Government: Sure. Here you go. We work with our corporate partners to commercialise research to create win-wins, so know that if you take the grant, our partners get dibs on bringing your research to market. Or, you can approach them directly if you’d prefer.

AI Researchers: I’m definitely more comfortable with the government and University grant. Okay, I guess. But, promise you’ll only use it for good?

Government: Sure. We’ll regulate them, we promise.

AI Researchers: Good. Where do I sign?

VC/Government Consultant (interest undeclared): Hey, John and Peter. You know how I own shares in all your companies and have 2 board seats? Well, it’s time for you to embrace the future!

John, CEO: Do I have a choice?

VC: HAHA of course not. We don’t pay you to make decisions, mate. You know that.

CEO: Yes, Sir. AI! Cool! So what’s the value proposition on this new tech?

Founder: artificial intelligence.

CEO: Wow! How does it work?

Founder: you wouldn’t understand, bro. but, do you remember how you missed the boat on web 2.0? do you want to do that again?

CEO: I guess not.

Peter, CFO: What’s the value proposition?

Founder: money is a social construct. it’s just like, air, man.

CFO: As in, you need air to breathe, or? No, really, what is the value proposition? What ROI can I expect? Also, why are you writing in lowercase? It’s annoying.

VC: Shut up. John’s getting a little too consciency lately. Do you want the job when we oust him or not?

CFO: Sorry Sir. Yes, Sir. Founder, this seems like an exciting opportunity, but can you help me understand why this technology is so brilliant?

Founder: remember how you needed to be all woke and stuff? well, you don’t need that anymore. you can just do your thing, be out and proud like it’s pride month, but, rather than do actual pride month, you can just blame ai. offshoring? layoffs due to ai. denying claims? ai. too many women or blacks applying? ai screens them out. employees won’t tell you about their lives? ai. want to put prices or rents up? dynamic pricing using ai that calculates how much they are stashing away. customer service? use ai so customers stop being annoying and give up. accused of discrimination? blame ai. want to steal ip? ai. you can pretty much do whatever you want, and ai is to blame. you can also scare employees into thinking they’ll be replaced so they work harder and stop complaining. also, if they do, the ai will find a way to fire them and you can blame the ai.

CFO: <whispers> I wish this guy would innovate some paragraphs and punctati…

Oh, yes, very impressive work, you make very compelling points. So, we can effectively do anything we want, even if it is against the law, and our stock price goes up? And we don’t even have to spend any money on Rainbow Flags or that stupid ESG shit? That’ll get Musk off our back at least. And, bonus, we won’t even need to compete on price anymore, because we can acquire anyone who doesn’t join us?

Founder: correct. number go up no matter what.

Everyone: AI is brilliant. It can do everything! It’ll replace everyone!

Workers: err, I don’t know about this. I got bills to pay, man.

VC, Founder and CEO: money is like air, man.

Workers: what, like you need it to breathe? Isn’t it wrong to hoard the air when others are gasping? That metaphor makes no sense.

Founder: what’s a metaphor?

VC: Hey, Worker. You just don’t want it enough, I guess. Learn to Code.

Workers: But you said AI would replace coders too.

Uber and Amazon workers: Welcome to our dystopia, everyone. The water’s warm. Do you have a spare jar?

Tech people over 40: AI? Oh yeah, it’s cool. Yeah, it’s pretty impressive, has potential, and it’s exciting what developments lie ahead. But it’s nothing we haven’t known since the 70s, and I’m not too sure this is why I got into tech. These guys seem… kinda… evil? Don’t Be Evil was why I got into tech. They said what about money and air? Maybe if your shares vested, but my rent is insane and I work 16 hours a day and never see my kids. Fuck. I went all in on this shit. What do I do now?

LinkedIn Guru GAICD Cert III in Real Estate, LION, Author, Ask Me How to Succeed on LinkedIn (also an expert in Content Strategy, Tech Policy, SEO, AI, Wealth Management, Life Coach, Nutritional Medicine, Alternative Therapies and Essential Oils): AI is brilliant. It instantly gives you deep knowledge across a wide range of fields! It learns like a human does.

Psychologists: I’m sorry, what? Haha no it doesn’t. I know you’re not bright, but no, it doesn’t.

Guru: What do you mean? I wrote 5 books with it and they’re best sellers! You haven’t even written one!

Writers: Fuck off. Also, you’re not an author.

AI engineer: Hey guys, I actually agree with the Psychologists. No, it really doesn’t work like that. It’s not “learning” as such. It spots patterns and you can use basic reinforcement, but even if you accept the premise, there still isn’t enough comput…

LinkedIn Guru: YES IT DOES. I ASKED IT ABOUT ALL MY FIELDS AND IT GOT EVERYTHING RIGHT! I CHECKED IT! I AM A CERTIFIED LIFE COACH AND UNDERSTAND PSYCHOLOGY BETTER THAN ANY COMPUTER NERD.

AI hype skeptic/normal person: LLMs are cool. I use them and know how they work. I can see some value in some areas, I guess? Maybe Law? But still, rather than buy into hype, we should probably consider the externalities, do a proper cost-benefit analysis, SWOT and all the other things that are routine for transformation projects.

Also, I think the way they launched it was selfish, reckless, unethical and probably illegal, and I think we should proceed with more caution. If these guys are willing to cause this much destruction without self-correcting, we probably shouldn’t trust them.

UX: Also, if we’re talking human-centred design, I’m not sure that sycophancy is a good idea, especially for vulnerable users.

Product Managers and Growth Engineers: STFU Old Man, why are you still here? We understand users better than you. We’ve got all their data. Look at our dashboard…

UX: Fuck off. You put the hack in growth hacking, that’s for sure.

Psychologists: I agree with UX. This thing has real potential to feed dangerous delusions and you need more safeguards.

AI Safety: Sure. So you’re saying we need to make sure it doesn’t say rude words?

