“He had no reluctance, he had no qualms!
If you’d call him he will rush into your arms!
All he knew is to cry in pain or laugh with joy!
‘Cause he was not a big anxious man! Just a little boy!”
Have you seen how kids or toddlers simply walk to the edge of the bed or the floor and keep walking! They do not care that they fall! All they want to do is explore! Ever since we have got some sense, that is the core thing for every human!
The inbuilt first tendency of many human being is to explore! No wonder tourism is a big industry! So when we were young toddlers, that was our greatest motivation. As we get older, our biggest motivation is this!
We have this motivation to go to work or read or follow rules or even be decent! Of course we must do these things without any though but then Humans will be humans!
In the book by Daniel Kahneman, he describes an office experiment;
In a cafeteria of a office where you get coffee and some light snack, it was
when a picture of flowers is kept on top the employees who have to pay by their own choice! That means you can choose to pay what you want!
Just before the place where you place your money, there was a provision of placing a large photo! The photos used to change everyday and one day it was just the photo or painting of eyes! and the other day it was some random inanimate object like flowers or houses!
The interesting thing is that the days which had the photos of the eye, the employees ended up paying more than the days with no eyes! Now remember that there is no camera and no one to actually see or judge!
But the eyes raise some emotion or concern which makes them more oriented to pay! For some it could be guilt but finally it is the motivator we talked about earlier!
In fact, even in most traffic signals, people have been seen to follow the traffic rules more faithfully when there is a CCTV nearby! Now, here also no one knows whether those cameras work or not! But the motivation is strong!
The same thing is when you see a police person nearby is akin to a student who sees his or her teacher or Principal nearby and starts acting nice or decent!
Though ideally it should not be the biggest motivation, unfortunately, from getting up in the morning to sleeping in the night and sometimes when it does not allow you to sleep, this is the greatest motivator!
A simple four letter word called, FEAR!
Now if you like FPS games like me there is an amazing FPS game called FEAR but this blog is about the literal fear and not the acronym!
Not only in real life, there is also a type of software which uses fear to make you do something or buy something! Just when you thought AI cannot be that Human (though in some cases they may be more humane than most!); there is a malware which uses social engineering to cause shock, anxiety, or the perception of a threat in order to manipulate users into buying unwanted software.
Deservedly and aptly the software is called SCAREWARE!
Scareware is actually a big group which includes rogue security software, ransomware and other scam software that tricks users into believing their computer is infected with a virus, then suggests that they download and pay for fake antivirus software to remove it!
The “scareware” label can also apply to any application or virus which pranks users with intent to cause anxiety or panic!
Of course the fear may be unreal but if acted upon the impact is more malicious. Scareware that installs intentionally malicious software on a victim’s device cloud can spy on users; steal personally identifiable information; steal credit card or bank account details; deploy more financial fraud or identity theft software; lock up the user’s computer and demand a ransom, destroying the files if not paid and even offer fake tech support to con more money out of the victim! Gone are the days of making songs and taking your money! Nowadays they scare you and make you pay for your own money without shedding a tear or singing a song! Songs reminds me of the dear Birthday Celebrity of the day Gulshan Kumar Dua! I used to love his cute smiling face on the TV when he used to do the guest appearance in his songs! He was gone to soon; guess he did not give in to the fear. He will be missed, his role in bringing some of the greatest hindi music is incomparable!
Now listen to some soft songs of Gulshan’s movies like Sadak or Ashiqui and sleep!
Shubh Ratri!
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