I can't help but to feel like this is the evolution towards the entertainment in the move Idiocracy.

Tencent is like a virus, they even bought 40-45% of UNREAL ENGINE (Epic Games).

I left right before shit got dystopian

You have to have the unaltered originals somewhere, or you won't know what you hid where

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yeah wtf, "we did it just believe us!"

Thanks for the thoughtful reply and the time you took to write it. Much appreciated.

How does Pegasus work?

Hi, elidevious. Thanks for contributing. However, your submission was removed from /r/Futurology.

> > You wouldn’t believe some of the shit he used to tell me about TikTok while we were tripping. > > He’d call their work “nurohacking”, because they knew the tech bypassed users’ prefrontal cortex playing to the limbic system. The limbic system measures everything as either bad or good, housing sex drive and fight or flight, perfect for training their algorithms. Also, the limbic system lacks perception of time, that’s why users are often baffled after they realize how much time they spent looking at 10 second videos. > > I was so confused when he showed me ‘user clusters’ (groups of people that all watch the same content). What was so freaky was how everyone in a cluster physically looks the same. Also kinda crazy that we were in China looking at USA users’ data. > > Interestingly, Chinese gov has policies in place that limits how much time children can use the native version of TikTok (Douyin) in their country, with other rules for adults + patriotic propaganda. They totally understand the power of this tech to warp minds. > > Just thought it was a fun LSD story.

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>Sometimes my life feels like I am being used as a steganographic element in a data stream between two aliens.

That's the coolest thing I've read on Reddit in a while :)

Shut up and make it a free app available to everyone already

I’m not attacking, simply suggesting. Also, wasn’t forced to read it, it’s the second best book I’ve ever read, changed my life and ways of thinking.

It betrays a 1st year psychology student level of understanding of neuroscience, that's for one.

The enitre view of addiction (limbic compulsion vs cortex) is 30 years out of date, and the entire fairytale of the lower lizard brain and the higher, reasoned and enlightened brain sitting atop it is 50 years out of date. Do you think this is so easy?

I find statements like this often from naive techbros who spent their career making apps for ridiculous cash ;) Any neuroscientist down there in the trenches for decades breaking their back to wrest a tiny bit of genuine understanding from a highly complex system far out in the chaotic regime with nothing but a set of ever-improving yet ever too crude tools can only offer a laugh.

Social media are habit-forming. Whoop de doo, such brain hacking. This is stuff we've known for as long as we've known drugs and gambling, which is to say: as long as we've had written word as a species, and likely longer.

What is new, is that each of us poor motherfuckers is holding an interface device in our pocket through which the habit forming behavior can be reinforced at any time, all the time. This is, of course, bad - more or less as bad as having a bottle of vodka that never runs out and taking a swig any time you want. Surely, to nobody's surprise, this would quickly turn you into a raving alcoholic. But is it some incredible feat of neural sorcery on part of the guy who gave you the perma-vodka bottle? Hardly.

Good old guy Karl Marx had a word for people who are so far up their own asses that they forget anything in society apart from their discipline even exists: Fachidioten ("professional idiots").

I would instead invite you to look at the big picture: being able to get someone hooked on an app means jack shit in the grand order of things; and in the long term, the entire data harvesting social app panopticon is a pyramid scheme, built entirely of the "greater fool" fallacy. You get data, more data, all the data, to, pretty much, brag about all the data you've got and get venture capitalists who know even less than you to give you absolute fucktons of money, under the understanding that suckers with even less brains (but yet more money) will buy in and make it worthwhile. But in the end, what good does the data do you? Ah yes, predictive algorithms. Which make you money... how exactly? That's right, by pitching them to venture capitalists... etc. etc. ad infinitum. Or, really, not. The carrying capacity of our economic system is not limitless. The ability to partake in buzzword- and hype-based economy is not limitless. The last bastion might be in the form of authoritarian governments (which is to say, most major powers) wanting this data for social control. But social control is brittle, my friend. I was here and watching it when the Eastern Bloc fell. In the 1980's nobody thought they would see it in their lifetime, the bloc was obviously an insurmountable behemoth. A few years later if immediatelly fell to pieces, and it was immediately obvious it was an impossible house of cards. This change, when ongoing, happened over months.

This is why I always laugh at tech bros who think they got everything solved and that they are, and will remain, at the top of the fucking world.

As we all death scroll through reddit.... cool story bro.

If you think this isn’t exactly how advertising has worked for the past 75 years you’re not paying attention.

If its so good at hiding information, then how do they know the information is there? Cuz if they know the information is there then its not good at hiding

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No I have not and I’m just guessing but neither would you have done so if not given it in college which is fine but to act like this one source is just common reading is aggressive. All I said was in my experience it was not a thing I had heard not attacking anyone unlike you

>Sometimes my life feels like I am being used as a steganographic element in a data stream between two aliens.

Why only two? Maybe it's a party line!

We say trip acid in my circle, but regardless their post is really wierd and just screamed bullshit the other 4 times they posted it too. And their defence being "is it reallly that unbelievable?" Is the nail in the coffin for me. Dudes just trying to farm karma on a cool story

"Theyre hacking our brains man"

...buddy, ive never even been on tiktok. Maybe theres your solution.

That’s cool I had just never heard it many regional Colloquialism

Whatever you say man, believe whatever you want to believe.