Psychologist: Well, not exac–

AI Safety: We got this. No rude words. US Generals from the 1700s will be black.

Product Manager: Got it.

Psychologist: No, you’re misunderstanding me. We’ve seen what’s happening with social media, and… government?

UX: I agree. Government?

Product Manager: STFU Old Man, why are you still here? Look at the dashboard.

Government: ooooh what a shiny dashboard. Did you do that in Word? AI Safety, what say you?

AI Safety: Okay, so we made the images diverse, and ChatGPT will now Wokescold people and let you guys know if they ask if Jews control the media. That should fix the delusion problem, and mitigate any psychosis.

Elon Musk: I’m making Grok not Woke. And also lol tiddies. What say you, Don?

The President of the United States: Electric sharks!

Everyone, in unison: We’re all fucked.

Elon Musk: CHAINSAW! HAHAHAHAHA tiddies on Mars.

Zuckerberg: I love that guy. He’s the best thing to ever happen to Meta. He makes me look normal.

Sam Altman: Same.

Tim Cook: Same. Hey Don, made you a gold statue, Sir. Can I peel you another grape, Sir? Anything else, Sir?

Siri: And you thought I was a sycophant? Broooooooo. That’s just embarrassing, bro.

Everyone in unison: Vomits. Laughs. Vomits again. Laughs. What the actual fuck are we seeing right now. Government?

Government: We fixed it. They’ll get a strongly worded letter from us telling them to knock it off. We’re also upgrading everyone from Word 2007 to Office 365, which includes access to CoPilot.

Everyone: Cool. Thanks for the help. How much does Microsoft get paid?

Government: INNOVATION.

VC, CEO, CFO, Billionaires, Tech Bros: You just don’t understand how it works. You hate AI. You just don’t get it and AI is magic and can fix all the externalities because it is so brilliant! You’re just a hater and a doomer.

AI Safety: I agree. You just don’t understand how it works, and all we need to do is make it more safe for the people who pay us, and also filter out extremist views, like terrorism.

Political scientists, historians, everyone left of Hitler: Oh, fuck. We’re fucked. Fuck. It’s fucked. We’re fucked. Oh fuck.

AI Safety and Tech Bros: You just don’t understand how it works. We’re working on making it safer, and so we made it so they’d be Wokescolded and added to a list if they ask if Israel controls the media.

Psychologist, UX, Normal Person, everyone: No, we fucking understand how it works. Shut the fuck up and listen to us!

Tech Founder/CEO: add them to the list.

3rd degree Software Engineers/tech bro: Brilliant work, Sir! Can I have a job? I want in on this thing! I am a systems thinker, husband and father. I’m just like you! I didn’t need college, because I had hustle. I work 26 hours a day, like you! You, Sir, are like Steve Jobs meets Tony Stark. You could say, that if Nikola Tesla were alive today, he would be in awe of you and how you have corrected the record on who really did the work.

I’ll sign the NDA, Sir, sure. I just want to be in your presence. I also think its best that nobody knows what I do and how much I earn anyway. You know, because people are jealous of our success and don’t understand that money is like air. Nobody needs to know about my signing bonus, my shares if number go up, or about our organisational culture where you can get colleagues fired anonymously and can get them on PIP for looking sideways or taking the last slice of pizza, or they threaten my bonus or promotion. I just want to do my 4 years so I gets that sweet, sweet vest. Then I can be a Founder.

What’s wrong with sycophancy? I don’t see a problem and my AI girlfriend agrees.

Piss jars? Disinformation. But, Sir, haha we know those brown people probably prefer it anyway amirite Sir ha ha ha…

H1Bs: what the fuck? How can that guy just say that right in front of us? I have a PhD in Engineering and this moron doesn’t even have a degree, I have to fix all his mistakes and he was promoted ahead of me? Obviously I won’t say anything publicly, Sir, but…. okay, sorry Sir, anything you need Sir. I’m sorry I acted Woke. It won’t happen again. I wouldn’t want to be replaced by “AI”, Sir.

Artists: Hey everyone, they stole our work without consent. I mean LOL these guys think they’re doing art, and that’s very cute, but also… yeah you kinda have to pay for a license.

Marketing: You have to pay creatives?

Artists: Pay your fucking invoice, Linda, or shut the fuck up. This is an obvious breach of Copyright and we need to do something. Mr President?

The President of the United States: Everything is computer and they’re eating the dogs.

Everyone: Cool. Awesome. Fabulous. Anyone else? Government?

Government: You can apply for a grant here. Oh, by the way, I have just been informed by my advisors that money is just like air. And yeah, he shouldn’t have said they eat the dogs, but the border…

AI Safety: Oh, we’ve also made it safer by adding people to a list if they ask if Israel is committing a genoci…

Academics: Oh, fuck. We’re fucked. Fuck. It’s fucked. We’re fucked. Oh fuck. I gotta get out of here, man.

People without H1Bs who are left of olive skin: Oh, fuck. We’re fucked. Fuck. It’s fucked. We’re fucked. Oh fuck.

Political scientists, historians: That’s what we said.

AI Safety: Stop saying fuck or you’ll end up on the list.

Tech Bro: Let me pitch you my new AI product. It’s the Uber of Police. I vibe-coded it in 3 hours. Who needs college? People need to get with the program and adapt or die.

VC: Here’s my card.

College grads: err, so great product, Sirs, I use it all the time, but could you knock off the whole adding us to lists and policing thing? We’re just protesting a genocide, and it includes a lot of jewish people and you’re letting Fundamentalist Christians label them terrorists and anti-Semites, because they don’t like what’s happening in their name. Also, again small quibble, great product, saves me loads of time and stuff, but we learned in class the other day and I skim-read on SparkNotes that this stuff usually ends badly and is uneth–

Tech bro: WOKE ANTIFA COMMUNIST FASCISTS POSTMODERN MARXISTS

Academics: Huh? What the fuck is this word salad?

