This Seems Poignant

Earlier today I looked out my window and saw a rather large stink bug had been ensnared in the cobweb three inches outside the glass.

A little later, when I looked back, it was gone.

I've Been Thinking

Been quiet for a while. Frankly, it doesn't feel like Freedom of Speech is a certainty anymore, except for those who walk a very, very thin line.

And I've never been one of those people.

I have been stewing, though, and things are just starting to bubble over. So for the two of you who will even notice this post, here's what's on my mind.

1. We're Fucked

If you haven't noticed, things have gotten really bad on the online. You may have missed this if you do not have a social media account.

Social media has become so irrevocably toxic. It's where people espouse the worst of their worst feelings and values, including things most people would never dream of saying in public twenty years ago (or more).

I think we all know that being online, whether in your own name or in anonymity, provides some degree of insulation. We can argue with people and be really nasty because there is almost no chance whatsoever that we'll ever meet the other person/people in real life. Or if we do, they won't know it was us who said those horrible things.

Human nature feeds our desire to be right. When we see people saying and doing things that are antithetical to The Good, it's hard to be quiet.

I often think back (and I mean several times each day) to the parts of my life when there was no internet, and also to the early days of the internet.  Pre-internet, if you had beef with someone, it didn't last forever because you eventually had it out, either with words or with actions. There was no insulation: if you were a dick, you were going to eventually run out of space to operate. Then when we first got online, it was slow as fucking fuck, and you mostly just interacted with people you knew and wanted to chat with. We weren't interacting with strangers nearly as much, and if we did, it was usually positive, like the time I had an internet phone call with a random Dutch stranger who saw my surname and thought I was also Dutch. Weird, random, and fun. Positive.

Things advanced far too quickly, and as I have argued before, human evolution has not even come close to catching up with the advancements in speed of dissemination. Put another way: our brains can't even fucking handle all the information we're hit with on an hourly basis. Contrast this with, say, the 1980s or 1990s, when we truly relied on (and largely trusted) the media, maybe learning of new events once a day, twice at the most. If something didn't occur in your town, or very close by, and it was newsworthy, you might not know until hearing of it on the evening news, or reading about it in the next morning's paper. 

Along came the internet, and at first it was really nice to be able to get the answer to any question with minimal delay. Our curiosity was rapidly sated, so we turned our interest to other curiosities. Without having to wait for information, our minds had a little room to wander, thing, and ask questions -- new questions, different questions. Generally, this was a positive development.

As technology rapidly developed, so too did the tools we used. As a kid, I might have used one or two applications on a computer with any frequency, and neither of them connected me to the internet. By the time I was 25, I had a cell phone, I had high speed cable internet, and I had a room in my house dedicated to the usage of the computer. 

No one should be so foolish as to believe a single person's brain, no matter how capable of acquiring new knowledge, could seamlessly manage all of those transitions. What was novel and new quickly became overwhelming and frustrating.

The end result, at least for now, is a deluge of information so frequent and powerful that we have no choice but to make snap judgements in order to move on to the next stimulus. The news cycle isn't a day or a week, it's an hour, or sometimes a matter of minutes. And on top of that, the news is being packaged to appeal to specific audiences, based on their deeply-held political leanings and beliefs. We don't get clean, raw information anymore; instead, we get what we're told we need to know -- but not just know: we're given that which we're meant to find frustrating, aggravated, and angry. Our frustration keeps us engaged in never-ending arguments that no one will ever definitively win, and sadly, some people have built their entire self-image around being engaged in those debates every single day.

2. We're So Fucked

As if it wasn't problematic enough that our addled brains aren't able to effectively cope with all this information, now we have a new wrinkle, and it should surprise all of no one: 

Influencers.

Influencers are a dime a fucking dozen in 2025. Talk about building a self-image around parroting the same shit everyone else in your little club is peddling. There is no original thought, no such thing as a "Breaking" story. And you will abso-fucking-lutely never get through to a single one of them, because their bot-like operating system is completely unflappable.

Admirable? Are they idealists, bound by the hill upon which they've chosen to die?

Fuck no, for fuck's sakes. They're opportunists.  These fuckers get online every fucking day, knowing full well that the more people they can get to engage in their fuckery, the more fucking money they will make that day. You engage because you are well-meaning person who sees flaw in what they're saying, and they fucking make more money. You aren't helping. You think you're helping because, hey, maybe someone else will see what I've said and realize how wrong the original post was.

