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Sean Parker Unloads on Facebook 'Exploiting' Human Psychology (axios.com)
Sean Parker, the founding president of Facebook, spoke to news outlet Axios about the ways social networks have made hundreds of millions of users addicted to their platforms. He said, from the interview: When Facebook was getting going, I had these people who would come up to me and they would say, 'I'm not on social media.' And I would say, 'OK. You know, you will be.' And then they would say, 'No, no, no. I value my real-life interactions. I value the moment. I value presence. I value intimacy.' And I would say, ... 'We'll get you eventually. I don't know if I really understood the consequences of what I was saying, because [of] the unintended consequences of a network when it grows to a billion or 2 billion people and ... it literally changes your relationship with society, with each other ... It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains. The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, ... was all about: 'How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?' And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that's going to get you to contribute more content, and that's going to get you ... more likes and comments. It's a social-validation feedback loop. He says people like him, and Mark Zuckerberg knew the potential consequences, but they did what they did anyway.
Sean Parker, it is your fault for creating the thing.
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
He is and continues to be wrong. I have successfully avoided Facebook.
It might have been addictive for awhile but it's getting pretty dull and feels more like myspace every day. I have a feeling the culture will eventually become dumb and toxic enough that the thing implodes an people will move to some other format for social media. Given Zuckerberg's interest in other social media platforms I have to wonder if he feels the same way.
I don't have much proof but it's happened to every similar service and website before it.
I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.
Yes, Mister Parker, you have. Facebook is a cancer to humanity, a virulent disease. It should never have been created in the first place, and I for one am glad that I have nothing to do with it.
..and NO, you can't find anything about me on Facebook. I don't have an account there, no one I know is allowed to reference me there, and I defy anyone who says different.
He says people like him, and Mark Zuckerberg knew the potential consequences, but they did what they did anyway.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say I don't totally believe that. At least, not insofar as it implies a deep understanding of the true impact.
I think what they knew was that if people really liked the product, then they could get lots of people to engage with it and that they'd make lots of money. That's true of pretty much any product, and it's why we have marketing and the like. It's what every inventor and app-maker and whatnot wants, and it's not a bad thing to want to provide something so useful that everybody uses it regularly.
What I don't actually believe that they knew was that there would be a truly addictive (ie, no hyperbole) effect on millions of people, to the extent that they've legitimately ruined lives. I find it hard to believe that some of the deeper, more insidious aspects of this were as foreseeable going in as they are in hindsight.
Furthermore, and I realize this is me being an optimist, I'd like to believe that if they had a deep understanding going in of the impact it would have, they would have done things a little different - "We can make $100bln and destroy lives and burn villages to the ground, or we can make $75bln and reintroduce the now extinct unicorn."
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
So it (maybe) changes children's brains. So does everything. So did letting them learn to read, or to use a telephone. Just because social dynamics are changing again, just as they did when cities were invented, and then suburbs were invented, and then TV was invented, doesn't mean this (Facebook / social media) is suddenly the Work Of The Devil.
Heck, we may be moving towards a society where interaction is primarily online rather than meatspace. So what? Who are we hurting?
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
...should pay the social and monetary costs for the damage he's done to society. He knew the consequences, and took the action any goddamned way. Full responsibility lies on him and Mark and they should pay dearly. Slam them straight back to middle class.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
It might have been addictive for awhile but it's getting pretty dull and feels more like myspace every day.
Yea, what's up with that bit, "...Facebook being the first of them..." -- I guess people have decided to start rewriting history again.
This is a huge problem - advertising, marketing and shadier news outlets are systematically exploiting the innate cognitive biases we all have.
They have always done this, but instead of an artform, this has become scientific. And it seems to work quite well (for them)
It's similar to Casinos, which also exploit well-known human mental defects - which is why casinos are usually heavily regulated. But you obviously can't do the same for communication.
The only kind-of protection against these assaults on our mental defects is education, and a change in the mind-set. But noone really has a short-term incentive to change either of those.