Tech bro: WOKE! INDOCTRINATION! GLOBALIST FAR LEFT GENDER IDEOLOGY

LinkedIn Guru: I wrote a best-selling book about this last night.

Tech bro: HUSTLE! GRIND! EMBRACE THE FUTURE! YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND! MARS! TO THE MOON! DA DA DA DA SEXSSSESEHDHWDKWKEWF!MURDERHUMAN!REDHEIFFERS?BRRRRRAINCHIPOFJLWFH I AM MECHA HITLER lmfao

Everyone: I think he’s run out of tokens.

Founder: It’ll replace everyone and do everyone’s job. It’s amazing!

AI Skeptics: So, back on topic, no it simply can’t do what they’re claiming. This is pure hype. And even if it did do that, which I must emphasise it doesn’t, there’s a social contract and a process that everyone should follow, with any new technolo–

AI Bro: Doomer. Flying Cars. Mars. You just don’t get it, bro. It’s a better writer than you and our writing product is going to replace you.

Writer: Now hang on just a gosh darn minute. No it isn’t. It’s a bad writer. It’s good for basic paraphrasing or summarising but it is mostly unusable slop. I must point out that 2/3 of American adults can’t read at a 5th grade level and that’s why a lot of them think it’s a good writer, when it isn’t. You didn’t go to college, so you may well be one of those people. But, still, I can see a use case for it… maybe in law?

LawAI Tech bro: Yes! Of course it can do law! Lots of law! People don’t understand that this is the future of law!

Lawyer: Now hang on just a gosh darn minute. No. I can see how it works, have tried it, use it sometimes, and I get it. But it makes up cases, confuses jurisdictions, and misunderstands the law… and ultimately it takes longer to wrangle it than it does to just do the work myself.

I’m sure with specially trained models like Lexis+ there is some value/potential, but a) it needs human supervision because I am on the hook if it messes up b) I need to be transparent in all dealings and be subject to audit, and that plus the externalities…well, it’s a fun toy, but it isn’t cost effective. Think I’ll do my own pleadings for now. But I am sure there’s a use case, such as in medicine.

How about you, doctors?

Doctors: Nope. We are a regulated profession and would be sued into oblivion. Also, can I take a moment to talk about not using AI to deny people insurance and ask that they take a break from posting about AI on LinkedIn, and check where my patient’s claim is? She’s waiting to start cancer treatment.

Lawyers: Here’s my card.

Tech bro: Huh? What’s a regulated profession? We are vibe-coding the Uber of Knowledge and Police and Lawyers and Doctors. We’re disrupting everything bro, don’t blame us. You’re just jealous and don’t understand how it works, bro. Universities? LOL we never went, because nobody needs college anyway! We are vibe-coding it so you can have a PhD in your pocket!

PhDs: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Are these guys fucking serious? They do know that PhDs are about new knowledge, right?

Coders: err… mate, that’s not how it works. You need to know what you’re coding and vibe-coding is reckless and dangerous.

Lawyer: Here’s my card.

Founder: pfft. you just don’t understand how it works, bro.

VC: Here’s my card.

Tech bro: No, I mean it’ll just have general PhD knowledge and create new physics. Also, women should have more babies.

AI Experts, Academics, Scientists, Doctors, Coders, Writers, Lawyers, in unison: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA are you fucking serious right now? Oh my God these people are so stupid.

Workers: I can’t afford to feed myself, let alone have more kids. The fuck?

NVIDIA: lol, we gun be rich as these dumbasses think it’s just about lack of compute.

PhDs: oh man I’m never going to be able to eat, am I?

Tech bro: Have babies instead. Look, I did some art!

Artists: This guy over here thinks he’s doing art. And hey, I didn’t consent to the use of my work.

Lawyer: Here’s my card.

Scientists: Hey, the oceans are kinda boiling.

Government: Do you want a grant to commercialise your research? We can help you fix the climate crisis and you could also cure cancer with our public-private partnerships where we commercialise research…

PhDs: Don’t do it! It’s a trap!

Tech bros: WOKISM! INDOCTRINATED! DOGE TO THE MOON! FAR LEFT ANTIFA TOILETS POLITICAL VIOLENCE BAD POPULATION COLLAPSE HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP.

Parents: Hey, sorry to interrupt, but your AI told our son to kill himself.

Tech bros: Soz about that. Here’s a discount code for BetterHelp.com

Parents: Not good enough. You evil, soulless ghouls.

Lawyer: Here’s my card.

Teachers: Heaven help us all. These little fuckers already can’t read and our tech bro friend here is the obvious end result. Can I have $20 for some pencils and materials, please?

Government: Here’s a discount code for PragerU. Also, that sounds awful Woke. Are you teaching the children how to do political violence?

Students: Cool, bro. Shrimp Jesus. Heh. Look, I made a deep fake of Miss and she’s getting death threats because I gave her coloured hair.

Media (interest undeclared): Is AI about to take over the world? Lawyers say it’ll be great for code. Coders say it’ll be great for Product Design. Doctors think it’ll be great for Law, Lawyers think it’ll be great for Medicine and Writers say it’ll be good for Physics. Artists know that it’s shit for everything but they’re always complaining anyway and we spend too much on stock photography, so welcome to the AI Revolution!

AI researchers: You know, this really isn’t what we intended to happen.

AI Safety: this isn’t what we intended, but it can be fixed if we get ahead of it. We’ve asked Bari Weiss to come on board as an advisor on how to make the AI Safer.

LinkedIn Guru: I wrote a book about AI Safety yesterday.

Everyone: Fuck off.

AI Safety: Alright, everyone, you’re on the list.

Product Manager: Yes, Sir.

Engineers: Yes, Sir. Can I do anything else for you Sir? Massage perhaps?

Tim Cook: Me first!

Elon Musk: We have to fix the mind virus!

