february 18 sme
If I had three wishes I would at least think of using the first one to snuff out all of human existence. This planet was better without us. The animals, the trees, the plants, the oceans —— they were all better without us and I would love to factory restore this pale blue motherfucker and give all creatures great and small (yes, even the plankton) their world back. Alas, I don't have three wishes. I don't even have one. And if I did, I still wouldn't, because I wouldn't have it as much as I would have to pay a monthly subscription fee to access it, and if and when I accessed it, there would be reams of legalese explaining that because of of my low-end subscription tier I would only be afforded a wish shaped conspicuously like the experience of being waterboarded by ads from GlaxoSmithKline and DraftKings.
Every now and again I revisit Ed Zitron's Never Forget What They've Done because the internet was my home and now it's owned by a consortium of the worst, dumbest, and least interesting people in the history of civilization.
Some of my favourite bits from Never Forget What They've Done are right at the beginning, in the framing of the larger piece, so I'll share a bit of that and then hope you click through and read the rest if you haven't already. I believe I mentioned this piece last year but I'm too NyQuilled to check.
There was a time this didn’t suck, when it wasn’t a struggle to do basic things, when my world was not a constant war with my god damn apps, when things weren’t necessarily turn-key but my phone wasn’t randomly burning through half of its battery life in an hour and a half because one app on the App Store is poorly configured. I swear to god, back in like, 2019, Zoom just fucking connected. I remember things being better, and on top of that, I see how much better things could be.
But that’s not the tech industry we’re allowed to have, because the people that run the tech industry do not give a shit.
It’s not enough to have your data, your work, your art, your posts, your friends, the things you’ve taken photos of, and the things you’ve searched for. The industry must have that of your children, and their children, as early as possible, even if it means helping them cheat on their homework so that they too can live a life where they’ve skipped having any responsibility or learning anything about the world other than how one can extract as much as possible without having to give anything in return.
Big tech is sociopathic and directionless, swinging wildly to try and find new ways to drag any kind of interaction out of a customer they’ve grown to loathe for their unwillingness to be more profitable. Decades of powerful Big Tech Business Idiots have chased out true value-creation in Silicon Valley in favour of growth economics, sending edict after edict down to the markets and the media about what’s going to be “hot” next, inventing business trends rather than actual solutions to problems. After all, that might involve — eugh! — experiencing the real world rather than authoring a new version of it every few years.
I tell younger friends this kind of thing all the time. I can tell a lot of them don't believe me, but it's true. There used to be an internet and it used to be good. I remember. Ed remembers. And I love Ed's work because it's long and angry and righteous, but so because I see myself in it. Whether I like it or not, having my fingers on a keyboard or a keypad is very natural and soothing to me, and something special will always be a breath away from existing, if only for me, if a computer is on my lap or in my hand. I once described myself as "a human interface" who has the ability to "translate ideas, thoughts, visions, moods, and vibes into explicable reality." Some thought it was a nice flourish, but I meant it with my whole heart and at least half of my ass.
THE NYQUIL HAS NYQUILLED IMMA GO FIGHT GOD
🌲 gonna NyQuil
🌼 go NyQuiller
🌱 touch NyQuillest
🌳 grass AAAAAHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhh
🌷 now QQQqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqWZ8ex967rc08 tv9yojp
Be good to yourself.
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