Please welcome The Revolution!

Free Ur Mind From This Rat Race

Glam Slam
Free your mind from this rat race
Glam Slam
Escape!

Pop quiz time! How do you get 46,000 people to forward an article that amounts to nothing more than gibberish? You give it a sensational headline. After all, most people don't read anything more than the headline before forwarding anything on to the masses. That's how the true thieves in the temple get to us. They know it's like herding sheep blindly through a fantasy. Because few people question what they read anymore. It's all clickbait for the rat race and its time we escaped. Now that I have thoroughly confused you, let me explain exactly what I am talking about here.

It seems that the satirical news site Science Post wanted to have fun with people so they made a post on Facebook with the headline, "Study: 70% of Facebook users only read the headline of science stories before commenting." Now the text of this post was nothing more than lorem ipsum but that didn't stop more than 46,000 people from sharing the post with their friends. Now let's think about that for a minute.  First, the post is nothing but lorem ipsum.  For those of you who may not know what that is, lorem ipsum is defined as:

In publishing and graphic design, lorem ipsum is a filler text commonly used to demonstrate the graphic elements of a document or visual presentation. The lorem ipsum text is typically a scrambled section of De finibus bonorum et malorum, a 1st-century BC Latin text by Cicero, with words altered, added, and removed to make it nonsensical, improper Latin.

So, lorem ipsum basically amounts to nothing more than gibberish. Now, let's look at the post's headline, "Study: 70% of Facebook users only read the headline of science stories before commenting." According to this, 70% of the people who read this should have commented without reading the article (which they couldn't read anyway because it was gibberish). I don't know how many commented but more than 46,000 people shared it. How do you share an article that is total gibberish? I don't get it! Come on people, free your mind from this rat race!!!

Now to show you that the above incident is not a fluke. A new study by computer scientists at Columbia University with the French National Institute shows that 59% of the links that are actually shared on social media have never been clicked. Once again, herding sheep blindly through a fantasy! Wake up children! Free Urself! Almost 60% of people retweet articles without ever actually reading them? Then what's to be expected from 3-3? Absolutely nothing! The Purple Army knows what I'm talking about!  Anyway, here is part of the Chicago Tribune's article on the subject:

Worse, the study finds that these sort of blind peer-to-peer shares are really important in determining what news gets circulated and what just fades off the public radar. So your thoughtless retweets, and those of your friends, are actually shaping our shared political and cultural agendas.

"People are more willing to share an article than read it," study co-author Arnaud Legout said in a statement. "This is typical of modern information consumption. People form an opinion based on a summary, or a summary of summaries, without making the effort to go deeper."

To verify that depressing piece of conventional internet wisdom, Legout and his co-authors collected two data sets: the first, on all tweets containing Bit.ly-shortened links to five major news sources during a one-month period last summer; the second, on all of the clicks attached to that set of shortened links, as logged by Bit.ly, during the same period. After cleaning and collating that data, the researchers basically found themselves with a map to how news goes viral on Twitter.

And that map showed, pretty clearly, that "viral" news is widely shared — but not necessarily, you know, read. (I'm really only typing this sentence for 4 in 10 people in the audience.)

The researchers made a few other telling observations, as well: Most clicks to news stories, they found, were made on links shared by regular Twitter users, and not the media organization itself. The links that users clicked were much older than we generally assume — some had been published for several days, in fact

But most interesting, for our purposes, is this habit of sharing without clicking — a habit that, when you think about it, explains so much of the oft-demoralizing cesspool that is internet culture. Among the many phenomena we'd tentatively attribute, in large part, to the trend: the rise of sharebait (nee clickbait) and the general BuzzFeedification of traditional media; the internet hoax-industrial complex, which only seems to be growing stronger; and the utter lack of intelligent online discourse around any remotely complicated, controversial topic. (you can read the full article here)

So is this the colonized mind? Is this the microchip in your neck?  When will we wake up and realize that they are force-feeding us the story they want us to hear and not the truth? You can see in the study above how we propagate their lies by taking their stories viral. We base our opinion on the summary of a summary or an opinion of an opinion. We need to do the work and go deeper than that so grab your scuba gear! Ask the questions that need to be asked! Don't be afraid to find the truth! Free your mind from the rat race and FREE URSELF!

If U look, Ur sure gonna find
Throughout mankind's history
A colonized mind
The one in power makes law
Under which the colonized fall
But without God it's just the blind leading the blind

Love4OneAnother! Love4EachOther! Love4UsAll! Peace & B-Wild!