H1Bs: Yes, Sir.

Everyone: Oh, fuck. We’re fucked. Fuck. It’s fucked. We’re fucked. Oh fuck.

VCs: Excellent.

Founders: Excellent.

CEOs: Yes, Sir. Can I have a pay rise? I need to pay for security detail.

Lawyer: Here’s my card.

Government: Stop doing all that political non-violence or five years from now we’ll have give you a $50 fine and a warning.

Doctor: I’m sorry, but the cancer has metastasised. I did everything I could.

AI Researchers: Hang on a minute, weren’t we supposed to cure cancer?

Speaking of AI, I have a post coming about that soon. I want to sit on it for a bit and put in a little more effort. It might be slow, but I am sure you’re okay with that.

In the meantime, I trained my voice for shits and giggles. Spooky. Yes, the AI wrote the script. Welcome to the slop factory. The spooky, spooky, slop factory.

<3

Thanks for your support. Working on Paid benefits but for now, I prefer to just keep everything free and if people want to support me, they can. Your support means I can write more (which, of course, there is a critical mass for)…

Stream Chapters

00:00 Technical Difficulties and Frustrations

01:32 Daily Life Chaos and Coffee Troubles

02:50 The Struggles of Content Creation

03:40 The Cynicism of the Internet

05:18 The Dilemma of Data Privacy

06:24 The Frustration of Repetition

07:52 The Impact of Social Media on Society

14:12 The Importance of Critical Thinking

23:14 Understanding Data and Privacy

29:24 Linking Metadata Across Databases

30:16 Palantir's Role in Data Profiling

31:03 Media's Influence on Public Perception

32:23 Commercialization of Research

33:46 Ethical Dilemmas in AI and Data Usage

36:19 Legal Frameworks and Accountability

52:24 Government Inefficiency and Data Misuse

56:19 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Get more from Téa Smith in the Substack app

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I plan to write more about why I quit tech in detail, including how I managed to disenshittify (Cory prefers that but I prefer unshittify) my tech, and a whole bunch of AI stuff that started as LinkedIn posts that need a bit work.

This post is mostly for you stragglers who make their way over as I get this all sorted, so you have something that isn’t the same year-old article about how I was definitely leaving Twitter this time that, much like live-blogging my divorce, has aged like fine milk. But, I have imported the old posts from the world’s most over-designed website in proportion to the frequency of content.

This week marks 30 years since I uploaded my first HTML file to a web server. I’ve done that many thousands of times since then. I did it for rock stars, Fortune 500 companies, sole traders and everything in-between since then. It’s a wild ride that I won’t bore you with right now, but Founding Members will get to finally work on that book about the Internet that I have been writing for a decade - like every other damn writing and creative project that stalls because I’m afraid to move on from making websites perfect so that then I can write.

I quit that in 2019 when I realised what my beloved industry had become, and despite my efforts to try and fix it, it became untenable. I have been in a grieving process since then, which has mostly unfolded on my YouTube channel.

I also went to law school. It’s a bit time consuming.

Obviously, I still write thousands of words a day. For now, it just never gets published. I bleed words. I write first drafts with an ease that makes people think I put way more thought and care into them than I did. But, lately it never gets past that, and that’s because I get to tinker with the back-end of my Wordpress site till it’s “done”. There’s always an update, a bug, a change that can be made and as a result it has become a source of procrastination to the point where I have written 5 articles in 3 years. I bleed words and have a backlog of hundreds of articles, hundreds of great jokes, and millions of words that never get published.

I will be a lawyer soon, which is weird. That is, assuming I pass the “fit and proper persons” process with the digital footprint I have painted myself into a corner with. There is no guarantee of that and I am willing to be the test case if it comes up, because you know me, Crash Test Dummy who is mostly right, sometimes wrong, but always for the right reasons. I can’t go back, or round. I have no choice but to go through, like I always have.

You may notice that I also go round and round and struggle to get to the fucking point, too.

I have been fairly belligerent about Substack over the years, mostly because I don’t understand why people would think - after all we’ve been through with tech - that there wouldn’t be another bait-and-switch. But also, fuck it. It’s a good product. This is where people are. Matt Mullenweg has completely lost the plot (I will write about this too) and honestly… it’s just time to move on from that phase of my life.

I was having trouble letting go of being in tech. It was such a big part of my identity, and my story, and I’ve been grieving and somewhat in denial about what has happened… and desperately clinging onto something that isn’t coming back.

And the real kicker is that I haven’t even been writing about any of it publicly, so others have beaten me to the punch when I could have positioned myself to be a leading voice in this space. All because I was too busy tinkering with my fucking website.

So, it’s time to move on. It’s hard to move on. But I need somewhere to write stuff down without fucking about. I may even write more about why thatis actually a symptom, and why I am so afraid to post things publicly anymore, because I have about 5 pieces on how my 00s blog ruined my life. That’s for the book, I think.

Anyway, Substack is fine.

Come what may.

I’m moving the domain over soon (I just need to do some housekeeping with my old list), and will be tinkering with aesthetic and branding for a little bit, but this will be the place from now on.

Thanks for reading, Like and Subscribe, blah blah blah. You know the drill. If you’ve been reading me for 30 years… that’s just fucking wild. We’re old now. I love you.

Talk soon and email me if you need anything.

-ts

“Congratulations”, the Professor said, “you’ve signed up to being frustrated - and even infuriated - for the rest of your life. You’re going to have to learn to be very patient with people or you’ll be very lonely.”

What an odd thing to say, I thought, as I scanned the room and noticed the other 35 people in my class, looking equally perplexed.

“But I need to qualify that. Let me open this class with some things you need to know upfront if you’re going to study political science. It’s not for the faint hearted, and if you can’t learn how to communicate, and be patient with people in your life, you should probably study something that will make you more likeable. Get an A in this class and then apply for Law school.”

