The Love For Social Media Trends And The Tacit Erosion Of Our Freewill

With this social media generation, I am convinced more than ever before that priming has finally jail-broken the prison walls of psychological ideas and now at large on the pragmatic streets of social media.
By the way, priming is a term in psychology which means "the implicit memory effect in which exposure to a stimulus influences response to a subsequent stimulus". It is a tacit way of controlling/influencing people's decisions and choices by manipulating a chain of related events in their subconscious to fulfil an already predetermined end. Simply put, it is the subtle erosion of a man's freewill. You will agree with me that freewill is one of the most invaluable assets Providence bequeathed on man. Strip him of his freewill and a man is not better than a genetically modified chicken intentionally fed fat just so it could be used as an edible decoration on a plate of Christmas jollof rice.

I cherish my freewill so much that if I am asked at gunpoint to choose between my life and freewill, I will unhesitatingly relinquish the former since without the latter, I am as good as an undead body anyway. For me, joining the bandwagon of a social media trend makes me feel powerless and stripped of my freewill. I mean, is freewill not the ability to choose one's actions, or determine what reasons are acceptable motivation for actions, without predestination, fate etc? Now, one may begin to argue that a man's ability to choose to follow whichever trend he deems fit is itself an exercise of his freewill. But could this argument stand in the face of the revelation that most trends are started by a particular person or group of persons to achieve a particular purpose without one's conscious knowledge? If someone therefore manipulates your subconscious mind to achieve a predetermined end which you ordinarily in your conscious mind would not have helped facilitate, has he not by that singular act eroded your freewill? Is such a man not your master?

A typical example of priming is where a man (primer) intends to have you pick a particular number of interest  (let's say number "7") at a raffledraw scheduled to hold next week, he needs not directly ask you to do so since you might choose to exercise your freewill against his interest. So, what does he do? He intentionally and strategically places "7" at different locations in such a way that it appears random. You go to the grocery store and the lady selling stuff to you cheapishly smiles at you with "7" written on her Tshirt. Few hours after, you were almost hit by a fast moving SUV branded with "7up" logo. You also got home only to have that cute little neighbour's daughter of yours walk up to you and say, "Hi John, I'd like to invite you for my "7th" birthday party tomorrow. Where these seeming, yet predetermined 'random' scenerios of "7" continue to appear in your subconscious, a psychological school says you are likely going to pick number "7" on that raffledraw day, thereby inadvertently fulfilling the primer's desire.

The point is, if critically-minded folks could be made to suffer the inadvertent loss of their invaluable freewill through priming, manipulating a man with insatiable appetite for frivolous trends would be a walk in the park.
The other day, they introduced you to #OneCornerChallenge and you made a trend of it. Today, it is #10yrsChallenge. Who knows what they have in store for you tomorrow? A #ShowMeYourPubicHairChallenge will definitely make a great trend-worthy challenge, you know?

In a world where people make money from virtually anything on the internet, you might just be another victim of a low-budget priming unbeknownst to you. Every time you help facilitate that trend, someone somewhere might just be using you as pawn to make a few bucks by gathering as much traffic as he can under the guise of some nonsensical #challenge.

I am simply not a fan of trends most especially the ones that take the shape of #challenge - I think they are more often than not used as a tool to compel people's obedience for self-serving ends. However, if at the end of the day, your motivation is to have fun, then fun, you must. Am I also not having mine here by assuming the duties of a social media police licenced to critique your penchant for frivolity? #winks

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