I didn’t have to know much about the leaker who was yet to appear on 60 Minutes when I wrote my last post. Didn’t need to, didn’t care, still don’t. I didn’t watch it.

I know what that bastard Zuckerberg is. I know what he’s gotten people to do. I got one thing wrong, though. I compared Facebook and Instagram to cults. You can see why, with a code of silence that looks like it’s modeled on something L. Ron Hubbard dreamt up while in a particularly vengeful mood. Maybe like after a day’s energy spent sticking hat pins through kitten’s tails.

But isn’t all big business modeled on the classic cult?

Industry secrets, big money, blackmailing and black-balling, spying, subterfuge, conditioning and indoctrination, forced signing of ridiculous nondisclosure pacts, psychological manipulation and reinforcement, and of course, demeaning punishments.

Every day it grows worse. If a high-level employee goes to another place of work, the boards-of-directors sit, smug with the idea that should that employee share trade secrets, their attorneys will sue that person and their new employer into oblivion. That, or they will engineer some extra-court agreement loaded with compensatory cash.

However cult-like it all seems, most have little to worry about. People who have no honor are free to squeeze their employees into paralyzed terror and conformity, whereas those so squeezed are at least getting paid. They cash their checks, watch Netflix and have sex on Saturday night. Maybe that is the American Dream.

That’s not the whole story but you get the idea, right?

The guy cooking your pizza at Papa John’s doesn’t know trade secrets. He works his ass off for people who don’t give a piss about him and he knows it. There are no expectations, just busting ass and a meagre paycheck in return. He thinks he’s being badly used. No benefits, nothing extra. A shitty pittance for a week’s work. It’s black and white.

He never knows or cares that others elsewhere in the world are, depending on job and location, treated better–and, mostly, much worse. Anyone working with indigo dye for blue jeans, or at a plastics plant in China, or a mine anywhere in Africa, well, they wish for the pay and the treatment that a Papa John’s dough-tosser gets.

None of it is relative, though it’s okay to think so. All things are different to different people from different cultures, different countries and different religions. What slavery looks like to an American is nothing of the kind to someone elsewhere who has a place to stay and a kind person to answer to.

And those people would break down in hysterical sorrow at the slaves of the sex industry which stretches around the globe, with the misery only known to those who are in it.

***

We Americans are divided, more than is generally understood. Worse than anyone could imagine. No one anywhere understands this. Even I can’t get my head around it and I usually have a crude but decent concept of all things dark. This darkness invading the United States, it defies my mind’s ability to grasp any part of.

But we did learn something important. Facebook has willfully made it worse. It will get a huge serving of karma, too. Perhaps it’s even started.

Facebook and Instagram went through and outage on Monday, following the 60 Minutes report. It was so bad that Facebook employees could not reset the servers because their security ID cards would not open the doors. See, there was an outage. So why did those people even try the card readers in the doors? It really had to be funny to watch. If they knew they couldn’t get to the servers, why try? Because someone told them to. At Facebook, you get an order, you carry it out, even if it’s impossible and you do look really stupid trying.

So serious and protracted was this outage that Facebook could only tell its users by posting to Twitter.

Not their best day.

Then came Mark Zuckerberg who managed to effortlessly act like the weasel he is. He posted a denial on his own Facebook page. It was strangely reminiscent of something Scientologists were doing on their Wikipedia page until they were banned from making changes.

In other words, Zuckerberg looked like a guilty man trying to cover up his feces in a hurry like a dog when the dog catcher is on the hunt.

Better yet, he looked like Tom Cruise but with a pencil neck.

Zuckerberg is so sleazy that he not only denied that teenage girls have serious self image issues made worse by Instagram and its advertisers, he went so far as to say his own research proved that the reverse is true.

Who’s research? “His” research? Because doing research on your own users is not exactly ethical, and let’s get one thing straight: this is not Domino’s taking a customer satisfaction survey to help them understand what their customers want, need or expect.

This is a biased party putting out a survey that had to have had leading questions and then, without providing hard copy results, claiming that everything came out pure vanilla.

If you believe this, I would like to point out that I did use the words “biased” and “leading”. Did that not register?

