What a week. And it’s only Wednesday.
The fake pro-gamer who runs the biggest shithole on The Internet just did a Nazi salute live on TV, which one TV network edited out. In his new job, named after his favourite meme, he’ll cut Government spending while his companies survive on subsidies.
Another power mad gym bro wants to force everyone to play with him and his toys, but is experiencing a similar kind of spiral. He says things like compassion, working in diverse teams, and facts, aren’t manly enough. He ignores the role his life’s work played in the death of thousands of people and instead wants to fill the world with lies that Shrimp Jesus is real.
The axis of assholes surrounding the US presidency started out in Tech, and now they want some say in ruining the World.
What happened to them? The early Internet was all about connecting people from different backgrounds, now it’s about making money and controlling power.
The author, Séamas O’Reilly, has written a brilliant piece for The Irish Examiner that highlights some of their recent transgressions.
Musk speaks like a man who believes his own insane conspiratorial guff, because he does. For years, we’ve watched as the most malodorous portions of the internet have fully infected his brain and transformed his entire personality.
Zuck avoided this fate by not having a personality to begin with. It is difficult to imagine him holding a strong view on anything, for much the same reason it is difficult to imagine him enjoying a poem or a sandwich. It would be like attributing sentiment to a set of venetian blinds. There is simply nothing there.
Jimmy Wales and Tim Berners-Lee had the right idea. Or be like Tom from Myspace and just take the money, get into photography, and then fuck off on holiday forever.
Coping mechanisms
What are we going to do about it? I honestly have no idea.
If you can somewhat face the impending onslaught of coverage, you should read things like Molly White’s newsletter, Citation Needed, alongside the news that made her famous, web3 is going just great .
For Podcasts, I like The Vergecast. For more skeptical voices in Tech I stick to Better Offline, Tech Won’t Save Us, and System Crash. Even the odd episode of Behind The Bastards covers your favourite Tech bastards. All of this assumes you can somehow not cringe every time you hear one of their names.
I’ll probably play more videogames, read more books, bake more bread, go for more bike rides, make more mad shit, subscribe to more RSS feeds, delete all the news Apps, and maybe finish some side projects.
The world that these weirdos thrive in was made by people. People decided how these systems work. Systems change, empires fall, elections still happen, and we can try to remake the world a different way. Just don’t let the bastards grind you down.
Honourable mentions
- Season 3 of From is terrifying. I’m having to ration it to 1 episode a night so it doesn’t give me weird dreams.
- I finished Children of Memory. Unfortunately it was my least favourite of the series, but still really good.
- I also read Blindboy’s latest book, Topographia Hibernia. Some bits made me laugh, but one unsettling story left me feeling awful. A new experience with books for me.
- Having dropped off of Chants of Sennaar a while ago I picked it up again right near the end. Coincidentally right as Polygon published a great article on the difficulty of translating a game about words, but also without written dialogue. I might just look up the solutions to the last few puzzles though.