THE SOCIAL DILEMMA Jeff Orlowski September 9, 2020 A reaction Paper submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the requirements In MGT. 206 MARKETING MANAGEMENT Presented To: Dr. Wendy Veeh T. Batar, REB, ICAP1 Presented by: Reyjane A. Obsioma MBM 1 PART I : SUMMARY OF THE WORK The movie that I will be reacting to is titled The Social Dilemma, directed by Jeff Orlowski and was released on September 9, 2020. The movie talked about how social media is slowly taking over people’s lives. It emphasized how today’s product is not anymore inclusive to the material goods being sold in the market but also the people – the people’s addiction, the people’s attention. It also talked about the concept of surveillance capitalism, where a personal data and even the analysis of thought is commodified. In today’s age, where people, businesses and governments rely mostly on technology, creators of these platforms took advantage of such opportunity. They did not only developed platforms that would connect people and advertise products but could eventually lead to creative destruction without people realising it. Every click in our devices sends data and information to the creators thus making us their captives. They then in turn, would analyse that actions for future predictions and manipulations. The movie presented three main goals of a social media platform: engagement goal, growth goal, and advertising goal. Engagement goal is the amount or the quantity of the people’s response with regards to their usage. Growth goal is the number of times people would come back whilst encouraging other users to visit a particular platform. And advertising goal is making sure that the company gets its purpose of profit-making from advertising. PART II : PERSONAL REACTION The movie relates to this course by showing us awareness of the effects these social media to the users. We are well aware that people nowadays are always online, especially in this pandemic. Advertisers have now the convenience in marketing their products at the comfort of the consumer’s home and not really having to physically introduce them to a certain marketplace. As an Institution of learning, social media is a big part of our learning delivery to the students especially in this times. Since we cannot conduct face to face classes, we resort to online or live class discussion through FB live, as this is the most convenient for our learners. Though it is the most appropriate way of conducting classes, it voids the sense of familiarity between the teacher and the students. The interaction is lacking since only the instructor would be the one talking without actually seeing the student’s faces. Not to mention the difficulty in explaining the lessons because of the one way communication. And it is manipulative in a way that we have to check on our emails and inboxes for their queries and output submissions from time to time. We could go on full day just rummaging through our inboxes for students’ messages. The Social Dilemma is an awareness of social media’s consequences to the people. We know it for sure but we cannot avoid it now. Especially that our work involves using it for how many hours a day. I agree that it is addictive and manipulative but with proper cautions in our engagements, I think we can change the habit. We may not be able to totally delete it from our system, but at least we are controlling it and not them controlling us.
