Chapter 255: Chapter 254.

Chapter 254. Enlisting Angela’s Aid. (3/6)

I’d successfully secured a wild card for that day without raising her suspicions. In all honesty, I didn’t know exactly how I could best make use of her yet, but her fame could come in handy.

Perhaps having her meet and get along well with Izora might raise Izora’s value in the student council president's eyes. How would I make it work though? That was the part that gave me the biggest headache.

When I imagined it in my head, it looked like a messy spider web. Alicia would be there and I didn’t want Angela to discover Alicia was my girlfriend. I didn’t want her to realize I was in high school as a result of my relationship with Alicia. I didn’t want Alicia or Izora to know I had ties to someone famous like Angela. I also didn’t want the student council president to know Rosa’s boyfriend was on this trip with them so I had to go in disguise. But going in my usual disguise was also problematic in case I was somehow recognized as Alicia’s boyfriend. Meaning, I needed a completely new method to disguise myself and blend in.

Though Angela could be a powerful wildcard, to play her meant severely restricting my own movements on the field. Angela was a double-edged sword once put into play. My identity couldn’t be known if I was seen together with her in public. I wouldn’t really be much assistance even if I was there though.

Hence, I had to go there alone. I’d keep in touch with Alicia through text to understand the situation. I could also communicate through emails with Izora. As for Angela, I had no way to mobilize her. The only way to do so would be to bump into her and let her know I finished things up sooner than expected. From there, I could make use of her.

Well, there was no need to rush things. There was quite some time before this operation would commence. 

“Uhm… hey, do you mind if I try something?” Angela suddenly asked me that while I thought things over.

“What is it you want to try?”

“Well, that Wisteria girl you were treating as a little sister before, you let her rest her head on your lap, right? Would it be okay for me to-”

“No way. Absolutely not.” I’d developed PTSD toward letting anyone rest on my lap because of Wisteria.

“What! Come on. Don’t reject me before I even finish asking.”

“Why do you even want to try that?” I’m not falling for this trap. Next thing I know, I’ll find an ungodly long tongue where it shouldn’t be again. I trembled when I recalled that terrifying otherworldly sensation.

“Don’t be such a wimp, it’s not that big a deal. There’s nobody around to see this right now. I’ve never had a chance to try this sort of thing before, now that I do have the chance, just let me.”

She didn’t give me much of a chance to escape as she immediately plopped herself down sideways on my lap facing the window.

I tried pushing her off but she’d latched onto my leg.

“You’re the worst boyfriend ever, seriously trying to push me off like that.”

“I didn’t consent to this.”

“Too bad, I’m invoking girlfriend privileges.”

“I’ve never heard of such a privilege before.”

“I just made it up. I’ll tweet about it so it becomes a real thing.”

She took out her phone and seriously tweeted it.

She grinned and showed me her phone so I could only see the likes and retweets that skyrocketed the instant she tweeted it out.

“Wow… I don’t use social media… but that response time is quite scary. Are people just monitoring your tweets 24/7? Also, shouldn’t your company be in control of your social media?”

You are reading story Redo of a Romanceless Author’s Life Devoid of Love; Another Chance at Youth at novel35.com

“They help me monitor it and post tweets for me, but I still tweet what I want.”

“Won’t people misunderstand and think you’ve got a boyfriend because of your tweet?”

“Huh? Not at all, quite the opposite in fact. I tweeted, ‘#GFprivilege: Using their BF’s lap as a pillow. 2 bad I don’t have a BF :( #lappillow #lonely’. I get responses like, ‘I’ll be your boyfriend anytime you want!’, ‘Pick me! Pick me!’, and ‘Don’t feel lonely, we’re always with you in spirit!’”

“Good thing I’m not reading their replies, just hearing you say them has my skin crawling.”

“You mentioned you don’t use social media, but you’re quite knowledgeable about technology, aren’t you?”

“I’ve made some burner accounts with fake info just to ensure I have a grasp of them. I’ve always deleted them shortly after creating them or never logged into them again after they were created. Social media platforms collect way too much information.”

“So what if they collect your information? Is it that big a deal?”

“No, for your average Joe like me, it typically isn’t anything big, but I’d still rather pick and choose what I let social media platforms know. I’ve kept my footprint on the internet near zero since I was young. I rarely even purchase anything online. Any accounts I create are typically under aliases and fake names. The amount of things online platforms want to know about you is creepy and disgusting.”

“Aren’t you just paranoid? It’s not like someone’s specifically going to watch everything you do when you’re just some random guy. If you had a big following like me it might be another story, but don’t.”

“Even if they don’t have any reason to use that information against someone like me now, the fact remains, if I one day pissed off the wrong person, they could destroy me with a snap of their finger. With the sheer amount of information they could potentially dig up on me if I used such platforms carelessly, it wouldn’t be difficult at all. Being able to communicate and having easy access to all the information you could ever want about someone you consider an eyesore is the most fearsome weapon. It is a weapon far stronger than an atomic bomb.”

“Even for a big celebrity like you, if you ticked off social media companies, they could take away your voice overnight if they really wanted to. A simple shadow ban would be more than enough to silence a celebrity. You’d be speaking, but your voice wouldn’t reach any of your followers. They could generate fake interactions if they wanted to so you wouldn’t be the wiser. Over time there would be fewer and fewer interactions, you’d think you were falling from grace as a celebrity when in reality it was all the result of a coordinated attack. The sorts of things they are capable of are limitless. The attacks can be malicious to an extreme.”

“They hold an absurd amount of power. They can influence an entire country’s election if they so choose to. They can sway the opinions of the people, and they are already doing so. They run small psychological experiments all the time and most people are completely oblivious to it.”

“Right now, they’re still toying around, experimenting to see what they can do and get away with, but when they become serious… for years to come, the world will be enshrouded in a veil of hatred and negativity.”

“Huh? Why-”

I cut her off, “Why is that the case? Well, it is for a very simple reason. When a negative response is evoked in a person, that person is much more likely to interact and engage with that event. The algorithms these large platforms have implemented, work to maximize interactivity and engagement.”

“Why would they design those algorithms with only that in mind?”

“Because that is where the money lies. People will keep coming back every day as they become addicted to those sorts of interactions without even realizing it. Making people more engaged leads to more traffic on the site allowing these platforms to serve more ads.”

“That’s why it’s best to remain disconnected from it all. Rather than marinate in that sort of environment, I’d rather not touch it at all.”

“These social media platforms lead you to believe you’re interacting with the world when in reality they secretly put you into small closed-off groups and only show you the things you want to see which coincide with your perception of reality rather than the bigger picture. Without realizing it, you end up in a place with only people who have similar views as you. Anyone who doesn’t think the same way as your group, which you’ve been convinced is the majority, must be wrong. The end result is one where people no longer think for themselves, herd mentality.”

“Well, you just so happen to be the head of a large herd though, lucky you. Haha… or unlucky, depending on how you look at it.”

It wasn’t as bad right now, but it would begin to significantly worsen after September. Cancel culture would spread far and wide. And the driving force behind it? The very platform she was using right now. It was the surface problem. One that was already too big to stop.

However, there was a much more insidious platform lurking behind the scenes, hidden in the background. It would be used to spread propaganda and exacerbate misinformation. It would only be launched in September. Coincidentally, right on time for many major events.

Could it be handled the same way as the institution I had my eyes on? No. It couldn’t. An app was much easier to develop. The app was quite simple to design as well, even if you eliminated one company another would eventually pop up. They could implement the same sort of deceptive tactics to make the app blow up.

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