I personally hate April Fool’s Day. Too much emotional baggage to enjoy it, so you won’t get any kind of chicanery from me today. Just digging into this whole “problem with the internet thing.”
Ok, now that we have that out of the way.
Where were we?
Oh! Talking about the challenges of getting one computer to talk with another computer without having jerks bring it down like a pack of hyenas attacking a wildebeest on the savannah & the problem of letting the right people connect but not others (by using usernames & passwords).
The result, however, is that you get Facebook.
A single entity that is the owner of every single post you’ve ever made. Every single flirty message you’ve ever sent to your high school crush when you saw they’re recently single. Every single frustration you’ve ever aired to your buddies in the group DM.
It’s ALL visible to Facebook. It’s ALL the property of Facebook.
You don’t even own your own life!
As social media, social connections, and creator audiences become ever-more-valuable, it’s allllllllll built on a foundation that Facebook owns.
That’s how you get shadowbanning. That’s how you get deplatforming. That’s how you get idealogues making sure their enemies can’t exist in civilized society.
It’s 1984 times 1000x.
Sidebar: Reading Orwell was recently added to a list of ways to identify political dissidents in England. Talk about irony! How would they know? You mentioned it in your DM with your buddy. That’s how.
Putting it all together.
The insidious extent to which social media + Google invades our lives is predicated on the fact that most people don’t want to do the work to figure out how to keep in touch with people any other way.
They exist on the complacency of the public.
Brutal, right?
Double sucker punch: when was the last time you thought about it or genuinely cared?
Recently, oh? What did you do about it? Ha! Gotcha, right?
Monday I’ll lead with the feel-good stuff since we all need something to cheer us up, right?
Best thoughts,
~Jonathan