Technology will save us from repeating history
Sunday, June 26th, 2005I felt like writing tonight. Now I don’t so much. Anyway, out with it: It’s been terribly disappointing to not have inherited shit. Over the past five years we’ve been inundated by media telling us that the geeks have won, the meek have inherited the earth, that truth-seekers won over masculinized father fearing/worshipping alpha males. Maybe it’s just me: Americans have been balkanized to the level of the individual, I hear and see only the things that are tailor made for someone just like me. Living in this personal universe made me feel on one hand actually comfortable being myself, but on the other hand like I had borders to defend and more recently lost on myself. I blame the internet mostly, from blogs and social networks to the personalized recommendations of Amazon and Netflix, but also other technologies like Tivo, DVDs, and mp3s and the across the board marketing of personalization. Should I explain that more?
I only need to hear, see and read the things that fit into my world. If I want some shoes that have green toes a pink tongue and the rest black, I can fuckin do that. If I want to walk down the street with my white earbuds and not hear it at all I can do that too. These technologies all lead me to I never have to read a dissenting opinion for the rest of my life. I don’t have time for that anyway, because there is so much that I want to know about who I’m supposed to be that there is no way I’m going to finish something that doesn’t fit it. The message of 3/4 of the ads I see is something about being yourself. I get thousands of messages a day telling me to just be me. What is there left to be?
That’s just all lead up though, the actual point is that I’ve been told that I (and the people like me, although, if I believed the hype there is only one me and I am a unique and individual so prove it by buying the things that make me me) WON, but guess what I didn’t, I’m still as much a loser as I always have been and the people who are run the world are and always will be the same un-self concious pieces of shit who ran your class in third grade and still rely on intimidation and are still bullys but now have more people to help them be bullys and giving up your own power to fight against power is giving a license to be walked on and it’s a shitty feeling to know that your outlook is a fabrication and that anything you could be think or know makes you a better demographic and that nobody ever changes and that downtown Chicago is full of 11 year olds in wrinkly bodys and pressed suits who are trying to get a bigger piece of something and that doubt should run the world but confidence does.
Hope that’s not too angsty. It certainly is half-drunk and rushed.