Everyone chuckled. Most of us were in political science because we didn’t get into the Bachelor of Laws (which was a lot harder at the time), so it was the perfect ice-breaker.

This guy knew his audience.

“So, with that out of the way, let me explain what I mean.

1. A minority of people are interested in politics outside of election campaigns.

2. The majority of people rely on low-quality information via evening news and sound bytes.

3. The majority of people who are interested in politics are more likely to participate, but that participation does not necessarily correlate with knowledge.

4. “Participation” ranges from talking about politics to joining a political party, and most people are in the former group.

5. The people who “participate” are often very confident they know a lot about our political system. This does not, however, meaningfully correlate with their knowledge.

6. People generally vote for emotional reasons, not logical ones.

7. Getting people interested in politics at all is the hardest part.

8. Apathy is the biggest problem in a modern democracy.

9. And, just in case you all think I’m suggesting that you are instantly one of the knowledgeable ones because you have taken this unit, that is not automatically the case, and you could just as easily end up being one of the over-confident ones that doesn’t know, but simply participates.

10. If you do engage with this course and graduate with a degree, you will likely be in the small percentage of people who do know what they’re talking about, but you will be severely outnumbered, even among those who participate.

11. You will need to learn to communicate, work with people from all walks of life, and most importantly, if you are doing politics right, inspire people to participate above anything else.

12. Politics won’t make you friends, but done right, it can help you influence people.

It’s not verbatim, but I remember this vividly enough to relay the gist1.

He was right.

Over the course of the next 3 years, I’d see half my class change degree. I think once they realised that political science done right was a lot more behavioural science, stats, procedural details, and much less “participating” than they thought it’d be. Most of the people who were in that class fell away and switched to Comms or Business. Journalism students would do an elective here or there, as would the Education students. In my graduating class, I think there were 3 people who finished the degree, and had heard that Lesson One on Day One about the relationship between confidence, apathy, participation and knowledge and the need for patience and humility if you want to persuade people to vote.

Boy, was he right.

I’ve encountered many a single-issue activist in my time, especially those who “participate” by talking about politics. The vast majority of them expected people to change their mind based on one conversation, one touchpoint, one tweet, or one slogan.

Then of course, complain when people don’t appreciate their efforts.

Well yeah...

...duh, it’s hard. If you actually understand politics and paid attention in class, you should know this.

Getting people to support a cause, especially complex ones with a lot of intersecting problems and information, is more like selling million-dollar consulting. The shit or lazy campaigners seem to think it’s more akin to selling knock-offs on Wish. Activists - especially the single-issue ones - don’t understand that they’re in sales, and their main competition is apathy.

That’s always their fatal flaw. They arrogantly assume they can show up and talk features and benefits, repeat slogans and make an instant sale if they push hard enough and handle every objection.

In sales, the more expensive the product or service, the longer the sales cycle. Unless they’re in immediate need and know what they want to buy, they’re going to need time to decide, compare and do their research. High pressure sales rarely results in anything other than buyer’s remorse, or a door in the face.

They may not be in the market right now, or never buy at all.

They may like the product but not want to buy it from YOU, because they find you to be too… salesy or scammy. They may have been ripped off before and therefore be more cautious, need to ask the same questions over and over again and waste your time, only to then go to someone else who explained it better, makes them feel less shit, or myriad other reasons.

That’s what persuasion is. That’s what changing hearts and minds is.

Patience. Hustle. Grind. Humility. Not simply being right or having a good product.

Generally, anyone who wants to stop anyone asking questions because they aren’t sold yet, aren’t caving to pressure and need some time to think about it, is destined to lose the sale.

It’s easy to sell mass-produced junk to idiots or addicts wanting a quick fix, or to scam people into signing their name in the moment.

It is way harder to sell something of substance, especially if they don’t see an immediate threat or problem with the status quo. It is exceptionally hard to sell uncertain or intangible outcomes.

Especially if what you are selling strikes to the core of someone’s self-perception of who they are and where they fit in the world.

Obviously, because internet, there will be “activists” who try to get rich quick using shortcuts, throwing money at things, black hat tactics or silencing competitors, or sell MLM. That’s going to happen.

But ultimately, if you’re selling something but don’t welcome questions about your product, you not only probably have a shitty product, but you also haven’t taken lesson one, day one on the basics.

Let people speak. Let people ask questions. They’re not ready to buy yet. But, they might be. They might be 90% of the way there and just need you to get them over the line.

If your product is good, and you are patient and approachable, it becomes an easy sale down the track, when they see that you helped them along the way, with no agenda, and didn’t pressure them into buying something before they were ready, and when everyone else was trying to sell them crap using high pressure sales tactics.

That can take years, if it happens at all. It takes patience, humility, and good communication skills. People who feel coerced or manipulated into a purchase using high-pressure sales tactics are highly unlikely to become loyal customers in the long term, and most definitely will not refer you to others. In fact, it often turns someone who could have been a loyal and happy customer into someone who tells everyone they know to stay away, because you’re an aggressive lunatic who is trying to pressure them into signing up to a MLM.

Don’t be lazy and stop complaining that it’s hard. Yes. It is. That’s why there are lots of dropouts.

Lazy political campaigners are as bad as lazy marketers and salespeople. They think they can just throw a slogan at it, buy a billboard, silence opponents and delete the bad reviews and you’ve won.

You haven’t.

Long term changes of hearts and minds, loyal fans and die-hard customers takes effort. It’s a grind. It is difficult, especially in a landscape where those with the most resources are able to take shortcuts and sell pre-chewed slop to people who are starving, or don’t respect boundaries and have blocked the doorway and they want to go home.

They may buy in the short term to placate you, but you haven’t won them.

It can take years for someone to go from “questioning” to “on board”, and if you are silencing people, you are going to lose them in the long term, because you lost their trust. And that can be done in an instant, especially if you didn’t pay attention in class, are confident without knowledge, and think “participating” is merely talking at people until they give in or tell you to fuck off.