Yeah, sure, let's totally hamstring the social development of an entire generation, so they're so afraid of interacting with real, live people in real world situations, that'll just be so wonderful for our civilization.
He says people like him, and Mark Zuckerberg knew the potential consequences, but they did what they did anyway.
They might not have realized the full implications. And they might not even agree on the full implications even now. So it is not correct to claim they knew it would be this bad and still did it.
Secondly, even if they agree on the full implications, they might argue, "if I don't do it the other guy will do it. So why not me?". When the financial crisis was brewing and when the bubble was about to burst, so many people knew what was going on. 1 to 30 leverage on questionable securities? To shoot for an additional 0.02% return? It was crazy. They knew it was bad. All securities carried AAA rating but some would fetch a full percent or 1.5% over other AAA securities. Why? Collectively the market was not buying the AAA rating and were demanding lower rated security interest for those bonds. That shows the the entire market knew the rating was bogus. Still they argued, "If I don't do it others are doing it, and if I will be punished in comparison".
Free market is like evolution. It does not plan ahead, it does not do short term sarifice to get long term benefit, Every adaptation by every individual life form must improve its fitness locally at that point in time for that conditions.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I think they are giving themselves too much credit. Let's strip away the advertising machine that is FB and distill it down to the most basic fundamental. A person can post information, and others who are connected to that person can see that information and react to it. That's it in a nutshell. The fact that people get a "little dopamine hit" when someone they are connected to reacts to something they did is not something Facebook engineered. It is human nature. It is why we like to sit around talking to one another, or why we like to see a person smile when we do something. This is nothing FB engineered or calculated or anything like that. For any virtual social network to be compatible with human nature and be accepted it must provide a way for people to provide feedback with one another. Calling it a "like" or letting someone comment on it is not exactly the height of software or social engineering.
Methinks he is giving Facebook way too much credit to stoke his ego that he had a hand in reshaping people's "relationship with society". Facebook was inevitable, and in fact had existed in many, many different forms in the past (Usenet, America Online dialup, MySpace, Slashdot commenting system, ad infinitum). Facebook was nothing more than a simplification of existing social networks to the point that anyone could use it. It hit a critical mass, like MS Windows, the iPod, etc, where it had to resources to outgrow the competitors.
Better known as 318230.
Cow Clicker! IMO this was a much better commentary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Seriously though, what about WoW? What about EverCrack (as its own players referred to it half-jokingly)? What about the new e-Sports games like LoL, Dota2, or any multiplayer game that does its best to avoid falling into obscurity? What about TV shows that do their best to try to keep viewers hooked? What about Hollywood trying to keep people coming back in to see movies?
What company goes out of their way to make a product that no one likes very much (and that will fail as a result of it)? He'd be better off blaming people for being sheep than for blaming a company trying to provide the best possible service/product. It's what companies do. No one is forcing them to sign up, to spend all their time on it, to get hooked on "likes" (or people clicking their cows).
Good. I am near three years after deleting my Faceshit account. Do not miss anything there. Still have a ghost account to access company websites, from those who insist in having presence only in Facebook. And that's it.
Well yeah, gee whiz Sean, I mean why didn't you just say so?
Surely now that everybody realizes their mistake, Facebook and all the other "social media" web sites will immediately shut down and everybody will go back to whatever it was they were doing before any of this started.
Thanks, for letting us know, Sean!
Well, it's here to stay. I don't use it, but if I want to discuss things going forward that doesn't matter, the fact is millions do, many to very engrossed degrees, and the inertia alone is cement for the scenario.
In a dream scenario, this would be fine, good even. We have the masses, especially the type who are easily influenced, all nice and corralled. In the hands of more competent and benevolent minds, this is great. It's sort of like how we'd want to heap lavish taxes on an ideal government, who would use every dollar optimally.
In practice, we have a large chunk of humanity vulnerable to the whims of those holding the reins. We worry about Google and Apple Disney and Do No Evil and what they do with their massive power, but the facetweets are the hamster water bottle that everyone sips at. Voluntarily. Faithfully. You could put anything in that water, you can steer people down to their deepest beliefs.
