I generally do not traffic in social media memes. In fact, of late, I generally do not traffic in social media, period.
But I went on Facebook the other day to see pix of the damage caused by those tornadoes Friday evening and y’know what happens whenever you go on soc. med. — you get hooked.
Social media is the heroin of the 21st century. Smack, of course is out, as the Dandy Warhols sang almost 30 years ago: “I never thought you’d be a junkie because heroin is so passé.”
We Americans need something to be hooked on and data-mining scams masquerading as interactive communities are it now.
Anyway, before I hit rock bottom and admitted the monkey was on my back once again Friday, about two hours after I went on FB, I found the following manifesto. It may not even qualify as a meme. It’s just some guy’s post that’s gone viral. (And god in heaven, do I hate the term viral.) I reproduce it in its entirety because I couldn’t put it any better myself.
Read:
I don’t want to connect my coffee machine to the Wifi network. I don’t want to share the file with OneDrive. I don’t want to download an app to check my car’s fluid levels. I don’t want to scan a QR code to view the restaurant menu. I don’t want to let Google know my location before showing me the search results. I don’t want to include a Teams link on the calendar invite. I don’t want to pay 50 different monthly subscription fees for all my software. I don’t want to upgrade to TurboTax platinum plus audit protection. I don’t want to install the Webex plugin to join the meeting. I don’t want to share my car’s braking data with the actuaries at State Farm. I don’t want to text with your AI chatbot. I don’t want to download the Instagram app to look at your picture. I don’t want to type in my email address to view the content on your company’s website. I don’t want text messages with promo codes. I don’t want to leave your company a five-star Google review in exchange for the chance to win a $20 Starbucks gift card. I don’t want to join your exclusive community in the metaverse. I don’t want AI to help me write my comments on LinkedIn. I don’t even want to be on LinkedIn in the first place.
I just want to pay for a product one time (and only one time), know that it’s going to work flawlessly, press 0 to speak to an operator if I need help, and otherwise be left alone and treated with some small measure of human dignity, if that’s not too much to ask anymore.
A-fucking-men.
It sounds like a fart from someone of our generation. Of course our children and grandchildren feel differently, because their generations have their own “structures of feeling” (to borrow Raymond Williams’s term). I don’t enjoy nor condemn all he hates; I just sit back and watch it unfold, and when it no longer amuses me, I open a good book for an hour’s respite. Williams also coined the phrase, “the myth of the happier past,” to show how ALL people, going back to the ancient world, create a mythic time before their own where all the troubles of the present never existed.