What Makes You Click

What Makes You Click

2016, Technology  -   17 Comments
7.84
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Ratings: 7.84/10 from 115 users.

Your likes, passions and habits are best known by people you've never met. They have the power to read your mind, mold your thoughts, and determine where you spend your hard-earned dollars. They're the capitalistic kings of the new digital age - the online persuaders - and they're the subject of the new documentary What Makes You Click from the renowned VPRO Backlight series.

Every day, billions of people around the globe are transfixed by their computers, tablets and smart phones. All the while, their online behaviors are being monitored, studied, and interpreted for the benefit of hugely profitable business interests. Consumerism is no longer driven by roadside billboards and 30 second television advertisements. Every click of the mouse can help to determine your next purchase, shape the cultural perception of an important issue, occupy every moment of our free time, direct social discourse, or even influence the outcome of a presidential election.

Our addiction to technology may seem benign on the surface, but it can ultimately spell disaster for the tenants of humanity we hold most dear. Free will, if it exists, could buckle under the pressure of unfettered corporate manipulation, and the notion of privacy could become nothing more than a pipe dream.

How much power is too much? Just ask the architects who operate behind the cyber curtain. Throughout the course of the film, several of these mystery figures speak about the dangers inherent in their chosen field of work, and express a need to be bounded by greater oversight and stricter regulations. In their arena, online users aren't viewed in humanistic terms; they're merely numbers on a spreadsheet that must be programmed to bend to the will of corporate interests. Ethical boundaries can easily be crossed when influencers are allowed to operate with such complete anonymity and omniscience. The desires of a few can come to define the future of millions.

What Makes You Click is both a fascinating psychological study and a gripping cautionary tale. The filmmakers navigate these uncharted new realities from an informed and probing point of view, and introduce a series of dilemmas our society is likely to grapple with for many years to come.

Directed by: Martijn Kieft

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Temeika
Temeika
5 years ago

After slogging through many documentary options, I was glad to come across, "What Makes You Click?" This was a thought-proving film that caused me to think about several aspects of our internet behavior. In fact, I thought about our overall actions in society that go against our own desire and will. I was frustrated by the Dutch because the psychologist spoke English, but the subtitles were helpful. In the end, it is worth watching and developing your own guide to internet usage for your life.

customer_database
customer_database
6 years ago

I like Tristan's vision of a grassroots movement in ethical design, and in respecting the end user dignity. Bart, the psychologist, also stands up to greedy mind manipulators and continues with the ethical responsibility. Natasha's research into gamification, and the casino like behavior it creates, is eye opening. These folks are on the front lines of consumer rights.

toni serpentini
toni serpentini
7 years ago

Loraine James my sentiments exactly .
Scary to think our minds and choices are being manipulated .
Orson Welles 1984.

TheDoc
TheDoc
7 years ago

Its speakin scandinavian or somethin can't understand no sh*t

loraine james
loraine james
7 years ago

I will not make any comments, what ever I say they will steal and then use it against me... There is no time more than now , in which we need a strong force that is concerned about the greater good for humanity. The power of each individual can bring these manipulative unethical motives to an end . Know the game and use your questioning mind to see all the red flags... Real life is such a pity to have stolen by a corporate vampire.

CDT
CDT
7 years ago

Very chilling

B. J. Symonds
B. J. Symonds
7 years ago

Informative, interesting, and most certainly got my full attention.
Well done!

Billie Corbett
Billie Corbett
7 years ago

It might be a great documentary, but, there is no subtitles, so, it prove pointless to me.

Mark Gaboury
Mark Gaboury
7 years ago

Pretty good doc. The part about gambling was the most revealing. We are losing our sense of self by this online presence.

Joh Dashwer
Joh Dashwer
7 years ago

Great doc. The subtitles work fine. Watch it!

Colin R Lanteigne
Colin R Lanteigne
7 years ago

Once they change your mind, Who are you? loosing it's center. willingly and ordinarily, 24-7. Corporates never sleep. - Huge knowledge base, movement, conversations, diet, physiological and biochemical sensors, mood control, loss of all control, other directed options.... Pavlovian Puppets in Paradise ... The presentation is itself being even more persuasive, if not strangely addicting (little jingle), to the absence of life in the spaces between one click and another or other click ... click OK Try this, Tell your entranced clickers, "You cannot hear ..." It is an everybody's black hole, for old I ego self lobotomies, digitized for predictable dependent thought prepped as the monster rolls onto the stage, search for that spark called humanity, and you may catch sometime, from the corner of old eyes. Meanwhile do not underestimated the power of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), Operant Conditioning, Or the new flash slick wam and wow repeating like the bark of a very large Pavlovian DOG. You and I cannot listen to their **** without being effected. This is hard science. We are way past 'Propaganda', and moving rapidly into 'Tagged and Bagged' ---- Resist Media - Get out of our Private lives you pyschopathic bastards.

Becky
Becky
7 years ago

A really good documentary.

Ed
Ed
7 years ago

Works fine now. Nice documentary. CRO (Click Rate Optimization) is hugely important to how the Internet (and world) are and will be. The laymen are blissfully ignorant of this fact.

Nancy Hollo
Nancy Hollo
7 years ago

You can turn on subtitles on the settings menu. It's easy to read with white font on black background, and the Dutch speakers are really fascinating.

harold durant
harold durant
7 years ago

What a waste of time for top documentary to send me this to watch, time to
stop them from doing more of this sort of crap...

mke m
mke m
7 years ago

That's like getting india on the phone when you need to talk to someone, Jim.
technology.......(has it's stupid advances)

Jim Freedom
Jim Freedom
7 years ago

The film has foreign language without English subtitles. The automatically generated ones make no sense at all.