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I ask you in this time of political strife to please do one thing for me. Question where you get your information. Question it. If you get that information from a friend or loved one, ask where THEY got their information, and question it.
We are all subject to Confirmation Bias. As such we're all subject to slowly working ANY social media platform (yes even Instagram or Youtube) into becoming a comfortable little echo chamber. Even staring at one photo longer than another will train the algorithms.
Now I have to talk about what's happening right now. Rioting is not OK. Tell me, when I said that, did you think Trump? Or Black Lives Matter? That information alone will tell you which pool of information you've been sipping out of probably. If you search for something on Google about riots you'll be presented with different videos than someone on the other side. Do you see a bunch of memes of Trump complaining about a ramp? Or do you see a bunch of tweets talking about all the damage done by Obama?
I honestly don't even know what Trump supporters believe anymore, but the few I've talked to talk about stuff that sounds like they got it from an alien world. They worry about things that I've never heard of before. When I offer up my concerns they are equally as alien.
This is all well and good until what happened today. Violence. The problem with having people so polarized is that we start to become alien to each other. We start to see the other side as "not human". We see them as dumb uneducated people who are brainwashed.
But the truth is, if you use social media at all, you're being "brain washed" every day, that's what marketing is. It's constant ingesting of information that leads to you becoming more and more solidified in your opinion.
When my Smartphone broke I had a sudden drop in desire to buy things. Why? Because I wasn't constantly putting that in my brain. That's what you're doing right now with your news feed. It's like a feeding trough for cattle, and you're not picking what goes into it.
Trump is just one man. He's not a "God" and should not be given the special privilege to "fight for his honor" more than any other person who lost the presidency. Even if the voting system isn't perfect, it's what got him into the presidency. If he just wanted "What's best for the country" he wouldn't be trying so hard to get himself and only himself elected. The best thing for the country is to not be divided, eating itself from the inside. It's to do things based on values, not on Blue team win V.S. Red team wins.
The #1 thing that makes me scared of Trump is the same thing that makes me scared of Facebook. They are "amoral" meaning they are only self interested. Both will do whatever is beneficial for them, good or bad. Spreading false information is never off the table. Making people mad at each other isn't either. But both are going to rip us apart.