Well, this is actually my first ever article who has nothing to do with blockchain, the cryptoworld, and the cryptocurrency on this platform. It describes a short story that took place recently about Brexit on facebook aka Meta and narrates how much easily, the masses can be manipulated on social media and on the internet in general.
Although it has been now 5 years since the United Kingdom’s referendum for exiting from the EU, and 10 months since the official exit of the country, there is still huge debate whether it was a good decision or not with many “Remainers” taking over the debate and trying to persuade the British society over their false decision blaming Brexit for the current problems of the British economy. They might be right, but i am not an economist to analyse it and although I am a Greek living in UK as a fellow European normally I should have been on the Remain side. However, I have chosen not to be trapped by extremism and remain neither a Brexit Maximalist or Minimalist (by using Gary Gensler’s terminology).
in the past there were numerous rumours from the “conspiracy theories” supporters that our world is fake and that in the past numerous book writers and tv series such as the Simpsons have predicted somehow future events such as the 9/11 WTC events.
Recently, came into my attention while browsing my facebook aka Meta newsfeed a post from an acquaintance, depicting an old cover book of Penguin Publications by Franz Kafka with title “BREXIT”, showing a kind of fallen Babel tower and just the following tags #SunlitUplands #Brexit. My curiosity made me to hold my browsing and try to understand if that was a genuine post of book cover or not.
It was actually too good to be true. Was there for real a book called “BREXIT” predicting the outcome of the referendum and the current financial situation in the UK following the exit of the country from the EU? Taking a deep breath and putting my brain into thinking instead of “swallowing” what was shown to me, dragging me into their own manipulation paths, I have decided to do a small web research taking advantage of my decentralised Presearch Search Engine.
The first thing was to search who is that guy Franz Kafka and according to Wikipedia, he was born in 1883, in Prague, today’s capital of Czech Rep. that was that time the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia part of the AustroHungarian Empire. He was trained to work as a lawyer and he was employed in an insurance company that forced him to dedicate his spare time in writing. Over the course of his life, Kafka wrote hundreds of letters to family and close friends, and various books and short stories that made him to be regarded as a one of the major figures of 20th century literature. In his books, he often blends realism and surrealism and his best known works include “Die Verwandlung” (“The Metamorphosis”), Der Process (The Trial), and Das Schloss (The Castle). The term Kafkaesque has also entered the English dictionary to describe situations like those found in his writings where his protagonists usually are facing “bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers”, what is known on the everyday language as “red tape”.
Especially in his book “The Castle”, the protagonist, named ‘K’, arrives in a village and embarks on a never-ending bureaucratic process seeking citizenship from the mysterious authorities who govern it from a distant castle supposedly owned by Count Westwest. It is ultimately impenetrable. Towards the end, the castle notifies K., on his death bed that his “legal claim to live in the village was not valid, yet, taking certain auxiliary circumstances into account, he was permitted to live and work there.” receiving a second-class status. As a result, The Castle is often understood to be a novel describing situations such as alienation, unresponsive bureaucracy, the frustration of trying to conduct business with non-transparent, seemingly arbitrary controlling systems, and the futile pursuit of an unobtainable goal. Kafka himself died before finishing the novel so we don’t really know its exact ending.
Eric Lonegan on his blog article with title “Brexit: everyone got it wrong” on 6th September 2016 few months after the Brexit Referendum in the UK, described Brexit as the latest case of ‘everyone got it wrong’ and he made an attempt to relate Kafka’s story with Brexit:
Imagine Kafka is an economist, and this is his tale:
An economy is thriving, or at least on some measures it is close to full employment. There is national angst about many things, some real and some fictitious: the distribution of wealth, the burden of monstrous financial errors being placed on the poor, and the imminent invasion of bellicose foreigners from a distant land.
One group of elitist bureaucrats blames the woes on another faction of the domestic bureaucratic elite, some blame foreign elitist bureaucrats, who tend to patronise them in recognisable but alien accents. In an attempt to settle the dispute once and for all, the elite turns to the population: let them decide. The team with the best jokes wins. The population votes to leave the big, foreign, castle, for its smaller local one.
The novel has been republished numerous times and even transferred into theatrical plays and movie films as the one below that have found on youtube.
As a said before my main intention on this article isn’t to analyze Kafka’s novel and Eric Lonegan’s ideas parallelising Brexit with Kafka’s novel.
However, I believe that the meme that it was developed and the way that it was used on the post that I came across on FB under the tags #SunlitUplands #Brexit, is a typical example of extreme political manipulation and fake news that reigns on social media today. Someone took the cover of an old book removed the title and put the fake title Brexit on it implying that Brexit has been predicted by Franz Kafka on 1926. Moreover, the reaction that I received from the person who published it it was something like “It was a meme, it was a joke” avoiding to take full responsibility of the misuse of social media or admit the manipulation that has been orchestrated and the original post has been removed from the newsfeed.
My advice is that everyone should try not to get fooled, being scammed and become a sheep no matter of which economic or political idea or direction when you come across an interesting photo or post on the social media because it is very likely that it has been photoshoped and the only aim of its existence is to brainwash your opinion.
As I kept mentioning in the past mainly in my crypto article “BTC Airdrop Conflict”, if an investment or idea that you come across you on the internet looks very attractive and successful, take a deep breath, put your brain into work, questioning everything you read and do your own investigation to find out if it is indeed attractive. Because 9.999/10 times it will be fake and it will be a scam !!!
And as Abraham keeps saying:
DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ ON INTERNET BECAUSE THERE IS A PICTURE WITH A QUOTE NEXT TO IT.
People can easily get fooled from the easiness of earning cryptos through airdrops and they just obey the airdrop instructions without hesitation and clear mind. Stay Alert. Stay Safe. Use Airdrops through official accounts only. Always remember; If an airdrop sounds too good to be true, probably it isn’t.
Disclaimer: All information found on this article is for informational purposes only. I do not provide any personal investment advice so please make your own research before proceeding to any investment/trading actions
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