The Joy of De-FANGing

What is FANG? FANG is an acronym for four of the largest companies in the world. They aren’t necessarily the four largest companies, but they are in the top seven. Furthermore, they are arguably the four most influential companies in the everyday lives of the most people all around the world. These companies are Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. It is also quite fitting to collectively call them “FANG” as they sure have their fangs sunk deep in us all. Well, almost all of us.

Who are these companies, really, and what are their values? If their values are so radically opposed to the natural law and to our faith, can we justify consuming their products? How much can we tolerate feeding these beasts? The present article will break down FANG type companies, their troubling agendas, a critique of remote participation, and how these companies are ultimately affecting our lives. It’s time to de-FANG.
 

The Problem of Remote Participation

Two years ago, many Catholics and other morally concerned Americans expressed their conscientious objections to receiving a Covid-19 “vaccine”, under the premise that there was testing done on cells from aborted babies to develop these treatments. The Johnson and Johnson jab even contained cell lines derived from an aborted baby.  Millions of Americans sought religious exemption letters from their pastors to ease the pressure at work to take one of these morally questionable shots. All this in spite of the opinion of the National Bioethics Commission and Rome insisting that any participation in the evil of abortion is too remote to constitute a sin.  Heck, the Pope and many bishops around the world even encouraged receiving the jab, as some sort of “act of love”. Some spoke as if it was a moral imperative.

If you knew the vile history as to how the cells from HK-293 were acquired, perhaps that was the determinate that led you beyond the absolution via “remote participation”.  In case you didn’t know, the reason why the baby from which these cells were taken was named "HK-293" is because that baby was the the 293^rd baby harvested in the project.  Additionally, the babies were essentially vivisected while partially outside of their mothers and alive during harvesting.  Again, this was enough for many to go beyond (not in contradiction of), but beyond the “it’s okay because participation in the act is remote” argument.  Kudos!

So let’s examine the following case.  As an associate pastor recently pointed out in a Sunday bulletin, Amazon is one of several big American companies that literally have been sending their employees on “abortion vacations” since June 24^th.  Only 20 years ago the feminist movement would have been coherent and sensical enough to understand the full reason why; Amazon, Dick’s, Mastercard, Disney, Tesla, and all the rest need their menial workers perpetually at the production and distribution lines to make, package, and sell trinkets to consoomers  Period. This cannot be done with women out taking 3 month long maternity leaves. The message is clear, “We care about women so much that we want them to kill their babies and promptly get back to work.” But ironically and tragically, both the feminist rights movement and American Christians are united, not in some brave resolve to finally boycott and strangle the beast that is America’s perverse and blood stained Consumerism, but rather in their apathy over the whole scandal.

 

What’s so bad about FANG?

When people talk about FANG, they don’t just mean those four companies. "FANG" is just a clever way to make an accusatory acronym against the current biggest and, unfortunately, most influential companies in the world. It just so happens that most of these companies are Big Data companies that, among other things, voueristically scour all the data possible about you, your kids, your wife, your search history, etc… Oh, and they are mostly out of California. Oh, and they are run by far leftists who endorse Universal Basic Income. Oh, and many of those executives dabble in transhumanism and obsessively aspire towards goals such as making technology that will allow our thoughts to be up-loaded and downloaded in the “cloud” via bluetooth and transferring our “mindfiles” from out biological bodies into machines (looking at you, Ray Kurzweil, chief engineer at Google). These are definitely people to be trusted, right? If there are “free” shiny products to be taken right now, these are the people to take from and to thank profusely, right? I mean, it’s not like we tell our kids not to take candy from strangers, right?

I have left nuggets about most of these companies in the Gadfly Report for two years now, nevertheless, allow me to recap some things:

Youtube (owned by Google) and Facebook did enormous damage to you, your country, the world, the economy, the mental health of people you love, etc… for several months by literally censoring all posts and videos contradicting the narrative that Covid was killing millions of people world wide and that Dr. Fauci, the WHO, and Bill Gates must be trusted with all of their solutions to this EPIC AND CATASTROPHIC PANDEMIC!  We quickly forget (totalitarians always take advantage of our poor memories) just how crushed we felt when Facebook and Youtube shut down any post or video that questioned the safety of a highly experimental mRNA gene therapy jab that was supposed to be forced on us and our children.  Anyone who has studied critical theory propaganda could have easily predicted how policies of “these posts/videos are too unsafe for public discourse” would soon turn into “these people are too unsafe for public discourse”. Facebook and Google are highly responsible for helping normies “get with that narrative/get with their program.”

