Subliminal Stimuli". Evidently, between my dipping into atmospheric music and C's yoga shows, the algorithms (ALS) decided that this topic might be a good fit.

One vid had a very strong odor of late night, cultish QVC BS. As a "subliminal session", this EIGHT hour vid was titled "Attract Abundance While You Sleep". Yikes! Run! Snake Oil Alert! I didn't click on it for fear this would justify the ALS decision and they would send more ideas such as this. I wondered if further training sources were embeded throughout, classes that were available...for a fee, of course. 

Imagine some knucklehead trying to sell this to their ever-suffering spouse, their interpretation of the word "abundance" is MONEY. "Hon, I can make money while I'm sleeping!"  If the spouse is wise like Alice Kramden, the perfect response would be: Sure, we ALL do if we have a savings account. 24/7, rain or shine, awake or not, we're making 1.37% per annum on our money. Woo hoo!

I also regard this whole scheme to be a cousin of the Christian based "Prosperity Gospel" that seasoned bullshitters like the ever oily Joel Osteen have yapped about for years. Yeah, you've been blessed because y'all been good little boys and girls. And if the Lord means for you to have this wealth, well sir, then you are obliged to do what the Good Lord wants you to do. Earlier practitioners include Norman Vincent Peale from the mid-20th Century with his "The Power of Positive Thinking" (1952) and  Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich" (1937). 

I'd be remiss not to mention the latest and ugliest manifestation of this kind of con: MAGA. Dear old hobo Steve Bannon, who perpetrated a major swindle asking folks for money to build a wall along our Mexican border to protect them from the thieving, raping brown hoards swarming into their precious White's Only property, has been indicted for pocketing the cash. Bannon thought his Get Out of Jail Free card pardon issued by his buddy, the former President would absolve him. (game show buzzer)  Either Steve didn't read the fine print or his enormous ego figured no one would have the balls to take him on in court-the pardon only applies to Federal statutes-so prosecutors are going after him on State charges. As historian Andrew Gawthorpe noted in his recent article in The Guardian "In the end, Maga is nothing but a scam with hate in its heart and other people’s money in its pockets".


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