COMING SOON!
by lisa marie quillinan
In late 2010, I thought Facebook was watching my every move, so I started taking screen caps of my notifications and then I would capture when those notifications disappeared or were no longer visible. I found it very strange. The patterns I noticed seemed to be repeating, and they became more and more recognizable, evident and obvious. It drove me nuts, literally; somewhat obsessive. So I ended up voluntarily seeking help at a behavioral treatment facility with the expectation of receiving professional healthcare.
That did not happen.
Instead, the course of my life took a, what seems like a 179-degree turn, upside-down with the lights off. I was completely lost, dumbfounded, and I felt duped into a horribly planned mission that everyone else but me knew about.
So I wrote about it. I filmed stuff, made a video, cried, questioned everything....but the more I wrote, the more I researched, and the more I learned, the more I wanted to get down to the bottom of it. I really, truly believed that my Facebook was possessed. That's what it seemed like; it was abundantly clear to me. In my hospital records, it states that:
"𝙋𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙚𝙭𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙚𝙨 𝙥𝙖𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙤𝙞𝙖 𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙁𝙖𝙘𝙚𝙗𝙤𝙤𝙠 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙚𝙢𝙖𝙞𝙡𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙏𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙧."
"𝐋𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐃𝐢𝐝 𝐈 𝐊𝐧𝐨𝐰: 𝐀 𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐍𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞" was originally going to provide an in-depth look into the pharmaceutical industry pre- and post-1942, as well as an investigation into The Joint Commission with the backdrop of what I experienced. I was given extreme doses of psychotropics and put in restraints twice a day for an unknown amount of time that I could not measure by my breaths or by the flickering of the florescent light shining above my head as I lay there with bit-o-honey-colored cuffs around my joints.
Because I was unsuccessful at securing a meeting with Senator Chuck Grassley--since he was investigating the hospital conglomerate that owned hundreds of nursing homes, behavioral treatment facilities, veterans facilities and youth homes that participated in unethical, neglectful behavior that I, as well as many others, had endured-- this project was put on hold and is now being recalibrated.
To observe the digital landscape and the scope of the social media ecosystem, entering this digital era at its infancy in 1995 when I was in high school where I was invited to the state Capitol to present data via HTML, has given me quite a perspective; I'm really glad I learned coding when I was 15. Working behind the scenes of the internet, literally measuring data-driven analytics; mining data...
Liberated, is what I am today and that's my silver lining.
To say I was embarrassed by this whole thing would be appropriate. Disappointed, is what I've felt and what I've been for the last few years because little did I know that I would be affected by social media's algorithms, psychometrics and data-mining.
Little did I know, however, that it would take 12 years for this story to finally come the f*•k out.
