Sup?

It seems that, UC Davis, a Californian university pepper sprayed students some time back. Don’t worry. It happens. Students. Seat of learning. Pepper spray. These things go together like strawberries and cream.

For some reason, the university is now trying to hide references to the incident. I wonder why?

Quoting from this article in the guardian : “Multiple contracts were with Sacramento-based IDMLOCO, which was awarded its first six-month contract, in June 2014, for the amount of $82,500, for “search engine results management” that involved creating new content to push “negative” results lower in searches”

This is online brand management, and happens all the time.

So why is this relevant to language learning? Well, why do you think that certain big name learning products are always linked to positive success stories?

Could it be … Could it be .. that they are all absolutely brilliant, and will bring you fluency … quickly … effortlessly … and so on and so forth.

Unlike the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, I don’t always believe six impossible things before breakfast.

This, my friends, is often the result of using ‘Brand management’ to manipulate search engine rankings (perfectly legally) to return the information that THEY want you to see.

Sure I’m paranoid. But am I paranoid enough?!

Besos,

MF