You're just drawing more attention to the opportunist. You're driving traffic to their horseshit factory.

The only thing you can do is disengage and hope others do the same, because even well-meaning interactions, even those that are 100% rooted in Truth and Reality, will just help make that opportunist a little more money.

3. Actually, We're Quite Fucked

You can't disengage! That's cowardice! You have to remain aware of what's going on and pick and choose the ways you can make a difference! 

How many times have you been reminded that Hitler was allowed to do what he did because the "good people" in Germany said nothing? If you keep quiet, you're just as bad as they are. We have to do better than they did or atrocities will be allowed to keep happening!!!

Yeah, kind of. But if all we're able to do is argue with strangers online, precisely zero of whom will change their minds (ever), and then we're frustrated, mad, exhausted, and defeated by it all, what did we accomplish? 

That's right: We made more fucking money for the opportunists. They don't give a flying fuck what's right or wrong as long as they can keep people pissed off and arguing. It's not unlike a certain President claiming he was smart for leveraging weaknesses in the tax code to keep from having to pay taxes: these fuckers are just out here whipping up a frenzy and counting their fucking money. That's why so many of their posts, which all have nearly identical wording to the other fuckers' posts, ask questions:

   "Do you think the President should be able to burn VCRs?"

It doesn't even matter how stupid of a question it is, or that there is a verifiable right, and an equally verifiable wrong, answer: it's just about whipping up a debate and watching the money roll in.

If you're one of these fuckers doing this intentionally, I don't care if you lean Left or Right: there is a special place in Hell for you. You aren't contributing to positive discourse, you aren't promoting a new vision that will benefit the majority of Americans; you're just fucking making money off of everyone else's misery. Fuck you.

4. Are We Fucked? Yes.

And this has all been engrained for YEARS now. Arguably DECADES. Long enough that anyone under the age of 18 probably hasn't ever known a time when things weren't like this.

This is what is now normal to them. Can you fucking believe that?

Normal is arguing with strangers over things that don't affect either of you directly, because you feel a compulsion to constantly stand up for, and signal, every single one of your values. No one is allowed to be a bystander: you're either consuming this mess or you're ignoring it altogether.

It's gone beyond being a pastime and is now a full-blown, epidemic level addiction.

Try to quit. Delete your accounts and see how hard it is.

First of all, they don't make it easy for you to quit. You're going to have to jump through some utter bullshit hoops first just to get them to really, truly move forward with deleting your account. But then, your account isn't really gone. Maybe you'll change your mind! Just log back in and everything will go back to normal: we'll feed you one or two things that we know you love, and eight or twenty things we are sure you will hate. You'll engage, the influencers will make money, and the platform will also make money!

Will you make money? Fuck no! Haha, you're the consumer, consumers don't make money for consuming.

Secondly, once you do delete your accounts, you're self-isolated. You have grown accustomated to learning the goings-on in your communities through social feeds, and that's because nearly everyone has grown accustomed to utilizing the social feeds to share the goings-on. You'll run into people you know, and they'll say, "Did you hear about so-and-so?" and you will be genuinely surprised and curious by whatever they say next.

"Oh, it was on facebook," they'll conclude.

And because something useful does happen occasionally, and/or because you have so much information on there and downloading it all would be a pain, and/or because you do not want to lose contact with people, you stay. It's just easier to stay, so you stay.

I'd stay too, but I'm not going to engage in making money for those fuckers, and now I feel like freely expressing myself is risky enough that I don't want to provide an easily searchable catalogue of Reasons To Put Me On A Train One Night, so I'm mostly just thinking.

And I'm thinking we're fucked.

Have a great day, everyone! God Bless the USA!! 

The Scoop

I deleted all of my Meta accounts (Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp) for all of the right reasons. Every benefit that I hoped would result from these changes has come to fruition.

I also anticipated that I would lose out a lot of meaningful interactions with people I like. Whether I think those platforms are good (or not), it's obviously the place where everyone goes to update the world on what's happening. Sometimes, that was a good thing.

All of that is to say that after several months, I am confident I made the right choice, and I'm ready to explore healthier ways to keep in touch with folks.

This blog has a form you can complete if you'd like to get back in touch with me.  Fill it out and let me know.