time and headspace

I'm writing this to no one. I just need to keep saying it. Social media models, as they currently exist, are homogenizing us. The message they broadcast to every user is to “stay on brand”. Those who can perform this task the most consistently and passionately are the ones who “succeed”, rise to the top, and they become the trusted ambassadors of the Platforms. The spaces stifle the multitudes each of us contain. They surveil us, track us, and train us to surveil and track each other. They make us more predictable, more influenceable, more manageable. They dull our thought, extinguish genuine creativity, and drown out nuanced expression. They dumb us down to trending topics, sound bites, out-of-context quotes, crafted narratives, chants. AI is the weapon they’ve chosen to captivate us further, and I used the word “captivate” intentionally, meaning “to influence and dominate by some special charm, art, or trait and with an irresistible appeal”, and in my usage I am also resurfacing ...

A while ago I was watching Arcane and started thinking about how far animation has come in the past 50 years. This led me down a fun little rabbit hole thinking about the evolution of animation technology, and to a broader extent, the evolution of our creative expression or "resolution" over time. I should be very clear, I don't subscribe to " simulated reality " theories because I find they too often revolve around dissociating from reality or perceiving this reality as "not real". Our reality is real. It's the realest reality we have. We feel here, we love here, we experience the consequences of our actions here. There's no escape from this realm of existence aside from death (which could be the beginning of a new reality, but that's not where this rabbit hole goes). Here's where it starts: Our creative resolution gets higher with time. "Resolution" meaning definition, representation and resemblance to reality. Different cre...

Here are some instances of me using the beast to ponder or offer advice on the beast. Most are pulled from the boss beast itself, Facebook, and the first is pulled from my first blog paranoid momdroid (the blog is now unpublished, too much cringe).  You'll note that my skepticism and distrust of our online spaces has always been healthy, and you'll also note that I'm still here. I stay because after 15 years, detangling is not so simple, and because I've invested this much time watching the slow motion social car crash, why look away now. And, not to brag but I gotta say, in all humility, I WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG.  April 6, 2010 - paranoid momdroid post titled "The Internet is Ruining Everything" (Note from my current self, please excuse the excitable writing style.) During a recent conversation about whether the internet ought to be a basic human right, I was struck by a thought:  we're devolving. Oh my god, we're totally devolving and it's the inter...

Our data is the fastest growing commodity in the world, and we're just giving it away. I've always been skeptical of social media (while also using it for most of my adult life), maintaining that the whole gambit is a dangerous social experiment. For years I had a personal rule of "no real feelings on the internet", and I so wish I had held to it. Now that it's become a fully-fledged global industry – an industry worth more than 163 billion USD , comprised of data collecting, storing, processing, analyzing, and utilizing – the more I think about the possible trajectories and implications, the more my heart and stomach tighten. Of course, it was always about data. For advertisers right? "A better customer experience". For many, the idea that their phone is listening is a funny abstract blip. Targeted and mis-targeted ads are a part of our daily online woes and amusements. But it's about so much more than that. Data is now inextricable from our econom...