At the age of 65, pushing 66, it has become evident to me that life is a series of epiphanies — if you are willing to accept them.
Example: After spending most of my career covering sports, I have come to realize it is, as a former news editor once observed, a lot of people obsessing over something that means nothing in the big picture.
Along that line, I’m writing this as the television is paused and muted on the broadcast of Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game. Once I’d have been glued to the coverage. But only a few minutes of pregame blather tonight convinced me I’m not sure I want to watch.
Maybe I’ll fast-forward through it later. Maybe not.
This is a far cry from my youth, or even young adulthood. I recall a colleague and I even went to a downtown bar on our lunch break during the 1977 All-Star Game to catch a few innings. Johnstown residents might recall that was the evening of our last major flood in this so-called Flood City.
We eventually decided not to continue to wait for it to stop raining before we headed back to the office.
It was a good call since it didn’t stop raining until the downtown was covered by about seven feet of water.
My latest epiphany, even as social media and other digital operations increasingly are intent on controlling us in part by determining what information gets to the public and how it is slanted, is that we’re living Revenge Of The Nerds.
The Revenge Of The Nerds franchise was a series of movies in the 1980s and 1990s in which put-upon nerds find ways to exact revenge on their tormentors.
Would any of you have trouble picturing Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg or Twitter’s Jack Dorsey starring in a remake of that series?
I imagine all four of those as school children being beaten up and having their lunch money stolen with regularity during recess. But, in the evenings as they tinkered in their family basements or garages on all their high-tech toys, they also likely were making plans on how they would get even with all the regular kids.
We’ve hit 2021 and their revenge is before you.
Gates came up with software that operates the majority of computers. Using that power base, he’s dipped his hand into such things as pushing vaccines and generally aiding in the surveillance of people.
Zuckerberg and Dorsey are big on censorship, political activism and, tracking people, the last in the interest of efficient commerce.
Bezos is just another seemingly vengeful nerd gathering information and attempting to mold opinion, only he’s come out in the open more than the others by acquiring The Washington Post and remaking a once-great newspaper into a house organ for leftist causes.
At the root of the Revenge Of The Nerds movies, we as the audience were expected to cheer for the underdogs striking back at their oppressors. Their ultimate success was supposed to make us feel good and optimistic about our futures.
But our modern day Four Nerd Horsemen are not underdogs. They are the oppressors and you are the victim as long as you willingly cede information in order to participate on their various platforms.
As many observers have noted regarding Facebook specifically, you (and your information) are the product they are selling.
Don’t let them do it. Stand up to the nerds.
Sam Ross Jr's site 