Remember when you were called a “conspiracy theorist” for suggesting an unfair election in 2020? How about when Amazon, Apple, and Google all agreed together (conspired) to ban Parler from their respective servers and app stores in January 2021?

How about the 400 million dollars that Mark Zuckerberg donated to “raise election awareness…” in strategically selected blue regions leading up to the 2020 election?  What do you think Google does with the power of the page ranker?  Look for some side by side comparisons between results from political searches on Google to DuckDuckGo or Brave; Google has and regularly uses the power to influence the population towards accepting Leftist ideology as well as influence elections.  Facebook employees have called the company out for supressing conservative influencers and podcasters for years. It’s only gotten worse.

Have you had a chance to really examine why Zuckerberg, Musk, Google, Bezos, et al. hearitly endorse Universal Basic Income? You do realize that they share a dream together of a CCP style, overworked, low living standards, social credit score, maximum public transportation, minimum private ownership of vehicles world, right? A world where the same masses who at this moment enthusiastically accept their shiny gadgets that track, trace, and spy on them will someday be a bewildered herd who own nothing and are happy.

Netflix ran a show that depicted Christ as a homosexual.  They followed that up by carrying a movie that sexualized twerking 11 year old girls called “Cuties.”  Don’t you remember that!?

All of these companies benefited greatly from Covid lockdowns.  They would have gladly taken more of them so that people would have stayed home and did more Google searches, watched more Netflix, and posted more crap on Facebook. It kind of explains some of their political affiliations. Their stocks soared during Covid. And we all became worse for it. FANG brings out the worst in all of us. And in return, they give us trinkets and AI to use for purposes such as writing more emails in less time at work. Which generates more responses to emails in a shorter time. Which generates more work. Can someone help me find an authentic contribution to collective human flourishing that any of these companies really bring?

 

The Problem with Boycotting

Here are the top reasons people refuse to boycott:

Objection 1: “I am fulfilled by plastic things with tiny electronic components in them. Oh, and I MUST HAVE MY STARBUCKS!!”

Obj. 2: “It’s impossible to boycott them all.”

Obj. 3: “I can’t do work/I can’t do my political and socially didactic duties without legacy social media.”

Obj. 4: “Boycotts don’t work.”
 

Reply to Objection 1: Most of us can probably trace our ancestral heritage back to multiple generations who withstood sieges from barbarous enemies in the ancient and medieval worlds. Or perhaps we can trace our heritage back to peoples who waged war against foreigners who worshiped terror gods such as Moloch. They may have walked hundreds of miles in sandals or eaten dog rather than surrender to the enemy. And we can’t give up time sucking perverted movie streaming or $6 blended mocha frappos!?  How are we preparing to say “NO!” to the next jab or a microchip someday if we can’t even say no to trans-bathroom pioneers like Target?  Now is the time to fight on some hills you don’t have to die on. Build up your strength while taking consolation in your moral conviction. It’s exhilarating.  Join the team.  Total shocker, but the worst and wokest offenders typically sell the most superficial and unfulfilling crap to humanity.  Marvel at how quickly your physical, spiritual, and moral baby fat melt away as you detach yourself from all the modernist consumerist fluff. It’s all there to make you fat, happy, and weak. Just say no to losers like Amazon and become your most bad ass self today.

Reply Obj. 2: It sure seems that way. For the vast majority of us, it is true. But De-FANGING doesn’t mean quitting your job because it requires you to use Gmail. It means ditching Google wherever you can.  Personal internet searches?  Why feed the beast when there are comparable search engines available that don’t track your data?  Use Youtube as sparingly as you can.  Need a video to understand how to replace the starter in your car? That’s what Youtube should actually be for. It’s one of it’s few redeeming qualities. Using it while keeping your VPN active and never logging into Youtube is a loss for Youtube and a loss for Google.  Earn some little wins.  Most of us are probably not in a position to 100% ditch every company remotely tied to near slave labor, donations to Planned Parenthood, or actively involved in the New World Ordering of our world. But everywhere we can get the FANGs out of us, the better.

Reply Obj. 3: Every time you use Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, you show bad people exactly what a resister looks like. Check Zuckerberg’s recent disclosure about his habits of handing over whatever data the corrupt FBI demands of him. It hasn’t hit most of us yet, but when a SWAT team bursts into a pro-life activist’s home with guns pointed, it’s no longer paranoia to guard your data from bad actors in authority. FBI raids aren’t just for Trump anymore. “But I have got nothing to hide!”, you say. Well of course you aren’t actually guilty of any crimes. People antagonized by totalitarian tyrants never are. And when totalitarian tyrants are in power, literally everything that is precious to you is something to guard.