It's like Inception - diluted, of course, but no need to dream dive.
In earlier times smart people used the internet, and the idiotic masses used AOL. Then AOL and the internet were joined at the hip and the internet went to shit due to the influx of idiots.
Those idiots are now all on Facebook. Rather than getting them off FB, I'm all for getting them to use it even more. It can serve as idiot containment. The more they use FB, the less they will harm the rest of the internet with demands to make it "safe for the children" or "inoffensive to me".
We should be pushing them to use more Facebook, not less.
2 billion Facebook accounts do not equate 2 billion people obsessed with checking out what is going on in their network. Most of the people I know with Facebook accounts use them the same way as I do - to log in effortlessly into sites where you have a passing interest, can't be bothered to supply a username and a password, and couldn't care less what garbage that will generate into your Facebook account. I do not know what is in my Facebook account, which I never visit, and I do not give a damn. As an all but infinite capacity garbage bin, Faecesbook is invaluable.
'How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?'
love is just extroverted narcissism
Solution 1.
Facebook is split into 3 companies that compete.
Solution 2
Require that Facebook charge its user base for services where there is posting. You can view all you want but if you want to post anything then there must be a charge for it.
Solution 3
Do both of the above. There would be more jobs and more transparency
I was on Facebook in the very early years and have now been gone for many, many years. I have had no major problems going about my social and professional life as a result and have saved tons of otherwise-wasted time. Plus, who wants to give all their data to creepy Mark Zuckerberg?
FB users, I mean. Well, at least according to Mark Zuckerberg.
DaveyJJ
...while I appreciate his candor, let's be blunt: we're PEOPLE, not rats in a Skinner box.
We have brains, and it's up to us if we choose to engage them or not. Whether we chase that dopamine hit of 'ooh, someone liked my post' and sit on Facebook for another 5 mins, or if we say 'you know, I should probably play with my kids'.
While certainly FB and other entities take advantage of mammalian psychology as much as they can, we are ultimately responsible for OUR OWN CHOICES. For good or ill.
-Styopa
Not sure what his angle is for this. Does he feel Facebook was a mistake? Do people become addicted to social sites like Facebook? Which is really a bad thing for real interaction face to face maybe? Maybe we should call Facebook addicts artificial social interaction addicts? A lot of the problem with Facebook is that you simply socialize though a medium rather then face to face contact. Maybe some day we as human's will realize this is not good.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
New technology always starts out with a basic idea: What do people need? That's the embryo stage of unicorn tech companies - they go for popularity, growth, adoption, novelty.
Not long after, either the people in charge, or those that want to be in charge such as investors, start thinking about exit: what do I need people to need/want? How do I make them do it to such an extent it starts providing something I can monetize? ...and this second step is where things really start getting out of hand. Thats problem no.1 of capitalist society - as it doesn't regulate until a fault is so big it has an effect, you can't really make perfect symbiosis with the user base. It's something we were expected to cope with, as the rational beings we consider ourselves, as a mild trade-off for innovation and economic growth. But in the age of information overload, we don't adapt fast enough and consequences might not be offset by the benefits.
The problem with innovation these days is that it has no sense of direction. I'll make this very, VERY basic analogy with the youtuber modus operandi: they find a weak interest group like gamers, children, compulsive consumers, extreme-left/right minds, religious types, nerds types... or a combination of the above, and then proceed to broadcast low or questonnable, definitely biased (read: sponsored) comment on whatever topic. You get low quality data on weak, influenciable people and you get a lot a disinformed community.
Fake news or trivial shares are not the problem - the problem arises when opinion is so influenced by trend that it becomes determination. Just look at the Catalunia issue: they really had no bad quality of life, nor that big a sense of identity to really make a fuss about separating from Spain (I am close, and unbiased to the issue as a Portuguese national), yet the simple fact some parties insisted on pushing the buttons over and over again, for very personal interest to acquire power for themselves, and you get populism, which is "old" english for trend.
