What made Chapter 32 of The Text bone-chilling to the core?
The Text is, without a doubt, a novel that libertarians can equate to what’s going on in real life in terms of propaganda, restrictions, and totalitarianism.
Well, it’s great to be back and writing posts again after having taken Friday off since I spent most of the weekend out of town attending a wedding. It marked my first appearance at one since 2013, and, overall, it was a fun time, even if I’m that guy at the reception who’d rather lurk in the corner and people watch, my face half hidden in the shadows while sipping on my beverage of choice: water.
I know, I’m boring. But I enjoy people watching and always have, something my grandfather was known for when he traveled. While I considered myself not to have had internet access since I don’t trust public Wi-Fi and have yet to pick up a hot spot, and yes, you can scold me for being unprepared, I still got a substantial amount of reading (and proofreading) in.
As for proofreading, it was my dark science fantasy short novel, Deceived Mage, which I think turned out to be a clean read. But trust me, proofreading can get boring, so I dove more into Julane Fisher's The Text and got about three-quarters of the way through the book.
As with all my reviews or books that I’m reading and plan on reviewing, I don’t like going into deep detail about what happens in the story since I’m not one to write spoilers. But I will spoil the plot a little on how, once again, Fisher managed to relate the work to real life.
Social Media and Propaganda
From the COVID crisis onward, not a single one of us is a stranger to social media propaganda and how they’ve suppressed, suppressed, and suppressed some more in the years since. Well, at least until Elon Musk bought Twitter and rechristened it as X, but not before unleashing the Twitter Files and allowing more free speech onto the platform.
Anyway, as I completed reading Chapter 32 of the work, I had to write about it, given the way social media propaganda influenced the plot of this fine novel. I’ll share a snippet in one of the scenes, even if the entire chapter is worth reading. But again, I’m not here to spoil the plot for anyone, and this entire chapter would contribute to that.
But I’ll give a general overview of what makes it so memorable. Finley, Rami’s friend at this point, as it’s unclear what she feels about him, even if she’s interested in some other guy whose name I’ll keep on the down low at the moment, ushered Rami and her friends Lela and Quince (Lela’s boyfriend) from school.
And for good reason, as Finley, using a source whose name I’ll also keep on the down low, was told there would be a bomb threat at their local high school. Well, not a bomb threat, but a news story that there would be a bomb threat, and guess who was getting framed for it?
Okay, fine, maybe I’ll let some spoilers slip when I don’t have a choice, but bad things often happen to protagonists to hold the reader’s interest, right?
After Finley unveils this little threat, he leads them to an abandoned gas station, where his source is hiding out. That source delivers some chilling information about the Safety Threats and Reinforcement (STaR), plus companies called Centurion (an app provider) and Connect Mobile (a phone service provider).
The Scene in Chapter 32
Finley’s Source: “Three years ago, Connect Mobile hired Centurion to create a social media app called Allicio. Heard of it?”
Lela: “Of course we’ve heard of it. So have two billion other people.”
Source: “Download the app on your STaR-issued device and the Threats Division has every piece of information on you at their disposal. And not just in America, every user worldwide who downloads Allicio has a digital profile to exploit anyone anytime they want. While kids your age love Allicio, some people who remember life before STaR, before President Young, think the app as dangerous.
“Rumblings of a resistance began circulating online, using STaR’s own social media app. The Threats Division tried to shut down anyone spreading disinformation and suppress was what they perceived as propaganda, but TD workers assigned to Allicio are overworked and understaffed. That left space for resisters to communicate and organize.”
Rami: “Organize what?”
Source: “Revolution. STaR needed a way to keep the next generation, your generation, from wanting to overthrow the government.”
Quince: “How are they going to do that?”
Source: “By convincing everyone that they’re safer under STaR’s control. Bifurcation racking, the program my team and I developed, divides individuals into groups based on what they believe. Centurion assumed if we could understand a group’s belief system, we could use that data to either encourage certain content or suppress the posts.”
Rami: “Let me get this straight. You installed a tracker in our phones so you could control our social media?”
Source: “So we can control you. Manipulate what you see on Allicio to encourage you to think a certain way. Gradually change your perspective, leaving you with the impression that STaR wants what’s best for you. Governments of the past often used propaganda to control their citizens. I swear to you I tried to stop the program, but I was too late. The only option was to copy the data.”
Chapter 32 in The Text and Similarities to Real Life
While some lines of this scene are just devices for genre fiction—for now, at least—the latter half couldn’t be more familiar to two groups of people: libertarians and conservatives. With COVID, alternative viewpoints such as the lab leak theory were suppressed, while on Twitter, the Hunter Biden laptop scandal was labeled “disinformation” before the Files confirmed otherwise.
Furthermore, Mark Zuckerberg himself came clean and expressed regret for allowing Facebook to suppress information deemed false or misleading, thanks to the Biden-Harris Administration’s pressure to censor content that it didn’t like.
The kicker, however, in The Text is the algorithm, which can suppress anything it chooses, when it chooses. Algorithms, as the Source in the above section claims, can “manipulate what you see on Allicio to encourage you to think a certain way. Gradually change your perspective, leaving you with the impression that STaR wants what’s best for you.”
STaR, a government program, by the way, and the Threats Division, as the Source later said in that scene, “controls Connect Mobile and Centurion.” Sounds like a rather familiar tale, right?
Kind of, anyway, with the federal government in the real world playing the good old hide-behind game, trying to control Big Tech of what to and not to unleash to the public to protect what was left of its own credibility, especially during the COVID crisis.
The same thing was going on in The Text but to a greater extent. The takeaway, for me, at least, is one of many potential drawbacks of what an enlarged, bureaucratic government can and will do to keep its citizens in line to protect itself. Whether that involves protecting its own credibility or spreading to the public what it wants them to believe.
Luckily…for now, at least…
Okay, before I go any further, the term, for now, at least, is one that I picked up in the Resistance Trilogy. It has some libertarian leanings, but I’ve always seen K.A. Riley as more of a “left libertarian” at best as opposed to someone from, say, the Austrian camp. That said, I’m overly critical of that trilogy for more than a few reasons, even if Book I, Recruitment, and most of Book II, Render, were lights out.
But once Riley started talking more about climate change propaganda, a kid major general forcing people to eat vegan diets, glorifying altruism, and, later, in the Emergents Trilogy, I was like, “Nope, this one’s an ultimate no-go.” Still, I highly encourage you to read Recruitment, and it remains one of my all-time favorites, as libertarians can get a lot of that one.
Anyway, regarding what I mean by, for now, at least, is that the public’s trust in the media, Big Tech, and many government outlets has dwindled. This is good news because although there’s a secret resistance building in The Text, at least any resistance here doesn’t need to stay so secretive and underground…for now, at least…
Overall, Fisher laid out here what could definitely be the case in the future if our government keeps expanding its draconian powers. While it tried like mad during the COVID crisis, the Hunter Biden fiasco, and even going as far as to label one of the 2024 presidential candidates as a fascist when the other candidate may be far closer to the label, it hasn’t worked. Yet, anyway.
That said, while I’d be one to worry about social media and Big Tech gathering information and data on people that the government can and will use to its advantage whenever it chooses, there’s a little more hope in this world at the moment.
So long as people continue to resist Big Tech propaganda and refuse to fall for what it wants us to fall for via suppression and pedestaling specific information, we should be just fine as a society. For now, at least…
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