Additionally, Facebook is designed to keep you glued to Facebook. They spend millions of dollars in market research and use advanced algorithms to keep you scrolling like an addict. Since content that angers women, for example, gets the most shares, such content is artificially boosted to the top of the feed (feed… wow, talk about irony). The remorseless pot bellied grubbers at Big Data play with you and your emotions like you are some little toy to keep stuck to a screen, seeing more and more adds and forking over more and more precious data to more advertisers. What a nasty orgy of money, emotion, manipulation, anger, and angst. They treat you like you are a moron, a glutton, and a sloth. Liberate yourself from yet another techno-fetter in your life today.

Reply Obj. 4: It is true that you boycotting FANG will not rid the world of FANG. Just like renouncing sin won’t rid the world of evil. But that doesn’t stop you from constantly recommitting yourself to living a more virtuous and holy life, now does it? And no, I am not necessarily equating using FANG products with committing personal sin. I am not prepared to make a satisfactorily thorough and exclusively natural law principle based argument to prove that at this time. What I will argue is that the more you give up the top industries that significantly influence world policy and destination, that are opposed to most of what you believe in, including the nuclear family, home ownership, the sacredness of unborn life, you being able to work without a microchip in your hand someday, etc… you get a tremendous satisfaction out of it. And in that sense, for you and your sake, boycotts do work!

Refusing to feed the Beast will always give you peace. Imagine how much money you can save when you don’t buy everything your heart whimsically desires on Amazon. Imagine how free you can be from addictions to social media and your Android phone; which does nothing but spy on you anyway. Imagine how nice it would be to not have to worry about whether your phone is on your person or in the same room before you go into the confessional or make love to your wife. Wait a minute… you did know that whistle blowers have exposed that creeps at these companies watch and listen in on private bedroom moments, right?  Uh oh, maybe you should rethink the next time you are about to tell Siri to play some Barry White.  Better yet, why don’t you take that God forsaken “magic black box” from hell and send it back once burn season returns in a few days. Just a thought.

The Beast that is ushering us closer and closer to a Godless transhumanistic and communistic new world order cannot be stopped by you boycotting FANG. But there is a growing crowd that is more and more proudly able to say, “the Beast might be fed more than ever right now, but at least it is not fed by me.” That crowd is inviting you to join in their peace.

 

Final Thoughts

I recently sat at the head table with a prominent pro-life activist at a fundraising dinner for a women’s care center. I have so much respect and admiration for this woman and her conversion story. She is a true warrior who has done tremendous good for the pro-life cause.

During dinner, I was intrigued by a couple of her takes on things.  Humorously, she shared the two things that one never should share on social media when in a position such as hers. The first was a picture of a child in a car seat. When she proceeded to recount the sort of drama that ensues over whether the harness is in the right spot, I got a kick out of that one. What I had trouble with was the next one: unless you want people to point out every time a company has given money to Planned Parenthood, don’t show a company logo on social media. One of the specific examples she gave was Starbucks.

While I can imagine how ridiculously “six ways to Kevin Bacon” some might get over company ties to Planned Parenthood, there are some companies definitely worth dumping.  I don’t think that’s something to trivialize.  Everyone has a part to play in resisting at this time.  For someone like her, it’s hard to argue against all use of legacy social media, for example.  If she and others have the talent to use such means to effectively intercept abortion minded women, change hearts, and raise money for good causes at a tremendously large scale, then the argument for using these platforms against the very bad guys who provide them is a strong argument.

But that’s certainly not where I am. And I am confident that there are millions of others who are in a similar spot. There’s no way I could argue that some good from my personal use of social media could outweigh the fetters such activity would put me in. I don’t have a full time job as a pro-life advocate.  So I’m happy pursuing these little victories as I do my own part in resisting the culture of death and the evils of our current age. For what it’s worth, my testimony is that there was great consolation in being able to open my pocket book a little wider at the check cutting portion of the event, because I don’t blow money at Amazon, Walmart, and Starbucks.

As always, nothing here is personal. Full disclosure, I still have some spots where FANG is part of my daily life (damn work Gmail!). But, as a good Gadfly and as a good Christian brother should, I write today to push you and to challenge you. Lord knows I need some pushing myself.

Score some of these wins, find better companies to feed, and get some extra peace today. You’re worth it!

 

God bless,

Gadfly