Foolish gibberish
Instax Sq10 double exposure
I thought I’d post a quick update about my knee since I finally made it back to the physical therapist today. I’ve been a little worried about it because it still hurts, especially at night. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with it aching. The PT says that it’s totally normal and that everything is healing up really well. I’ve been limping around without crutches for almost two weeks and it’s caused my back to hurt. She told me that I have to stop limping because it’s really hard to unlearn limping once it gets ingrained in your head. So she game me a cane so I can focus on walking like a normal person. It is helping already! Though I do feel really old right now. The PT also told me I could start exercising on a bike at the gym, so I’ll start doing that this week. I miss exercise.
I’m trying to not think about how much I miss running.
I’m in the middle of a really busy day and haven’t been able to put any thought into posting here. Sooo, here is some blog filler: a self portrait in ballpoint pen I sketched the other day. Perhaps sharing what I’m doing with sketching will become a thing on this blog?
Instax SQ10 Double Exposure
Last summer, after I broke up with my phone, I proceeded to read a number of really great books about how technology, particularly social media, is affecting us humans, both on an individual level and as a culture. One of my favorites of these books is Jaron Lanier’s “Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now.” It’s short and sweet, and packed with a ton of information. Jaron Lanier is a pioneer in the field of virtual reality and knows what he is talking about regarding this subject. I won’t break the book down for you because it’s short enough that you can read it all yourself in a day, but I would really encourage you to read it. Even if you don’t delete your accounts (which I have yet to do), you will be have a better understanding of how the big internet companies like Google and Facebook and messing with our minds and, according to Lanier, destroying our culture. Here is a link to a great talk that Lanier gave on this subject. It’s long, but totally worth watching.
Several months after reading it this is what stuck with me: We are not the customers of websites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google. Advertisers are the actual customers. We are providing the content for the websites. FOR FREE. And in the meantime we are being completely fucked with so that we will purchase things from the advertisers. This is the new advertising model. It has become totally ok for advertisers to creepily spy on us and follow us around the web so they can market their product to us. THIS PISSES ME OFF. And the shitty thing about this is that IT WORKS.
So after reading all of these books and taking the red pill I am feeling all of these feels about participating in this horror show. I feel pulled in different directions. On the one hand I care about my friends that I connect with on these platforms, but on the other hand GODDAMNIT I don’t appreciate my brain being hacked and manipulated for profit! One of the ways that I’ve compromised is that I have deleted social media from my phone and I have pretty much broken up with Google. I refuse to use Chrome or Google search (I’m using Firefox and Duck Duck Go which are both awesome) and I’ve moved over to ProtonMail. I’ve been able to use social media through Firefox on my phone and I’m happy with the way this is working. With one exception: Instagram. I love IG more than the others but I really do not want to have it on my phone. Instead I have it on my iPad, which is a good compromise, I think.
And I’ve noticed the advertising on Instagram when I view the app on my iPad. I’ll be mindlessly scrolling through the feed, thinking everything is fine, and then BAM, I’m hit with an ad and it’s literally the perfect thing for me, whatever it is. It’s this thing that I never knew I needed. As I mentioned above, this advertising method WORKS! But damn, it’s so sneaky and creepy and evil.
Anyway. Read the book.
Blatherskite 