There is well known story about the Cloud and the Sun which, paraphrased is that the Cloud and Sun bet each other that they could get a man to remove his jacket. The cloud blew and blew and it only made the man hold his jacket higher, and the sun was hot so the man took the jacket off. The moral of the story is supposed to be how being positive and warm will get better results than being confrontational and mean.
But as an animist this is fascinating to me. Would the Sun make bets with the Clouds? But a better question is...what is going through the mind of the Man in the Jacket?
What would this man think if he KNEW that Sun and Cloud were taking bets on him? What would he do? What would you do? Its one thing if the weather is cold or hot, its another thing if you know its doing it just to win a bet at your expense.
I know in my case I'd do exactly the opposite of whatever I was expected to, I'd wear my jacket when it was hot and not wear it when it was cold. I just have this thing that I don't like to submit to unrighteous authority, but to each your own.
But lets go back to the man in the jacket in the story. Can you imagine his FIRST reaction? After his astonishment that the clouds and sun were alive; imagine learning that the weather regarded you as a plaything. We need both the rain and sun to survive; and it might make you feel small. But then it could also be empowering. The sun and clouds floating up there are so BORED they they have to take bets on your behavior.
All analogies break down, and you could say I am reading too much into the story but Twitter and Facebook have become such daily parts of our lives that we take them for granted. Yet we let two very very flawed people; Jack and Mark, neither of whom were elected and neither of whom were selected from their virtue, just chance and a bit of skill at programming let them both win the lottery to control our political discourse and primary method of social interaction on a daily basis.
Yes, yo absolutely can delete facebook and twitter, I have many times, but wouldnt it be nice if you could use these tools without these two calling the shots? Vague and ambigous calls for Facebook and Twitter to be 'broken up' ignore the fact that it requires both a congress and president who are willing to take on big companies and about 15-20 years after that. Even if we elect one president or one congress, given the fickle nature of the American public do you really think they will stay the course? Look at what happened when they tried to break up Microsoft?
Nothing.
If Twitter and Facebook are the Sun and Clouds in this analogy, then you cant directly do anything to them. But you can pass word about their activity and maybe the next hapless soul that they make a bet on defies them. One man with a jacket can't do much, but a lot of people with jackets?
I am proposing two ideas here.
1) Coordinate days where you boycott facebook or twitter 1-2 days a week until they comply. Cost them add revenue.
2) Delete your account for a month and then remake it. They both profit off your data.
Really, the thing is, spread your own ideas. The more we organize and fight back, the more we can win. Mark and Jack are not evil but they are definitely not people who deserve the power they have and we can, together, do what we can to take it back.