Because I’ll admit it. I’ve taken leading questionnaires and surveys too, and I fell for the bloody trick. I gave a cable provider’s customer service high marks when the wording of the questions took my attention away from the anger at how I was really treated. I wouldn’t know about slimy questionnaires and surveys had I not fallen for their cleverness, making me feel as if I were valued in some way, only to realize later that I was as valuable as my money, nothing more. Yes, it’s humiliating and yes, you blame yourself. Yes, you feel used, sometimes violated. That’s a good thing; I want you to know that it’s completely normal. Do you know that people have careers just writing those surveys, ever changing the design? It’s true. Some are called independent and some are openly working for advertising services. Some are corporate stooges. Yes men. Douche bags loaded with lies and tricks.

A POST MODERN PROMETHEUS

In a particularly sickening episode of The X-Files titled “The Post-Modern Prometheus”, Mulder and Scully investigate one of their many monsters of the week. This time a thing created by some mad scientist with a bit too much knowledge about genetics and no ethics whatsoever. The title comes from Mary Shelley who wrote Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus.

Shelley was ahead of her time and didn’t have her name added to the novel until its second edition. It is a valid argument that her book is the first known, true science fiction book ever written.

Of course, film adaptations blur the true nature and theme Shelley tried to get across. The doctor was named Victor Frankenstein but the monster he created did not bear his name. His creator called him terrible names including “demon” but never gave him a proper name because he was full of regret and horror over what he had done. The title calls the creation a modern Prometheus. That was the name of an Ancient Greek titan, forerunners to the gods. “Titan” and “Prometheus” have become synonymous with “huge”, “giant”, and “monstrous” although the latter is becoming more used.

In an homage to Shelley, Chris Carter wrote the episode and initially it was shown in black and white like the first films by Universal Studios.

It starts out with a house being tented as if for fumigation. The woman inside doesn’t notice. Tarps roll down past the windows while a song about loneliness plays. Nine months after falling asleep from gas, she gives birth. But she’s not the only one. So the feds are called in.

It turns out that the attacker is hideous. Created by a man with no sympathy. He is lonely, this prometheus, and he unbelievably erects scaffolds and tents and plays the same song every time he rapes and impregnates a woman. Oh, but it’s okay.

He apologizes, you see. And everyone keeps their babies and forgives him but in the end, being taken to (prison?) by Mulder and Scully, they stop for a Cher concert because the rapist/monster loves Cher.

A reward for all those women he raped, I guess. The whole episode is a mess, yet was praised by critics and nominated for Emmy awards. Shaking your head? I did.

The theme of the Shelley novel and the episode are the same. Things get out of hand when men of no principles take things too far.

And Facebook is the result of one man of no principle taking things too far. It is our own nemesis of the age; a true post-modern prometheus, dangerous and much bigger than it should ever have been allowed to get.

That Facebook has become cult-like is apparent. It is a juggernaut of power and secrecy by its own admission, having confessed to “cleaning house before inviting guests.”

It keeps your information even if you delete your account. It keeps your face in a file even if you don’t give it permission for facial “recognition” purposes. It breaks its own rules and defies your every selection for permissions. You see that lens on your phone, the one looking at you right now? You know, the selfie lens? Tape over it with opaque tape. Or clear tape with a black Sharpie to ink over it. Add two more layers. Sometimes you’ll be able to tell if a picture is taken without you even opening your camera app. Most of the time you won’t. Turn off the camera under permissions for all apps until you want to use it. Then turn it off again. Expecting apps to be run honestly is unreasonable and unrealistic. They want your information. Especially Facebook. It knows everywhere you go, every site you visit, and more. Giving it even more information on your own is asking for it.

IN CLOSING

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting truly honorable people in my life. If not for them, in fact, I’d likely not be here.

But I was raised by predators and perverts. I’ve met more than my share since. Zuckerberg may not be a pervert but a predator, that he absolutely is. Being one has made him powerful and rich. I’d like to see him fall and his empire crumble. He’s been allowed to hurt too many people, and hurting children is too grievous a sin to be given a pass on.

Here’s the song the rapist prometheus liked so much when he did his heinous deeds. Loneliness is terrible but gives no lease for predation. Likewise, power is terrible without ethics. Zuckerberg, this dedication goes out to you. May you know and feel the pain you have so viciously given others.