I really tried ro get through it but it was so many words that (I think) describes what I already knew ...
That people just LIKE Trump.
I think it is well-summarized in post #11. That was my big takeaway as well.
You and your personality is datamined. Business has been doing this for years, now facebook and other digital interactions have exploded offering a deeper psychoanalysis.
Using the latest software the Trump team outdid the Hildabeast in targeting voters based on the data mined from the voters themselves. They knew who to avoid, who to contact, and the best message to give them to obtain support. The potential voter thus heard what he wanted to hear.
And this allowed concentrating this effort in key battleground states to win the needed electoral votes.
By taking those silly facebook type surveys, you have granted permission to all your facebook data and it is collected along with all your other digital “footprints” so that the collector of the data will know your personality and desires better than you do. This is unavoidable if you use anything in the digital world, and even if you don't, data about you already exists. You can run, but you can't hide.
It’s not at all about trump. It’s about how they can pre-determine things way in advance. It’s about the data collection being accurate to a scary extent.
This article reminds me of a 1981 PBS show called “the public eye”. It showed how accurately they were able to catalogue people’s attitudes about even certain words used by predidential candidates via focus groups with “like/dislike” buttons.
They’ve come a long way since then, but it is still not perfect and never will be because of the wild card: Faith in Christ.
If there were no God, eventually, we could all be utterly manipulated in any direction those with power see fit.
Remember Wall-E, on the luxury ship, everyone is wearing red tights and the advertisement said, “try blue. It’s the new red!” And everyone changed their color to blue. This is, in a very real way, what is already happening.
(or was it blue to red. I forget.)