Stick around, Lesson 2 is wild.

In her announcement-slash-hostage video that was definitely-not-satire-but-could-be, she mentioned the “global town square” with a cadence obviously intended to invoke feelings of the salons of 18th Century Paris. Unfortunately, these days 𝕏 feels less like a “marketplace of ideas”, and more like an abandoned asylum where a few die-hards with nowhere else to go have been left to fend for themselves among panhandlers, alley cats, vagrants, street preachers, and unmedicated schizophrenics wearing dunce hats on their heads, sandwich boards on their bodies, and poo in their diapers, all screeching about threats only they can see, or worse, trying to lure us into a dungeon where they can take us hostage, tape open our eyes and be force-fed idiotic takes, reality distorting made-up “facts”, weird homoerotic psychological projections (otherwise known as conservative media) and extremely unhealthy niche fixations.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the love-hate relationship I have with that platform. I love it less and hate it more every day. I’ll quit one day, I promise.

Anyway, my point is, the disconnect between Yaccarino’s “global town square” in that video and what 𝕏 is right now for the average user is… hilarious. People are dunking on it (myself included), but I need to point something out.

I am incredibly frustrated at all the self-identified “tech journalists” (read: sponsored content creators who create listicles and don’t know the first thing about tech…), who screech about “speech”, “regulation” and “big tech”, with absolutely no idea how laws are made, how government works and what is actually involved in any of it.

Ironically, they appear to be in the business of screeching at people in the “global town square” that somebody should DO SOMETHING. Yes. We know. We get it. You hate Musk. He took away your badge that said you were special and cool. You’re used to saying something and everyone around you scrambling to make it so, with all thinking outsourced and all action or work delegated. We get it. Monopoly bad, except for when said monopoly works in your favour. Screech. Traffic cone. Screech. Somebody do something about tech! written on your sandwich board, as if nobody had ever thought of that twenty years ago. Capitalism bad too, until it affects your revenue, then it’s hate speech! Screech. Screech. Screech. Twitter Dunk.

Anyway.

Assuming you’re actually concerned with “big tech”, interested in the actual problem, and not just upset that people you don’t like are getting engagement and the people you used to bully with impunity can now talk back…

How do you propose we do that, then?

You are aware that this is… kinda hard to do, right?

Let me explain something. Sorry, it’s in the form of a very long non-tweet and isn’t a 15 second video. It might take a minute. It’s actually kind of complex.

With the current state of the tech industry, because it was ignored by so many for so long, it’s going to take thousands of cases, tens of years, hundreds of statutes and many, many thousands of regulations to implement what you are screeching about.

And guess what?

These lawsuits are part of that.

Every. Single. One.

Yes. Even the cringe ones. And especially the ones initiated by fuckwits.

How Is Law Made?

Laws are usually made in one of three ways:

1. Statute: Politicians write bills. The legislature then passes that bill and it becomes a statute.

2. Case Law: Judges interpret the meaning of those statutes and apply them to cases.

3. Policy/Delegated Legislation/Regulations: Bureaucrats implement, which involves some interpretation (less now) and enforcing as they go, depending on what authority they have been given, and that is frequently siloed (let’s park this part, but it is important to note, because tech regulations fall under this category).

Last time I checked (and to the shock of Americans), there are quite a few – lots of – countries. And, though there are often similarities and overlaps, different countries each have their own laws, norms, and procedures. In federal systems like the United States and Australia, both state laws and federal laws apply to each case. We have six states, and America, always bringing its special brand of crazy (for better or worse) has 50 states, each with its own statutes, procedures, norms, subcultures, industries, and interest groups. Then you have the EU, which has countries. And China and India, who have almost half the world’s population with different systems entirely. You get my drift. Then, you have the international layer – the real super fun stuff – which mostly operates on a legal principle called “trust us, bro”, but, as recent events have demonstrated, is mostly toothless, at least when it interferes with the interests of the United States (which of course means the interests of United States corporations, because they’re a plutocracy).

Tech companies (and all multi-nationals, but tech in particular) have benefitted from 50+ years of exploiting all those gaps. Legislators and Judges were painfully slow on the uptake, and users were way too distracted with the shiny things and actually believed the dorks in hoodies when they said “trust us, bro”, they effectively fucked us over, robbed us blind and fucked us the arse without our consent, and now they have all the advantage, because they (literally) own our secrets, control the information we consume, sponsor the people who write and enforce the laws (to ensure they don’t write or enforce any laws), and now the whole world is in a position where “the interests of the United States” and “Big Tech” (including Palantir, and all the advertisers and half-witted marketing consultants – who uncritically harvested all our secrets on their behalf in order to sell us a fucking Diet Coke – are now one and the same).

Cool. Easy. No big deal. Simple. Someone should do something about that.

This is the problem I have dedicated the rest of my life to fixing. Easy. Simple. Ugh.

Are you bored yet?

Exactly.

Not exactly a viral tweet, is it?

In defence of vexatious litigants with cash to burn

Anyway, now that you know more about tech law and how laws are made than any tech “journalist”, you will understand that case law matters a lot, especially in America. In Australia it is a lot more restrictive, but Judges in the US generally have far more leeway to make law via interpretation based on “novel circumstances” (which is a polite way of saying, “the crazy lands in the courts and this tests the law.” or, as I have said, “90% of the laws are for the 10% of fuckwits”). So, when crazies and fuckwits test the law and its limits, and defend their actions with the out-there arguments, everyone else understands where the edges are.

And there is no better way to do that in tech in 2024 than to be a full-time fuckwit with deep enough pockets and an army of lawyers who will hop from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, fight petty battle after petty battle, fuckwit against fuckwit, test after test and loophole after loophole, like Elon Musk.

