Meet the cofounder of the franchiseable social radio station and transmedia juggernaut in America’s Heartland that won the hearts of America — **WWW.SONGA.LIVE** 👀
— Forbes Nash, Jr Esquire @ ForbesNash.com
Before I belonged, I didn’t. I was a data miner who wrote the disgracebook algorithms that made media less social. I was the son of an oil miner in a small field in the plains of West Texas. You might know the company I cofounded by a different name. I bet you use the platform I built too — probably even a little bit too much. Well, I used your data. And I became the company’s CMO, the Chief Marketing Officer, but I was later reviled as its Chief Manipulation Officer, because my algorithms manipulated—and sold—
I had hoped to create joy and connection in the world, but I was paid handsomely by our Shareholders at Sequia Capitol™ on the bottom line, so I drove traffic to our platform using the emotions that sold best—Anger and Division, Hate and Fear.
I sold the eyeballs that those negative feelings drew to companies for a massive profit. And as the social media landscape I helped architect tore apart society’s fabric—and millions of families along with it—my bank account grew beyond imagination. But along the way, I lost my imagination — and my joy — and, ultimately, my job too.
When I started watchin’, I stopped listenin’—and with me, the world stopped listening, to each other. And when we started scrolling, we stopped livin’, and lovin’. When my heart and life grew dark, I finally, lost my Self.
But the greatest tragedy came later. As our screens got smaller, so did our gatherings, until our screens got so small that we didn’t gather at all.
It wasn’t hard to tap into the worst of US. I’d had practice with my own family.
Wyoming, before he changed his name and became the one named enigma that the world’s come to know him by, he was my rival, and once upon a time, he was also my brother. We had two different mothers: Mine, the sister of a game theorist who’d won the Nobel Prize in Economics. [**Uncle John Nash](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash_Jr.)** was a novel thinker known in Nobel circles for his theories, helping the world better understand the interconnectedness of our societal fabric, the very fabric I’d destroyed with the algorithms that fascinated me as a young engineer at disgracebook. I guess, starting from a young age, I’d never really taken his Nash Equilibrium to heart, because, the prisoners my uncles saw, Wyoming (“Wy”) and I, we were trapped in our own Prisoner’s Dilemma, fighting for our father’s attention in a game where no player benefitted while the others strategy remained unchanged. Uncle John solved The Prisoners Dilemma, and that’s what he won the Nobel for, but it was my brother Wy who released me from the prison of my own making.
They called my father domineering. Wy played the same game. And as we both grew older, we fed each other’s growing capitalistic narcissistic wounds.
Capitalism failed us, and it’s failed…
I grew up an unseen son, in Wyoming’s shadow—quiet, overanalytical, overlooked. But during those hot Texas summers, when Wy would leave St. Louis and come to our father’s ranch, I learned to play a game of my own. I manufactured crisis and played the Victim. I’d inflate my successes and play the Hero. None of it seemed to buy my father’s love which was never for sale, as much as he pretended it could be bought. Wy accused me of manipulation. So, it only made sense I’d pursue a career in it.