I have seen the Facebook trend evolve - some years ago, Facebook was being used by everyone I thought was of reasonable character and technologically OK (let's put an age/social status label on that and say high-level educated millenials such as me and most of us here). facebook was getting trendy but it still managed to have actually relevant, valid information. Then it became meta-mainstream with the explosion of Android and the consequent WWW ubiquity, reaching the "septemberists" that had no idea on how to interact in an evolved community (both uneducated oldies as much as infant new generations). What do humans do when in a harsh environment? They attempt to thrive, Dunning–Kruger style: pack, gang up, and hoard the place with unfounded comment they believe as fact with the slightest argument. And this is not Facebook, this is the entire social web, today. And people, this september will last forever unless someone has a bright idea to stop it.
How you might ask? Well, I surely don't know but for starters, surely something better than FB/Twitter/Reddit must come forth and replace current use-patterns - and by better I mean it gets people to move there. With a bit of luck, whoever invents that acosystem also manages to place some core rules that prevent an idiocracy state all over again. But it might take some iterations, yet some systems such as Wikipedia made it on the first try (despite some nay-sayers, Wikipedia is still asserted by most as a decent platform, perceptibly preventing abuse by about 99% of relevant issues, and arguably with a lot more good than bad).
How do your friends arrange meetings?
At the pub used to be answer, and for some is still the most relevant.
Meet in the bar for an afterwork beer, and while there discuss interesting new plans for a trip on the upcoming week-end.
And hook up with a nice girl while you're at it.
The whole internet or the mobile network could go down in flame, the above mentioned method can still work.
(And if you're a regular enough at the bar, even the banking, payment processing and ATM systems can go down, and it still works for a couple of beers "on the house" or "I know you well enough, you can pay me tomorrow when the system is back up").
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
They say it is for old people.
I have friends and some family who over share posting things that should never be posted and then get upset over nothing.
People are to quick to post with out thinking.
Now when any info you share has the potential to be weaponized and used against you, thinking before you post has never been more important.
Something that may seem harmless now may come back to bite you in the future. Once it's out there you can't put the genie back in the bottle and once it on the net it on some server somewhere for ever.
People get upset of insignificant things that get blown up on major issues that really are meaningless who liked or didn't like what.
People don't realize how precious privacy is.
Look at the equifax breach the potential damage that info could cause. Look at everything people freely give up to social media even stupid phone apps that demand access to your contact list, texts and email just to play a stupid game or some other function that has no reason for needing that access you have to ask why and what they what that info for and what are the doing with it.
They are just monetizing you in to a product to be bought and sold. Your nothing more than electronic live stock.
As product your complaints are pointless like that of a cow complaining about what happens in the slaughter house.
the bigger big data gets and the more integrated artificial intelligence becomes the more we are at risk.
The ways it can have a negative impact on peoples lives from medical treatment and coverage employment financial to every aspect of your like is at risk.
All it may take is some in forgotten insignificant post you made in the past.
Anything a college frat party pic some statement that might now be deemed politically incorrect.
It's not evolution you dumb american.
Facebook is a product of state-monopoly capitalism. It was bank-rolled by the CIA until it succeeded.
Because Money
It just goes on into forever...
Also - does the term "social media" make anybody else cringe like nails on a chalkboard? The term sounds so fucking stupid.
And yet, nevertheless, you just posted that thought on social media.
Check back later to see if you got modded up! Maybe getting some karma points (or replies that agree with you -- they're just as good as upmods!) will get you to come back for more.
Slashdot's advertisers should be unhappy to read this, but considering where they're reading it, I suspect their frowns might be upside-down.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
NO, you can't find anything about me on Facebook. I don't have an account there, no one I know is allowed to reference me there
Yup, you don't have a Facebook profile, and you've politely asked your closest friend to not upload pictures with your face on them to it.
Good for you.
The problem is that Facebook will data mine the living shit out of everything it comes by.
