As a child I would watch ants build their little anthills, as a teen I went to the countryside and found out that ants could make anthills so tall that they reached my knee. I was fascinated.
Watching those tiny ants work in such perfect synchrony to build something so massive was humbling, it was beautiful.
Once I grew bored of watching ants, a fun activity for a teen, I kicked it and destroyed most of it in the process. The ants had no real way of stopping me and still the next day they were building their anthill again.
The web is shit. Just like the cities we live in today it is overly complex, it’s mostly controlled by a powerful few and offers little value to their residents other than sunk cost and fear of missing out.
Giants roam the streets of our metaphorical metropolis, toppling buildings at random and asserting dominance over those who dare try to be a giant or those who denounce their power as the rotten thing it is because in truth the giant can only exist as long as we perceive them as giants, we don’t really need them. They are unwanted and a general nuisance, they get in the way but as individuals we are unable to stop them.
And so, like the tiny ants we are, we build our small anthills, our small communities in the countryside far from the giants and their violence so that they might get to be a tall and proud anthill because we know that in the city we will get stomped on. Every community built in the city will be another perfectly segmented audience for some brand we don’t really care about.
We also know that we have no power against the giants, at least not as individuals, and someday they will arrive at our countryside not because of fear, they do not fear us and they have no reason to fear us, but because of boredom or general stupidity and with their nice shiny boots, polished by unpaid labor and exploitation, they will stomp us.
The next day we will be rebuilding our little anthill once more.