You have to remember that all of the bigger fights, such as having unfair terms in the Terms of Service ruled unconscionable or your rights as a user or creator to receive payment for your data, or your right to amend or be forgotten, all need to be built on a pile of lots and lots of precedents and clarifications and points of law, across the globe, to be even remotely achievable. All it will take is the right cases, the right courts, and the right arguments and the right precedents, and they won’t be able to do this shit anymore. And every new case is a step closer to the bigger goal: protecting user rights, and taking our shit back that was stolen from us without our consent. And the more cases that can clear up all the distractions and side issues, the stronger the foundation for the big ones.

And we get to do it on Elon Musk’s dime.

Enter …the Fuckwit.

We need more case law and more fuckwits testing legal boundaries because statutes and regulations are not going to be enough. For example, Reid Hoffman, Founder of LinkedIn (and a part-time fuckwit), has gone mask-off, saying his $7m donation to Kamala Harris’ campaign has strings attached. Billionaire global empires – whether tech bro, corporate media or hedge fund – are the only fuckwits that can afford to fight their petty grievances in court. Most of us ordinary non-fuckwit people lack the resources to fight any of this and, so, billionaire global empire fuckwits are going to have to be the ones that duke it out, and, well, we’re all just going to have to hope that some of the wins trickle down in the process.

To take tech on is a massively complex, expensive and decades-long feat that very few people have the skills and resources to accomplish. The only way to take all of it on is bit by bit, case by case, country by country and close all those gaps, one by one. Also, with the relative transparency of the US discovery process is excellent for those of us who are less powerful and less petty, giving us access to information we wouldn’t ordinarily be able to afford (i.e. the more stuff that is on the public record, the cheaper/more accessible that information becomes for future action – something journalists SHOULD BE DOING INSTEAD OF BEING STUPID CONTENT FACTORY BABIES).

None of means I agree with, or support, Musk. Musk is a full-time fuckwit. The platform is garbage now. But, intelligent people understand that multiple things can be true at the same time, and mature people actually bring solutions rather than dunks, clap-backs and screeching about “regulating tech” and nothing else to actually follow through.

We WANT more clarity via legal judgements. The more of these cases, the quicker it goes up the chain and we get some actual binding decisions. This is the system working as it should.

Anyway, I am so fucking sick of so-called “tech journalists” playing cheerleader for their clickbait thunk factories, instead of actually doing analysis. Leaving it to people like me, who are not paid, talking to 10 people. Sigh.

ALWAYS SUPPORT LAWSUITS. EVEN THE FRIVOLOUS ONES. THEY’RE NECESSARY AND VERY MUCH NEEDED.

Also, crazy cases are the most fun. They make the drudgery of slogging through 250 admin law cases worth it, which is what I did this week and am writing this to avoid doing more. heh. Take care x

Most writers (myself included), spend a lifetime trying to craft a single perfect sentence. We write junk, after junk, discard 99% of the words and thoughts in the hope that we can create something that will outlive us.

Whether it is the perfect joke, the perfect observation, the perfect comment on what it means to be human… we are in pursuit of that one perfect set of words, that we assembled in the right order, that stands the test of time.

This is what “content” people don’t understand.

This is what tech bros, and the AI/LLM people who think it does “writing” don’t understand. We don’t write to blend in and create a dull word arrangement based on probabilities. We seek to do the opposite.

They will never, ever understand the anguish, the ruminating, the reading, the process that goes into creating a sentence that stands out amongst so many – a sentence good enough to elicit a tear, prompt an epiphany, or provoke a shiver at its profundity. They will never know the high of crafting great word arrangements that resonate with people. Or, the lows of writing what you think is the perfect word arrangement, to find nobody – at least right now, while you’re alive – sees it.

Or, the perplexity at writing what you think is a terrible and sloppy word arrangement and people thinking it’s great. That’s the roughest and weirdest one.

What the “content” people create is junk, to sell junk, to people who don’t want to hear words of importance. The word arrangements are a means, not an end.

“Content” people manipulate readers into doing something we might not ordinarily do, or into wanting something we might not ordinarily want. Content people are transactional thinkers and see you, the reader as a mark.

Writers are relational. There is no other agenda. Writers don’t need to manipulate. Writers inspire, persuade – and it is the words, the sentence that, if we are lucky, has our name to it, that is perfectly crafted to get you to repeat it to someone else, that stands on its own.

I don’t know if I got any good sentences here, but that’s okay. 99% of my stuff is junk. But, I hope you like them. Oh and like, subscribe and become a Patron if you want.

A deep, deep love for a marvellous and important product. There are some who may think it is ‘cringe’ – as the kids say today – to be sad. But it is okay to be sad when you have invested time, and emotions and have happy memories attached to something.

So many take tech for granted. They don’t see invisible labour, the tireless work to remove friction, the tape and glue that keeps servers up, the content moderators’ trauma, the vision that we all had for a product like Twitter.

I’ve been rough on tech bros lately, but that comes from a place of disappointment at having seen what was done to these platforms, and what they were supposed to be.

Maybe I was the gullible one for believing in it in the first place, but there was a window there where things were truly… incredible. Lifelong friendships. So many laughs. So many people who met husbands and wives and whose children grew up alongside each other and never got to meet, making us act like a weird overenthusiastic but distant aunty to a very confused kid who thinks “um… do I know you?”.

I’ve even been the main character – zero stars would not recommend by the way, and thankfully it was in 2011 when it didn’t wreck your life and you could go back to normal by deleting your account, laying low for a bit and then starting over on a new account – but still, it was marvellous for this Perth girl who never fit in anywhere and would have gone insane if not for other weirdos on the virtual watercooler that was Twitter.

Then, selfish people – first, media and ‘brand’ people (who Twitter was supposed to disrupt) staged a hostile takeover, thinking the Internet was theirs to gentrify and control, were then overtaken by the jerks who think the internet is theirs to wreck, and other people mere tools for them to harass, threaten and defame.