Maybe one person with whom you didn't communicate using throw away accounts (but, e.g.: you mailed using a regular e-mail, all called them with your called-ID visible) had facebook's app installed on their smartphone (and the app will automatically mine any contact details it comes by, including caller list and e-mail addresses auto-added to the replied-to list)
Maybe someone you don't know personally uploaded a picture of a crowd while you were out in the public without wearing dazzle make-up (forget about usual clothing accessories like sun-glasses, Facebook face recognition system is fine-tuned well enough to be able to recognise you even with these).
etc.
Add all these small crumbs of information together over time and facebook ends up having quite some idea about who you are without you or any of your direct friend ever giving out any such information.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Facebook, not even once.
Making America Shitty Again!!
The children got bored of it first. Much like email, fb is something for the oldsters. The waves of migration follows the attempts to monetize the large user numbers. The attempts to "catch em young" just drive the demographic faster than the rest.
If they had said "I value my privacy", they'd be pretty much immune to the addiction.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I totally agree Facebook incorporates aspects of human psychology to try and draw people in.
But for myself, and other people I talked to, I am actually repelled by Facebook to the point where I don't use it that often. I dislike the UI, I find it super confusing/annoying that the main feed you look at when you go into Facebook is essentially random - so random that re-loading the page often means I cannot even find something I wanted to read earlier, it lots of cases it is just gone.
I don't fear Facebook that much because while they are mining a lot of data, what they are mining seems to be a pretty crappy level of quality.
It sure seems to me that Facebook is ripe to have people's social networks migrate elsewhere, we just haven't seen the company yet that has a compelling enough offering to draw people away. But I do not think it's impossible by any means.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
... I never use it.
It's so fucking boring.
I'm 71 years old and it's the same goddam electricity, day in and day out.
Sure, billions of people use it NOW, but just wait until the next technology comes along and replaces it.
Water ... ... I never use it.
It's so fucking boring.
I'm 71 years old and it's the same goddam water, day in and day out.
Sure, billions of people use it NOW, but just wait until a replacement comes along.
Air ...
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is nothing if not another ad for Facebook. Anything inducing stress forces an addict to crave the next dopamine hit. And any reminder of the opportunity cost associated with addiction is stress-inducing. So this "soul searching" is designed to get people who haven't been on Facebook in a while to get back on. Well, at least assuming that they stopped checking in because they viewed it as an addiction.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
You just listed three things that progressively robbed people of their soul.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
I'm 33 and have NEVER signed up for Facebook. Facebook got started when I was in college and I always refused to use it on principle. I also don't use Microsoft Windows, Apple products, most Google products (fork of Android and occasional Google search are the half-exception), Twitter, and many others.
I still refuse to use it and I've got a large community where I moved to which also refuses to use it. Not everybody mind you- but a lot of people. There are places (or is a place) with a bit more technically sophisticated population (being a "power user" does not make you technically sophisticated) and a larger percentage of very sophisticated users (ie developers, security researchers, and similar).
I'm in Keene, New Hampshire with a bunch of principled libertarians (ie if you think Gary Johnson is a libertarian you don't understand what a libertarian actually is, and republicans in sheep clothing calling themselves a libertarian doesn't make one a libertarian just because they agree on some issues, libertarians agree with both democrats on certain issues and republicans on other issues, it depends on whether or not we are talking fiscal or social issues, libertarians are traditionally fiscally conservative and socially liberal, ie pro gay rights, anti-stealing from the people and calling it 'taxes', or in other words the numerous wealth redistribution schemes) because of the Free State Project and Shire Society. Ie migration movements for those who wish to develop a free society where the people aren't made dependent on the state. More risk, greater rewards, and less "safety".
> we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while
The fiends! And now back to my Civ 3 game.
Fear Of Missing Out.
I see this all the time with high school students today. The reason they're checking their phones (instagram/FB/snap etc) is that they always want to be up to date on whatever is happening in their lives (circles of friends etc).
