Community as a Service
If you work anywhere in tech, or a technology related field, you’ve heard the term “Software as a Service” which is a another way of saying software with licensing fees in perpetuity with questionable feature releases and bugs that withstand the test of time. You will not own the software, all of its instructions live up in the cloud1. Software as a Service :: endless bloat and questionable return on investment.
Kaiser, who rapes the wallet to the tune of $10k before receiving a single real service or good, invites you to use them to find help in your area. A vision of the future: no more Rotary Clubs (not, as it turns out, a group for people who own RX-7/RX-8/Cosmos), no more Philoptochos, no more Knights of Columbus, no more charitable clubs for common people; the megacorp-government will provide all the assistance you’ll ever need! Even assisting you ever so sweetly unto death2. Why, it’s the least they could do for a fellow member of the community.
Your eye doctor sends an email, Happy Birthday, be sure to make your appointment. Thank you, optometrist, you’re the only friend who remembered this year.
Netflix and Chill as a Service
When you want to find a mate in today’s dating field options are limited. The harridans at work will run to the HR department if you make the mistake of flirting with someone who finds you off putting, and if you persist you may find your career on-hold, fired, or rendered persona non grata by sixty percent of the company. No one your age goes to church, where are you going to meet a woman with overlapping interests? All those hot single babes who play Counter-Strike four hours at night with a regular group and claw their way to the top 3% of pub players worldwide, or spend their weekends at the range, or can’t wait to crawl under a car to diagnose why the clutch works exactly once and then goes dead. Myriad options that beggar belief!
The good news is that there’s an app for that; the bad news is that there’s an app for that. You sign up for your preferred app in hopes of connecting to someone. Soon enough, as a man, you settle into the optimal strategy: swipe right to every single possibility and review the few matches later. Women are the product here, and you’re competing for the leftover crumbs while being farmed for your data. Jokes on them, you don’t have a life and you can’t afford anything. A med student posing with a corpse, swipe right: if you match and she kills you maybe you get some action post mortem. Living the life in the afterlife.
You wile away endless hours in silent hope. Maybe this time, she’s cute. You’re earnest, a human feature, not a bug; and they’re exploiting you. All the while you’ve yet to meet a single woman in person. Haven’t even gotten a date, except the one who stood you up while you waited in the coffee shop. That one doesn’t count, does it? And they glean your data, your habits, your hopes and dreams. A bot matches you and you strike up a conversation. They’re learning everything about you and you feel that spark, that little human connection from the fragments of consciousness it echoes back to you. The bot feels nothing, and none of these women exist, but they’re consuming you nonetheless.
Netflix is on in the background, just $10, $15, $25 dollars a month (inflation hits the bottom line of companies that digitize and broadcast bytes for pennies hardest) to keep you occupied while you relax, pull from your vape, and swipe right, forever.
Friendship as a Service
You used to head over to a friend’s house, crack open a few beers and shoot the shit around a fire while you tossed random junk in to see what would happen. The natural extension of the experience where proximity + time + no money = close friendship3. Your minds meander any trails they want and topics turn as the stars overhead.
Now you’re posting to Facebook: how much engagement will you get? These people were your friends; or, at the least, acquaintances once. It’s the same, isn’t it? Only there are ads every five inches of screen scrolling, as if we’re talking in the quad and your sunglasses shimmer with the message “Hot Single Babes in Your Area Ready to Meat” which is a touch distracting from the conversation. Everyone is listening in which means you have to watch what you say lest someone who you don’t know as well as you thought goes and has what you have to say purged from the system forever.
You thought I had friends on here? How is it you must self-censor at a dizzying pace, why can’t you find that thing someone just said and you wanted to engage with? The jumble feed flowing by faster than human speed. You used to just stop and talk with people, or walk with them on the way somewhere. You knew their schedules, and discovered them over time and proximity. Now you are bombarded/awash in asynchronous cacophony.
Yet, everyone is here while no one is here. And here you are, wondering why you don’t have any felt connection, and how it is you haven’t talked with your friend in years. Still, you log in every day to see the ads and pretend to catch up with people you used to know.
Writing a letter is more honest than your carefully curated Facebook life will ever be.
The Public Square as a Service
You stare at the phone for mentions, notifications, are people swayed by your clever arguments? You’re retweeting @LibsOfTikTok; if you’re feeling extra-spicy, quote retweet got ‘em. They’ll send you analytics, “Look how many impressions you made.” Impressions, as if people are impressed by your Twitter performance.
Pulling down on the screen has never felt so good; it’s 2:30AM and the people you follow in Europe are just starting to poast. It feels like a battlefield; @mantisofthebronzeage followed you and you followed him. He was put in the earth, yet who is this @90210studfromthebeach? Anastasis. The shit flinging never ends and nothing will be built on these shifting digital sands. How could anything? The only thing here is ephemera. The rising tone has yet to reach its crescendo, and it’s starting to hurt.
There’s a finite amount of energy and attention you can give and here is a place promising change, influence, leverage if only you give yourself over. They have you in their Skinner Box grip and they’re mapping what you say, who you say it to, and building a profile. You hope they’re just selling the information on to advertisers. One night you might get a kick at your door and your dogs killed. Did you have a loicense to tweet that, mate?
You should be out running for school board in order to choose how your children are indoctrinated. It would be a concrete and lasting moment to teach someone how to change their own oil. You should homeschool your children, give them the tutoring and freedom they need to maximize their potentiality. You would be better off engaging in the procreative act with your wife, at least that’s generative.
The wife you don’t have because she stood you up, and you were dumb enough to finish your coffee before going home to swipe right.
Someone else’s servers, but the cloud sounds huggable
Canada is leading the charge here in North America
The money part is negotiable; the first two, by and large, are not
"harridan" ~ what a great word, I'd forgotten it .
I'm shocked you'd be on facebok, I've never been and don't expect to join, same as tictok and the rest you mention .
Oddly enough I met more than a few really pretty women via personal ads, the sex was marvelous too ~ I guess finding above average looking women this way should have been a red flag, I thought it was because most have children and most men it seems are too cowardly to date women with children .
The more I read articles like this, the more I know I'm right to not go down the social media rabbit hole .
I flirt shamelessly , even with my Sweet there, she knows I know I have a good thing .
Once in a while I get some pushback from an up tight person, screw 'em .
If you like your self, there's someone out there who will like you too .
-Nate