Mastering Persuasion: The Art of Manipulative FOMO
Do you understand that your online presence has resulted in a real world change on your emotions and behavior? Humans don’t seem to care. I don’t think it’s laziness; I think people truly do not want to remove themselves from social media at this point. They decide that the emotional manipulation is something that they should not worry about, because clearly it is not happening to them. The online presence continues, untouched, unaltered, and the websites continue to show them a feed that will do its absolute best to keep you engaged with its enraging content specifically designed for your consumption. (think of the linguistic manipulation here!) I cannot fully blame people who are wrapped up in this world; they have been tricked. They have been whisked away into a virtual reality that supports the idea of the human removing himself from his humanity under the guise of “Create this world full of content tailored for you and your interests. Do not allow other interests or opinions because they are wrong. Anyone who is different than you is wrong.”
Sometimes I am met with aggression from the party receiving my cyber ethics spiel. Excuses fill the air, some with varying levels of validity. An artist must show his art. Okay, I completely agree! However, the people that have given me this excuse have weaponized it and use their artistic endeavors as a social media mask as they continue to peruse the platforms like every non-artist. Maybe I’m generalizing here…
Even I have fallen prey, countless times. Events are announced on Instagram. Shows that I want to go see are announced on Facebook. I made a “fake Instagram” in order to attempt to keep up with these events, but I don’t want that application installed on my cell phone. Also, without even realizing it, I would end up scrolling for way longer than intended! Even someone who has dedicated their life to combating abusive technologies instantly fell under the spell after having an Instagram again for five minutes. If that does not clearly show you the issue at hand, you might be too far gone.
On a daily basis I implore and almost beg people to consider their online behavior and the cost it has on their real world actions because humans have been cornered and we must fight back. Our nature is being stripped away and being replaced with an enticing metaverse that allows for you to be whoever you want to be. Will this really come at no cost to us?
We absolutely must reverse engineer the technological human collective that we have become, for it will be the sword that will be fallen upon.
“I deleted my Instagram the other day because I realized that I was looking at hours upon hours of pictures of hot girls and other shit I don’t care about.“