In what is likely a breach of Australian guidelines for advertising and marketing towards children, Facebook denied and then apologized for revelations about its marketing plans to sell advertising to vulnerable youths who “need a confidence boost.”
The Australian obtained internal documents from the social media giant which reportedly show how Facebook can exploit the moods and insecurities of teenagers using the platform for the benefit of advertisers.
This conduct appears to be similar to other widely-practiced predatory advertising methods designed to target “vulnerable narcissists,” especially in the social-media obsessed millennial demographic.
RELATED: How To Explore Cuba Through Ernest Hemingway’s Most Famous Novel
If you feel your identity has been hijacked into believing only purchased externalities (ie. material things) can bury the hole in your soul left by a machine designed to monetize your suffering, then go to Cuba. There you may discover why the place you left behind seems like a giant car dealership masquerading as a sovereign nation. The resulting revelation could be transformative and may restore your faith in humanity.
Here’s why you should go to Cuba now:
1.Cubans Love to Sing
For Cubans, music has a physical dimension as the mastery of a craft but there is also a metaphysical dimension that is a cultural connection to an eclectic blend of histories and influences stretching back hundreds of years. Turn any corner in a Cuban city and you will likely encounter musical Cubans unleashing their gifts, paying no attention to the oily puddles and rusty rebar that surrounds them.
2.Cubans Identity Is Not Tied To Abundant Material Possessions
Make friends in Cuba and find out why having more stuff may actually make you feel worse. HumansofHavana is a great place to see Cubans in daily life on the streets of Havana.
3.Cubans Are Amazing, Prolific Artists
There is an ethical asymmetry in the art that has emerged out of Cuba in the last several generations. The yin of that asymmetry is yoked to generations of Cubans’ writhing under communism’s lash, and the yang is the immense creativity unleashed by that monolithic paradigm’s fantastical ability to produce endless scarcity in the face of abundance.
Scarcity is the parent of so much of humanity’s greatest achievements, and while the price for that scarcity has been a gauntlet of human tragedy, we are hopeful that a deep well of refreshment and healing in Cuba brings the pioneer spirit to bear, and the story’s core shifts to the consoling certainties of life with a future – together with a force that continues to excavate Cuba’s artistic depths.
Cuban artist Yoan Capote comes close to capturing the mystical and imaginative quality of the sea described in Ernest Hemingway’s novella, The Old Man and the Sea, written during Hemingway’s long-term residency in the island nation. Capote’s Isla and Panagre series of seascapes were created by attaching thousands of fish hooks to a board. The artists says, “These paintings are the interior sea of every human being, the psychological seascape that every person in Cuba has.”