This and the need to always be connected to their circle of friends or influencers. Always on internet with social media is creating a generation of kids that don't know what to do when they aren't connected to them (being bored or disconnected isn't a bad thing).
I'm not on Facebook, so that kind of shit will never happen to me.
P.S.: please mod me up, I beg of you! I need to feel good and validated about my point of view!
#DeleteFacebook
They are just buying and selling you until and only until:
They make a free and easy tool that tracks your total hourly, and weekly usage.
I know people who have facebook as a second, 40-hour-per-week job, and can't imagine that they do.
Seriously, what chunk of the American GDP is sunk into tiny dopamine hits on facebook??
Why can't they "engineering good" or "engineer excellence" and do things that remove crime, addiction, or stupid? They don't want to.
They make $50/person/year.
How inefficient is it that a person-year of human lifetime on the application is only worth $50??
Is reserved for these drug pushers.
MAZLTOV!
There were always some kids like that, they grew up and became engineers.
Nothing forces you to use it.
The idea that Facebook did some great innovation is false. Facebook built a better MySpace, which was a better Friendster. Facebook had significantly better marketing, and MySpace was poorly run as a company at the time. If Facebook did not come along something very similar would have filled the social media space.
It's OK. Someone had to do it. Now that we know what it does to us we can slowly get off of it, like we did with smoking/transfat etc.
That said, occasionally I find some facebook posts from a very small number of people in my feed *very* useful. I've actually unfollowed everyone in my friends list (350+) except for that small group of about 10. As much as I loathe facebook, I would actually prefer the setup I have now over no facebook at all.
And I don't mean facebook. This is just more of the cancer that's fucking _everywhere_ today. Never take responsibility, it's always someone else's fault.
It's not my fault I post stupid shit on Facebook! It's facebook's fault!
It's not my fault I get my news from Facebook and believe stupid shit, it's Facebook's fault!
Those evil Russians totally ruined our elections.. by posting really stupid shit only a halfwit would believe. OMG they subverted us, it's not our fault for being a nation of fucking morons.
It's not my fault I'm fat, someone should have warned me about eating 3000 calories a day and doing nothing!
Fa. Mother fucking fie on all of it. If you don't like facebook don't fucking use it, and Sean Parker is a whiny little cunt.
Facebook wasn't the first at anything.
They did a better job marketing and monetizing it than their predecessors, but by the time facebook became popular social media had been around for at least 5-10 years. My sister was on social media in the 90s when nobody had heard of facebook. I didn't hear about them until '01 or so when someone in the hacker scene was bragging about working for them and how they were going to have an open bar after party at DefCon.
Look how well that has all turned out.
"the only winning move is not to play."
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
It is a synergistic effect between smartphones and social media. This is nothing like reading books, using a telephone or watching tv. The numbers are scary...:
Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?
And according to my 16 year old; 'Facebook is for old women"... (his mother facebooks every day :-)
As for me, I guess I am just plain anti-social (don't myspace/facebook/instagram/snap-whats-twitt).
Facebook is not a "social media", it is a social network.
Even the movie about it is called The Social Network.
Media is content, face thing is just a network.
How do you find the real age of Facebook users? 18 is a nice fake age - says "I am an adult" in many places. As for 22, I think between 21-24 is the start of drinking age in many places - just in case they end up posting pictures showing themselves drinking.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Death of democracy.
1. Soon (could be already) Facebook has a pretty good idea about who you are going to vote.
2. Soon (could be already) Governments ask them for this information, with or without an NSL.
3. We have already, in the name of the war on terror, given discretionary power to Governments to hide, kill, intimidate citizens.
4. We also don't mind when our elected political officials hide information from us, or lie to us.
So because of we wouldn't know when / if 4, 3 is done based on 2 as per 1.
QED
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
After people get fired on the basis of a facebook post you get anons. Anons are not intimate with anyone.
... that the people who run Silicon Valley tech companies are sociopathic assholes who only care about money and don't give a rats ass about their negative impact on society?
I am shocked. Shocked, I say.
Why do you bother making comments? Nobody cares what you think anyway.