You may listen to its Audio by clicking on the Play button below.)

PART I: THE NEW WAVE OF INSANITY

Hello!

To all social media users (including me!): Beware of Algorithm, the internet’s omniscient god! It can slowly kill you.

But if we keep this awareness front and center everyday in our viral life, we can make this god our servant. And we can continue to enjoy the endless excitement that social media platforms have to offer. And earn decent money, too!

Again, that is – if we do not lose sight of its dangers. They are real and can be deadly.

Are you still familiar with the saying in Latin “Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat”?

It loosely means,

“Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

YouTubers, Facebookers, Reelers, TikTokers, WhatsAppers, Instagrammers, WeChatters, Snapchatters, X’ers (nee: Twitter), and those using the rest of the at least 36 (and counting) popular social media platforms:

It is time for self-examination! Are we losing our mind yet?

The Hunger Games: the movie

Do you still remember the movie “The Hunger Games”? And are you still familiar with the highlight of its plot?

Every year, the story goes, in the country named Panem, each of its 12 poor and destitute districts is required to send their representatives, called Tributes, to participate in the game of death. The winning tribute and their district would be rewarded with food, supplies, and riches. In the first phase of the game, the tributes would utilize a strategy of finding allies.

Then they kill each other.

Does this sound familiar now?

Content Creators, Digital Creators, and whatever other flatter-sounding titles we are given, are not killing each other literally. At least, not yet. But unknown to many of us, we are already active participants to The Hunger Games. We are losing our mind finding allies, to Follow and Like, hoping they follow and like us in return. We appear to be helping one another, but in reality, we are dying to be the overall winner. To be one with millions of followers, another hundreds of millions of engagements, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in windfall.

The truth is, very few can make it on top. Most of us are left behind. Like zombies, having lost our minds trying everything to reach the pinnacle of internet success.

But even those who saw what’s on top, many of them regretted having witnessed what they saw.

Scary? Let us go back to the not-so-distant history and revisit the lives of those netizens who came before us. And let us learn from their massive successes and consequential mistakes.

The new and real Hunger Games

Yes, the real-life Hunger Games is fully upon us, with the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI). How does this modern game of death work?

Let us begin with Meta and (Google’s/Alphabet’s) YouTube, two of the Big Five American technology companies, together with Amazon, Apple, Microsoft. (What they all have in common is that they all hover above us in many aspects of our daily life. And, yes, they all harness the endless power of AI-driven Algorithm.)

Meta

Meta has a revenue in 2022 of a staggering (US)$116.61 billion. It employs 71,469 people.

It owns and operates Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads, WhatsApp, Meta Quest, Horizon Worlds, Ray-Ban Stories, Mapillary, Workplace, Diem, and maybe more.

Google/YouTube

YouTube, on the other hand, is owned by Google (under its parent company Alphabet). YouTube was officially launched in December of 2005, and was ultimately purchased by Google in November 2006. Alphabet does not need more introduction, since we already are familiar with how much influence it has on our lives. Besides, Google has a massive list of products that boggles the mind of any average human being.

Now, talking of the new The Hunger Games, the race for its sponsorship accelerated with the appearance of the mind-blowing TikTok.

TikTok

TikTok was founded in 2016. It took the world by storm with its short-form video format. In six years, it has already 1.2billion monthly active users.

As an immediate response to TikTok’s surprising popularity, Meta launched Instagram’s own short-form video feature, known as Reels in August of 2020. In just a two-year period, Instagram Reels attracted 1.4 billion monthly active users.

YouTube Shorts followed suit, launched first in India in 2020. And with ¼ of the world’s population already YouTube users, its Shorts monthly active users rapidly grew to 2.5 billion. During that same period, the all-time Shorts viewers reportedly numbered 5 trillion views. Yes, in capital T!

Now, what sets YouTube Shorts and Instagram’s Reels apart is the hard and hot dollars being dangled to Creators!

It’s raining money!

YouTube had announced a Shorts Creator Fund of up to $100 million, to lure Creators to use its short-form video.

Not to be outdone, Instagram pledged to invest $1 billion into Creators. There is even a Reels Play Bonuses of up to $35,000 (the latest figure). Payments to Creators depend on the number of Reels play over a 30-day period. (But these things are periodically changing. To the chagrin and frustrations of Creators themselves. More on this later.)

And here is where the fun begins. Or the creators’ new wave of insanity starts.  

What about X?

While X (formerly Twitter) attracts people who appear to be on a higher plane of intellectuals and experts, it also draws insane people who think they are the smartest and brightest in the whole planet. No wonder, they engage in endless conversations that leads to nowhere, and no one admits any intellectual and expert mistakes. X is where those whom the gods bestowed “wisdom” before the gods make them crazy congregate.

Or, maybe they are already crazy. The gods put them on X to humor Elon Musk.

However, the “12 districts of Panem” are mostly found on Reels and Shorts. And the sight is not getting pretty.

The ordinary people have now a level playing field

I am personally happy that ordinary folks – called Creators – have now the chance to earn some extra cash by working hard to create short and long videos. From the high mountains of Kota Kinabalu to the deep waters of African ocean, the poor have finally found the chance to engage in a side-hustle that is not difficult to accomplish. All you need is a working smart phone, and a reliable Wi-fi connection.

I, myself, follow my favorite YouTube channels and Facebook pages. My favorite videos are about fishing, farming, nature, animals, and the like. And aside from enjoying them, I also hope the people who work hard behind those posted videos would be helped with my own viewing.

Or, is it?

But the truth is, things are not really what they seem. And many of what I discovered come from the very mouth of those I interact with online. Listening to their sad experiences is the reason why I have decided to write this blog post.

Stay tuned

In Part II, I will share about the lives of those early creators, some have gone to join the Creator in heaven, others are still fighting with their own demons residing inside their head. What they have in common is the experience of seeing what is on top of the invisible mountain where influencers and celebrities are dying to reach.

Meanwhile, I invite you – if you have not done so yet – to revisit the Reels and the Shorts. You see people doing crazy things in front of their phone, trying so hard to get noticed by the god. Hoping that their “obra maestra” (masterpiece) of a short clip will get noticed.

By who? The omniscient god: Algorithm! As many early creators have realized by now, success in this new The Hunger Games has largely nothing to do with the quality of the video at all. The omni-potent Algorithm decides which goes ahead, which gets dumped behind.

The Algorithm is very powerful. To fight against it, or to game or to cheat it, is futile. To do so, will drive you crazy.

If you are not insane yet.

See you in Part II. And, if you like it, maybe you still have the interest to read Part III. This is where I share how I try to avoid becoming crazy, myself. And still survive The Hunger Games.

What do you think of this post? Please share your thoughts by clicking on the underlined Let Me Know Your Thoughts below.

Meta & YouTube are now sponsoring a new The Hunger Games. And it can be deadly.

Let Me Know Your Thoughts