Facebook: “A Giant Blood-Engorged Tick Hanging off Your Frontal Lobe”

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“Designed to be addictive, Facebook feels like a giant blood-engorged tick hanging off your frontal lobe,” writes Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone. You may recall, Taibbi coined Goldman Sachs as a “[G]reat vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.”

In his piece on Facebook, where the median salary is $240,430, Taibbi makes a case for breaking-up the band which is more like a cult.

What is it like to be on the inside of Facebook’s corporate walls? Former senior Facebook worker Antonio Garcia Martinez wrote the book, Chaos Monkeys, in a way that Michael Lewis did about his time working at Goldman Sachs with his classic Liar’s Poker. “The culture is like an odd religion where Zuckerberg is worshipped as a deity, sort of like Scientology, but without Tom Cruise or space invaders,” explains Martinez.

“Whether Facebook is just a reflection of modern society or a key driver of it, the picture isn’t pretty,” writes Taibbi. “The company’s awesome data-mining tactics wedded to its relentless hyping of the culture of self has helped create a world where billions of people walk with bent heads, literally weighted down with their own BS, eyes glued to telescreen style mobile devices that read us faster than we can read them.”

Facebook, last year, applied for and received a patent for “Techniques”, an emotion detection tool that uses your phone’s camera to take pictures of you to determine what type of stuff to send your way, notes Taibbi.

Facebook knows how to make “you” friends that you’ll like. It has created a world where you’re connected only to those who share your opinion. “Once a citizen had a right to an opinion. Now, they feel like they have a right to their own reality,” writes Martinez:

But maybe kids don’t want to end up like their parents. Facebook has about 100 million users in America between the age of 25-44, notes Taibbi, “But it gets dicey after that, with just 6.8 million users between the ages of 13 and 17.”

Facebook critic Mark Cuban, says: “I think they are losing impact domestically, with zero influence on millennials and younger, but [they have] overwhelming influence on boomers and Gen X’ers.”

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E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy

E.J. Smith is Founder of YourSurvivalGuy.com, Managing Director at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd., a Managing Editor of Richardcyoung.com, and Editor-in-Chief of Youngresearch.com. E.J. graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with a B.S. in finance and investments. In 1995, E.J. began his investment career at Fidelity Investments in Boston before joining Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. in 1998. E.J. has trained at Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH. His first drum set was a 5-piece Slingerland with Zilldjians. He grew-up worshiping Neil Peart of the band Rush, and loves the song Tom Sawyer—the name of his family’s boat, a Grady-White Canyon 306. He grew up in Mattapoisett, MA, an idyllic small town on the water near Cape Cod. He spends time in Newport, RI and Bartlett, NH—both as far away from Wall Street as one could mentally get. The Newport office is on a quiet, tree lined street not far from the harbor and the log cabin in Bartlett, NH, the “Live Free or Die” state, sits on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. He enjoys spending time in Key West and Paris. Please get in touch with E.J. at ejsmith@yoursurvivalguy.com

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