I mean, the torment nexus is the torment nexus because the corpos did an unbelievable amount of data analytics to figure out how to precisely manipulate human emotions and brain chemistry.
Yes, we need to wrest control away from the digital drug dealers, but also, they are digital drug dealers, so you can actually do a good deal of that by detoxing, by quitting, going clean, destroying their market base, rewriting the cultural norms so that such activity is not celebrated, but viewed as shameful.
Detoxing from corpo social networks (or phrased differently: boycotting them) is at least an actionable thing that a person can do, and it will actually benefit them directly.
Of course, switching to non corpo social networks is also very important, but its probably still a good idea to have that detox period, to just, you know, renormalize, establish a new baseline, touch grass for a while.
I’ve logged into my Facebook account out of sheer curiosity, and my god it’s a wasteland. Ads, AI slop, hot takes from nobodies, the works. It is obviously designed to be as infuriating as possible, and qutting that digital landfill is the easiest thing ever.
I was one of the earliest adopters of Facebook, and also seemingly one of the earliest to bail out.
When the Cambridge Analytical scandal broke?
Nuked my entire account, at least, according to Facebook, who I’m totally sure doesn’t just still have their own archive of me, because how the fuck would I know?
Basically everyone I knew thought I was literally insane for doing that at that time… I connected the dots and realized the true extent of what they could be, and we now know they were and are doing … because I worked with databases and data analytics.
But nope, everyone thought I was nuts, and slept walked into the social apocalypse.
All you need to know about Facebook:
Zuck: yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard
Zuck: just ask
Zuck: i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns
Friend: what!? how’d you manage that one?
Zuck: people just submitted it
Zuck: i don’t know why
Zuck: they “trust me”
Zuck: dumb fucks
i think oop wants to challange the underlying assumption that “digital” automatically means corporate social media and such.
There are large parts of the digital world that I would not describe as toxic that actually work for the people not against them.
Touching Grass is important but large parts of “real-life” are just as toxic. You can find a break from those in the good parts of digital life as well as by touching grass.
Sure… but unless you’re talking like, I2P decentralized alternative internet… or torrents…
… (almost) everything runs pretty much entirely on servers that are owned by a handful of megacorps.
Almost every physical part of the internet fundamentally is literally controlled by corpos, and they also govern almost all the software that is run on that physical stuff.
Yeah, it didn’t used to be that way, so extensively and thoroughly, yeah, it doesn’t have to be in the future… but like, how, what’s the plan?
See how that compares to ‘detox from toxic corpo social media’ as… an actually actionable plan that produces results?
I dunno, I don’t generally care for self expression for self expression’s sake, in the form of saying things to a small audience that said small audience will just generally agree with, as compared to a potentially actionable plan to actually cause the change that is being prescribed by that statement.
There’s expressing feelings, and there’s “here’s something you could maybe do to remedy the situation causing those feelings, to achieve the effect I desire”.
Capitalism Detox
No, there are PLENTY of people who need to touch grass and go hang out in a social setting from time to time.
Here’s an idea: email your friends more often. It’s not a silver bullet but seriously, it’s so much more pleasant to fire up Thunderbird than it is to deal with the FOMO of keeping up with Discord servers and group chats and Facebook and Insta and Snapchat and
… and risk accidentally sending a wrong attachment file that i should not have sent? and i can’t delete images after i’ve sent them? no thanks.
If that is a significant concern for you then no, you probably shouldn’t use email. The other platforms are lying to you when they say that they can delete your photos off other people’s computers though. Most of them are probably lying when they claim to delete files off their own servers.
I agree, it’s a tragedy that the internet and the majority of digital spaces have been captured and wrecked by monied interests.
I would argue that we all probably could do with “detoxing” from digital spaces, as well. Plenty of people seem to be way too into the internet.
Do you accept all cookies?
For decades websites didn’t need this ridiculous disclaimer and then all the sudden it’s become absolute necessity.
Because they put them on your device silently, and then the EU stopped them from doing that?
So you are fine with being tracked as long as they are transparent about it? In practice, you still have to accept cookies to browse the site, or you are kicked off entirely.
Absolutely nothing changed regarding tracking.
The spirit of the EU law was to allow users to decline cookies and still use the site. That outcome is meaningless to advertisers, who require tracking to function.
The EU law did not protect users. It simply made the internet worse
So you are fine with being tracked as long as they are transparent about it?
No, I’m saying for most of the time before that popup existed, the cookies were already there, you just didn’t know about them.
Yes. That is correct.
Seize the memes of production.
I dunno dude. Sometimes building a home or on the woods, way out where no one could hear me play my instruments and get mad because I suck, that sounds kinda nice.
Poison the torment nexus. Burn it’s creators. Abuse it’s maintainers.
And we can achieve that by… boycotting?
