Our interactions with one another are based on hacking. We decipher each other’s likes and dislikes to develop bonds and boundaries outside of ourselves. We have lists of pros and cons for everyone in our story; we do it both consciously and subconsciously. Our relationships have hierarchies based on data obtained, stored, and processed.
Advertising and Marketing Companies
Companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, and many others have learned to use basic social science theories and turn them into algorithms capable of hacking our behavioral patterns. Yes, we are hackable on both the personal and collective levels.
For most companies and institutions, humans are the gold mine to dig. The amount of money spent and invested to hack our brains and influence our preferences is beyond telling.
“It was calculated that the total advertising expenditure in North America in 2021 amounted to about 297.5 billion U.S. dollars.” source
However, companies are not doing anything different than what we are doing to one another. They figured out a way to make money hacking us.
Human Relations
If there are any lessons that I have learned from our ongoing information revolution, they are the following:
- Older generations were easily brainwashed by the media. They didn’t have as many outlets or ways to verify facts. They went after their basic survival with very aggressive narratives, world doom kind of narratives.
- Most human relations are based on unethical hacking. We overlooked such unethical practices for years and we normalized lies and deceit as part of our daily interactions.
- Younger generations are overly sensitive and self-righteous. They are as easily influenced and hacked as older generations. However, they are more flexible to correct courses, if presented with logical answers.
- Most nations fed their citizens nationalistic and patriotic narratives to ensure and reinforce loyalty, just like brands and sports teams do. It is an ongoing practice, but not as obvious, racist, or bigoted as it was.
- We need to re-visit our values and standards when it comes to human relations and communications. We don’t do much of a two-way communications kind of relationships. We either listen or talk. We are getting to a point in history where we need to do both well, with full comprehension and accountability.
Humans are the ones who determine the true value of a commodity. We shouldn’t be the commodity.
