💾 Archived View for midnight.pub › posts › 952 captured on 2022-07-16 at 14:02:27. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2022-06-03)
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Let me start off by saying that I'm not really drunk...I just thought it fit the theme of the site lol. But it is late as Hell and I'm half awake and I have just been thinking...thinking about the internet...the way it's very quickly bleeding into our daily lives? Our reality? Isn't it bizzare? You can't go outside without worrying about some "influencer" (hate that word) asshole taking a picture of you/recording you without your consent to post on their shitty account and hope to get clout off of you...or how we have lunatic politicians constantly yelling about "cancel culture" when literally people are just trying to hold them (as the people in charge of the entire country) accountable, or the fact that if you're lucky and you sanitize and sell your existence well enough companies will pay you money to shove their products in our faces...isn't it all so bizzare? I think that's why it feels like everyone is insane these days, the worlds between the internet and reality are merging together. The lines have blurred. That's why I seek out very small and obscure websites like this. It's SO BAD that it has gotten to the point where we hear things like "companies are listening to us through our devices 24/7" and no one bats an eye because we're all so desensitized to these huge breaches of privacy and boundaries. And we have no one else but corporate America and capitalism to thank for unleashing pure insanity upon the human race. Good night.
//stumbles out of the pub//
I've recently been gifted a new smartphone (which I can't really give up using 'cause it has functions I need that a brick phone lacks) and the sheer amount of things I had to decline, uninstall and remove permissions from was frustrating and horrifying. Recently I've been moving away from music streaming services in favor of good old mp3s or actual CDs, and then as soon as I boot up regular in-built mp3 player of this phone... It gives me ads and recommendations like a full on streaming service? Just play my goddamn music I already have on the SD card, you don't need internet connection for that?
A certain incident made me recently realize that everything I said and did online was interconnected, easily trackable to my real identity and, to add insult to injury, filed under an advertising profile of what ads to shove in my face based on that identity. That, honestly, scared me. As you can see, I'm trying to be better about it (and I deleted most of my social network profiles apart from some I need tor work), but that doesn't feel enough.
And as I buy a concert ticket online - my family in the same household starts suddenly getting ads for that concert everyday, despite us not even talking about it and them being totally uninterested in the said band. Being regularly connected to the same Wi-Fi as me is enough, apparently.
I will say, though, I don't think America is the only one to blame here (saying this as a non-American). Feels like a collective mistake we humans are making, even if American capitalism somewhat takes the lead.
I do hope to live to see this way of things break, although there's no way of knowing if the next thing will be better or even worse.
i think this will all wind down with the arrival of the scarcity civilisations - the recent goings on in the world just brought those closer than ever. also, no matter how bizarre it seems, it's like a non-biological natural selection period. at least i like to think of it this way..
~tatterdemalion wrote (thread):
This is my kind of rant. Don't mind young ~inquiry, he is on a very interesting trip into esoteric spaces, which, unfortunately from my perspective but appropriate for him, lead through idealism and individualism.
Probably not one anyone wants to hear/read at this point, but it occurs to me no one - including corporate America or everyone's favorite whipping post (capitalism) - is holding a screen to our heads.
In fact, "capitalism" as some inexorable, evil force isn't even a thing apart from people incessantly saying it is. That aspect is way more a seeming phenomenon emergent "at scale" from the (mathematical) integral of each and every one of our self-centered, greedy impulses.
To me, that we use it as a scapegoat for our collective behavior instead of individually addressing the real issue deep within our self definitions only emphasizes the actual problem's true location....
That rather poorly said... I enjoyed your post. Lately I've been finding most if not all my problems to be rooted much more closely to within than without, which carried over into this reply, which likely sounds anything but welcoming... but I'm very happy you arrived here, and hope to read more from you sooner than later regardless the degree of real and/or poetic slosh!
(LATER: "In fact" should have been "To me".)