Retrospeculation with NPGMC

Wow, I can't believe that it's been a month since I've posted here.  So much has gone on that you would have thought I would've posted something. Anything.  But nope, not a thing.  Hmmm... well time to remedy that.  Since my last post we found out the actual cause of death for Prince but I don't want to discuss that in this post. Maybe in a later post I'll broach the subject but I am here for a specific reason. Let's see, what else has happened in the last month? Oh yeah!!! The BET Awards kept their promise and gave us a tribute worthy of his Purpleness unlike that other awards show.  Yeah, I'm talking about you Billboard and your weak @ss Madonna tribute that wouldn't have made it in a third-class karaoke bar.  But, I'm not here to talk about the BET tribute either.  No, like I said, I am here for a specific reason.  I am here to retrospeculate on the NPGMC.

First off, let me say, I know that retrospeculate is not an actual word but hey, it's my blog and I like the sound of it.  Besides, it describes what I am doing perfectly.  I'm speculating what might have happened if certain events had happened in the past in a different way.  Anyway, it's not like I invented the word.  I stole it from Prince and the NPGMC.  Track down the commentary Freedom, Pt. 2 from the 2003 version of the NPGMC and you will see Prince used it first. So there!!! Oh lawd, I sound like I'm in third grade! Once again I digress. Or maybe I regressed in my digression? Huh? Okay, forget all that noise and let's get on with this retrospeculation thang!

So, on February 14, 2001, the world (at least all the Purple Party People and True Funk Soldiers) was introduced to the first version of the New Power Generation Music Club.  It was basically a download manager/media player that gave you access to various media made available by the club. Looking back at that first incarnation, I'm astounded I actually joined.  It was pretty lame but then again, by 2001 standards.... hell, who am I kidding.  It was Prince's website! I was joining! And join I did.  I was a loyal member of the NPGMC until it closed in 2006.  I bought the music, the merchandise and the tickets.  Especially the tickets.  Afterall, members got the best seats, didn't we? I know when I got my Musiclology 2004ever tickets through the club, I was on the front row.  That is a show I will never forget!!!! So yeah, I'm like sailing along doing the whole club member thing like a good little soldier when 2006 rolls around and POOF!!!!! It was gone!!! (Side note: I think this is first time I have ever typed the word poof, much less used it on a blog post! So don't judge me! Now back to my regularly scheduled rambling.) But what if that hadn't happened? What if Prince had kept the club open and not lost interest in it like so many of his other projects?

Would we have gotten  more music through the club than we did in real life? Maybe a few more live videos? How about a concert snippet or two from the 21 Nights in London concerts? Or maybe a live album from the 3121 residency in Las Vegas? I know, we could have gotten a concert video, a la Lovesexy Live, of the Welcome 2 America tour! Yeah, he could have released 3121 and Lotusflower through the club and...and...uh...hmmm....wait a minute. So in this alternate timeline that I am retrospeculating on, Prince hasn't lost interest in the NPGMC so he may not have come up with 3121.  There may not have been a Lotusflower for him to release.  His journey would have been greatly altered and may not have even crossed the path of...say....Welcome 2 America or Welcome 2 anything for that matter.  It's that whole Butterfly Effect theory playing out in my purple universe! Instead of Schrodinger's Cat, I have created Schrodinger's Purple Yoda! Oh wow, I think I have officially lost it now.  

I guess this has made me realize that it was probably a good thing that the NPGMC closed down when it did since he moved on to so many other things that are essential in the Purpleverse (that's the Purple Universe. Get it? Of course you do. Why am I explaining things to you? You are obviously all very intelligent since you listen to Prince. But not too smart if you actually read this stuff. LOL!). Wait...there I go with the regressing digression again! Let me try to wrap this up since I have rambled a lot longer than I meant to when I started.  

Yesterday, princeonlinemuseum.com went live and they offer a virtual walk-through of Prince's various websites from over the years.  The site is run by the same people that brought us these sites to begin with and are a great document to Prince's large on-line presence over the years.  If you get the chance, I strongly recommend you visit the site and take a cyberstroll down random access memory lane. I spent hours reading the various commentaries Prince wrote that were posted on the different sites. Matter of fact, I will probably write a post or three at a later date about some of the articles he wrote and posted.  But while reading all the stuff he posted on the NPGMC, I started to wonder what it would have been like if the club was still around. And that's how we ended up here...wherever here is.  Just kidding, I know where here is....it's in the opposite direction from there. What??? Nevermind. Just ignore the man behind the curtain who may be a little senile and sleep deprived. Now, quit reading and head over to princeonlinemuseum.com and remember the Days of Wild!