04 August, 2016

Manufacturing Consent on Quora

There’s trouble with unanimity. It is no doubt reliable but it shouldn’t be trusted blindly. In the 2002 elections in Iraq, there was 100 percent turnout of voters and all 100 percent voted in favour of Saddam Hussein. Obviously, the unanimity was not reliable.

Quora.com is somewhat similar to that. It is a very good tool for sharing knowledge and asking questions but only up to a certain limit. After that it is a mind control cult and a tool to manufacture consent. Take for instance the assertions used by the “happy family” of Quora:

-Most of the users of Quora claim to be employees of high-profile companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple etc. Their answers on Quora are long and anecdotal with incredible details. Where do they get time to write such long answers? People who work in those companies are well-paid but they also work long hours: sometimes 15–18 hours in a day. They not only work hard but they have families and active social lives. So where is the time to write such long answers, unless they are paid by corporations and government? In times when an average person brags about having a short attention span and gloats about having no time for anything other than work, it is quite amazing that they not only manage to post regularly on Quora, but they also find time garnish their answers with little details.

-“Quora broadens your horizons. If you don’t like Quora, you are narrow-minded and detached from reality.” The assertion itself is utterly narrow-minded and bullies anyone who dares to question them.

-Quora is like a happy family, where most of the users agree to one another. Isn’t that a little odd? It is difficulty to get unanimity in a family of four, then how could thousands of users have same opinions on almost everything from cinema to politics.

-Governments use Quora to brainwash people. The top four–five search results to most questions searched on google lead to Quora. It is a dangerous trend. Quora is influencing our actions and what we think. Quora has taken over every aspect people’s lives. Bigotry is rising. Beware.

-It is filled with thirty-odd-year-old lifestyle gurus who claim to know everything about everything. They indoctrinate people on every aspect of their lives. They tell people how many children they should have, what movies they should watch, how they can be successful (but ironically their own lives are miserable), the ideal quantity of happiness they should have in their lives (two teaspoons? in other words, no one is allowed to be happier than the prescription of lifestyle gurus), what career they should take etc. And anyone who isn’t like them or doesn’t watch the movies they watch is declared unsuccessful by them. They are a gang of bullies who harass people who ask for career advice. They discourage people from getting into high-paying careers by scaring them and feeding them with their pessimistic pabulum. If everyone listened to Quora for career advice, then many of the successful entrepreneurs, doctors and engineers would be doing minimum-wage jobs.

-Almost every Indian on Quora loves Anurag Kashyap. The ratio of his lovers on Quora to those in real world is highly skewed. You cannot even find one critic of his. Even Nardendra Modi will have more critics than Anurag Kashyap. Does that mean Anurag Kashyap is more loved than Modi? That’s ridiculous. The reason given is that Quora is only used by intelligent people and only intelligent people love Anurag Kashyap. That’s a highly preposterous claim and just another example of how Quora manufactures consent.

-There are provocative questions like “What do you think of people haven’t seen Gangs Of Wasseypur”? In other words, they mean “What should be done to people who have no interest in Gangs of Wasseypur?” It’s a well-made film but not everyone has interest in films like these. Not everyone has to watch it to fulfil their lives. Watching highbrow cinema doesn’t get one admission to Mensa. Religious fanatics share this parochial outlook with them. They too think that their religion is the best and anyone who doesn’t follow their religion is a loser. Strangely, the religious fanatics are ridiculed for such bigotry but the movie buffs are hailed as the champions of democracy.

-Quora is professed as a saviour of humanity. But what Quora has done is nothing new. Yahoo Answers did the same thing for years (it still does) but people shunned it by saying that they didn’t have time for such online activities.

-Another autocratic claim made at Quora, which I wrote about in my previous post, is that All India Bakchod is extremely popular amongst India’s youth. Just like Saddam Hussein’s “victory” with one hundred percent votes, it’s preposterous. When more than ninety-nine percent of India’s youth would not have even heard of AIB, this only speaks of their bigotry; their utter disregard for the common young people is a reflection of the class divisions flaring up in India.

-Most of the Quora users love BJP. The reason given is that most of the sensible Quora users are intelligent and educated. Hence, they love BJP. It implies, that everyone who loves BJP is smart and intelligent.

-There is a typical question that the happy family of Quora likes to ask “What advice would you give to your children or so-and-so?” Among the typically lame answers, one is “I will ask them to sign up for Quora”. Again, it’s an obviously sycophantic reply to manufacture consent.

-It is filled with racist questions and answers. The sole purpose of flashing those questions is to spread hate and bigotry.

There is no doubt that Quora is a good tool for sharing information but the cultization of Quora is extremely dangerous. Like religion, it is getting misused. It’s all about manufacturing consent by government and media to control people. Unless Quora learns to respect common people, the day is not far when it will turn into a hub of extremists. 

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