Internet videoblogger Loren Feldman kicks it CIA-style and runs problem-reaction-solution on his audience, tricking them into thinking he was a racist, generating hysteria as a result, and then offering a solution in the form of a new format for his show.

At least that was what I saw it as. It was kind of weird and disorienting, not really sure I got the message. One thing that he is clearly trying to communicate though is the lameness of groupthink, which he talks about in the final show of his opera. It's an idea I agree with totally. David Icke has said that the matrix -- the false reality we live in -- is consensus reality; it's mainstream thought. That's why everyone's afraid to talk about it and accept 9/11 being an inside job, when the evidence is right out in the open and obvious to anyone with anything resembling a brain. But consenus reality won't allow it, and so the minds imprisoned in the matrix (aka the minds of sheeple) simply edit it out of their cognitive process, and attack the messengers who deliver the truth.

Feldman goes on to talk about how Facebook apps are a lame form of social media. I don't fully agree with that (Facebook is lame, but the developers building cool stuff atop it are not [they just don't realize THEY are the ones who have the value, not the operating system]). I think Feldman's larger point is that social media is about the message, not about finding lame ways to sell ads or capture user data that can later be sold. I agree largely with that idea. I think we will see firms use social media to create deeper messages, and I think this idea is at the heart of branding 2.0.

But I don't think we'll get there until more sheeple unplug from the matrix. Right now it always seems like a long shot that anyone will unplug, but when the inevitable next terrorist attack comes, and when the economy plunges, the sheeple are going to demand some answers. They're going to begin to realize that mainstream media has seriously conned them, and that groupthink does not benefit them.

Of course, they'll also have to accept that on some level they wanted to be lied to, and they refused to wake up earlier when they knew there were problems.

But right now, the sheeple want to be lied to, and so the market rewards liars.

It is only a matter of time before the market corrects itself, just as it is only a matter of time before systems become more and more open. But of course, even though it is predestined, we will still need heroes to choose it.