I’m always amazed by the ability of libertarians to believe that in the jungle, they’d be tigers rather than tiger shit. More often it turns out they just have a grossly inflated opinion of themselves, as in this case. We’re all human, all weak, and we all need to depend on each other a lot, it’s just the way it is.
I think that people who go out of their way to present what they believe are alpha male characteristics are essentially hanging a neon sign above themselves. That sign is begging for someone with those characteristics to come along and fix the worlds problems in the way that the stereotypical Clint Eastwood or Arnold Schwarzenegger character solved his problems. In other words, an alpha male exerting his will, delivering satisfying one liners, and saving the world.
Why else would nearly every single popular conservative media "character" be so uncannily similar? Why did nearly all of those characters triple down on this machismo roughly 18 months ago? Could it be that they got back the results of their latest A/B test?
I think this all drives at the most interesting, world changing possibility that could come out of this reckoning with Facebook. What will happen when it becomes conventional wisdom that the true power of collecting all of this data is not the ability to predict what you will do, but the ability to direct what you will do? What will happen when it truly registers with people that this necessarily removes their agency? What will prevent that critical mass from making the trivial jump in logic that advertisers and public relations firms have been progressively improving on these same skills to the same general ends for a century?
