"April fool banaya to unko gussa aaya" or so goes an old Hindi song .
1st April is officially April fools day. I sometimes genuinely wonder do we only need one day to celebrate foolishness? Look at the recent Cambridge Analytica episode. It is claimed that the company made psychographic profiles of millions of voters so that it could influence them to vote for Trump in the US Presidential Elections.All this while the actual Facebook users/voters being unaware of all this happening.Isn't this the equivalent of getting fooled? This Cambridge Analytica episode brought into light the larger issues of the data on social media and how it might be used so that the marketers/sellers can influence us. I am sure each of us using social media is blissfully unaware of how our data is being used to influence us. We are being fooled by social media but because #deletefacebook does not save us from the ills anyways we don't know what to do.Long ago I had written a blog post about "Whose choice is it anyways "(http://dsaidso.blogspot.in/…/whose-choice-is-it-anyways.html) which talks about how influencers tend to affect our subconscious mind and influence our choices.
Let us see some examples of these influencers in our daily life. If the influence is for good, its awesome. But if its for some other intent then?
- Lets say you pack a healthy nutritious lunch box for your child named "A". Your child's friend named "B" gets a some ready made not home cooked yet fancy looking stuff in his lunch box. Now normal common sense suggests that home cooked meal is good. But because cooking at home is time consuming and requires effort B's mom suggests how A's mom is stingy and thats why cooks at home. So before some else points out at B’s mom at how lazy she is to not cook at home, she points out first to A’s mom for a non issue and makes seem like how it’s her fault. This stems from B’s mom’s own insecurity about her image. Otherwise who said everyone should cook at home?This is just one example. The broader topic that this example tries to address is how someone tries to hide their shortcomings/ laziness/ faults by portraying others in bad light. They try to fool and influence the world by their propagandist tactics of impression management in a specific way.
- One of a friends used to say - “ My kids like only dal rice for dinner”. When I got to know better, I realised that she had gotten them into this habit because she did not want to cook any effort intensive meals for them. Right since childhood she had given them that only , so that when they grew up they got so used to it, they did not even realise that it was intentionally done. Moreover since Our culture glorifies mom’s ( I have nothing against that, I love my mom ) some moms use this to their advantage when questions are raised about the intent behind the actions for raising their own kids. The child gets fooled by his own mom.
- In our own social circles, people who desire to influence us about a specific person for some advantage will portray some facets of him repeatedly. Even before the cambridge analytica saga , look around and think why certain impressions were created in your mind. Maybe you avoided going to a certain person because someone else created a certain impression subconsciously. Some of those impressions were purely due to some xyz person and the mutual admiration committee that the person was a part of reinforcing that belief repeatedly.
Wasn’t that equivalent to us getting fooled subconsciously?
Let us see some examples of these influencers in our daily life. If the influence is for good, its awesome. But if its for some other intent then?
- Lets say you pack a healthy nutritious lunch box for your child named "A". Your child's friend named "B" gets a some ready made not home cooked yet fancy looking stuff in his lunch box. Now normal common sense suggests that home cooked meal is good. But because cooking at home is time consuming and requires effort B's mom suggests how A's mom is stingy and thats why cooks at home. So before some else points out at B’s mom at how lazy she is to not cook at home, she points out first to A’s mom for a non issue and makes seem like how it’s her fault. This stems from B’s mom’s own insecurity about her image. Otherwise who said everyone should cook at home?This is just one example. The broader topic that this example tries to address is how someone tries to hide their shortcomings/ laziness/ faults by portraying others in bad light. They try to fool and influence the world by their propagandist tactics of impression management in a specific way.
- One of a friends used to say - “ My kids like only dal rice for dinner”. When I got to know better, I realised that she had gotten them into this habit because she did not want to cook any effort intensive meals for them. Right since childhood she had given them that only , so that when they grew up they got so used to it, they did not even realise that it was intentionally done. Moreover since Our culture glorifies mom’s ( I have nothing against that, I love my mom ) some moms use this to their advantage when questions are raised about the intent behind the actions for raising their own kids. The child gets fooled by his own mom.
- In our own social circles, people who desire to influence us about a specific person for some advantage will portray some facets of him repeatedly. Even before the cambridge analytica saga , look around and think why certain impressions were created in your mind. Maybe you avoided going to a certain person because someone else created a certain impression subconsciously. Some of those impressions were purely due to some xyz person and the mutual admiration committee that the person was a part of reinforcing that belief repeatedly.
Wasn’t that equivalent to us getting fooled subconsciously?
I think the only way we can avoid this is by being more self aware and as I said previously that it is worth questioning “Is what we hear some sort of propaganda? and are we getting fooled by it? “
In the end, let’s just have only one April fool’s day and be self aware otherwise! Let us only be April 1 fools only please:)
Note-the examples used in this post do not suggest that the mom’s using ready made meals are bad or that moms giving dal rice are intentionally doing so. Because to each his own .They are purely some examples which are certainly not comprehensive enough to bring out all facets in the society, yet they help to bring out certain facets to the fore in the context of my post here.
- Dhanashree
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