Twitter was the love of my life. A deep nerdy love that first turned unhealthy but then turned abusive, where I convinced myself it could change, if I just kept trying harder. I even tried to work there so I could help fix things. I wrote a proposal on how to change the product and processes to solve the problems, several times. That went as far as their support tickets: nowhere.

Sunk costs and habit. That’s what remains.

And the handful of people who are still on there that I don’t want to lose touch with, so I will not completely delete, and still copypasta (I still want it to get better, but not at my expense). But no more than 5 minutes a day.

X in 2024 is a reality-distorting, crazy-making, deeply unhealthy and abusive app. It is the ‘everything app’, but not in the way he’d hoped. It’s everything that went wrong with the dream of the internet, rolled up into a big ball of shit. I won’t let Elon Musk drag me down with him in his descent into madness. Get some therapy, for heaven’s sake. He’s a grown man. It’s just …sad. It was always a bully machine, but the targets were usually deserving, but at some point it just became about righteous cruelty rather than truth to power.

Anyway, it’s been a long road. Yes, it’s cringe, but I’m allowed to be sad over what happened to the lofty idealistic dream that was the bird app from doom. It’s okay if you don’t get that. But know that it represents a dream that was promised, but unrealised, in many ways, for a cohort of people who more than just a financial stake in its success. I invested a lot into it. I got celebrities on it early on. I evangelised it to everyone who would listen.

And it’s done. It may change, but I doubt it. Without some serious intervention, that we all know is unlikely to happen, we have to learn from the mistakes, try again, and try to do it better next time. And no, I don’t think Bluesky is the answer, but… go nuts.

I suggest you do the same. If they’ve lost me, a Twitter addict who rationalises like a smackhead over the greatest app in the world that holds my friends in the little glass box… they’ve literally lost everyone.

Here’s my handwritten notes from 2014 when they were struggling, pre-Trump. Trump saved Twitter. It could have been done differently and executed well, but nope. Musk fucked it and burned through all goodwill from people who agreed with him in the process.

This is still how you fix it from a product POV, but obviously, at the time, because non-psychopaths forget that psychopaths exist… I didn’t really address the bad actors. There are solutions to that, too.

I don’t regret any of it, because it brought me here, but I am still sad about it.

I’ve been trying to think of a term to describe tech bros who are suffering from a severe, but quite specific variation of the Dunning Kruger effect. You may have seen it more recently, with the whole AI reckoning.

Tech bros live in a bubble with other tech bros who tell them they’re brilliant, and they make inflated salaries. As a result have an over-inflated sense of their intelligence and competence outside of code/engineering.

I present the “Code-Savant Illusion”.

Engineers who confuse complex and complicated, and reduce everything (including humans and society) to mere calculations and tools.

But it’s not just that. It’s the hubris. They have answers to every problem. They wander out of their lane and they do so with enviable confidence, but it is utterly baseless.

They confuse their pay cheque with merit, because they have anarcho-capitalist brainworms and think that capitalism is a meritocracy, not a system where many mediocre people and minds get paid a fortune for compliance, not challenging anything in any meaningful way, and enforcing said system on everyone else. And, of course, run interference and turn a blind eye to the collateral damage.

Once it occurs to them that their salaries are higher than many C-levels, that’s when they become insufferable. They start to confuse that with actually being a C-Level, and think they know everything about every discipline, and can solve every problem.

They of course lecture everyone on the social sciences (they know nothing about), and creative industries (they know nothing about), people stuff (they have no people skills), and basically, because they have one niche skill that is in high demand, they think everyone else is useless, and everyone else is stupider than them.

There is a 10x multiplier if said social scientist or creative is a woman.

They write in condescending pseudophilosophical jargon and management word salads that don’t mean anything, which they then bludgeon everyone to death with. When people zone out, they blame the reader for not understanding them and their brilliance, because they conflate the ability to bore someone to death with being intelligent, or having won the argument, when mostly, everyone just gives up because they’re boring and annoying.

They also don’t realise that their field is actually not terribly complex, relies heavily on other disciplines for a good product, and code isn’t really all that hard. They don’t realise that STEM is often not about intellect, but patience, and how high your pain threshold is when it comes to boredom.

And of course, that whole thing where many autists consider themselves savants, because many autists ARE savants. But, unfortunately, they lucked out there, so have to instead deal with the fact it is just a plain old disability that they have not yet processed, nor accepted (note: me and my entire family are on the spectrum, calm down).

So there you go.

The Code-Savant Illusion.

You’re welcome.

Nothing says privileged like toddler billionaires in a week-long Twitter war with also-privileged corporate DEI crybullies (who don’t actually do anything other than puff up themselves, you may have heard) and far right lunatics saying “DEI must DIE” (ooh witty) suddenly being deeply concerned with plagiarism at ‘elite’ institutions in the richest country (read: kleptocracy) in the world.

The institutions with oh so much status and merit, whose graduates are behind a disproportionate amount of evil in the world, between Wall Street, weapons manufacturers, tech bros, Hedge Funds and corporate lawyers… this is obviously the single most egregious thing anyone who came out of Harvard and MIT has ever done.

We get to watch as they all argue what to do with us serfs. How much or how little access we can have gifted to us based on our sex or race. But, only so far as to avoid talking to us, helping us, listening to us or sharing with us. Only enough to keep us quiet, and know our place, and remember that we are there for the rich to harvest and exploit: our stories, our data, our identities, our pain, our desperation.

They are very, deeply concerned with what to do with the riff-raff and the muckraking, so they are arguing over which bones to throw and which scraps to let us fight over.

I dunno, food? Living wages? Housing? Clean water? Not pulling the ladder up behind you after you’ve weaponised real social justice issues to help yourself and your own brand? Not using other people’s identities to subvert labour laws and weaponised at-will employment?

Nar, instead we’ll go to war over a missed comma in the footnotes in 1993. That’ll keep ’em distracted whilst corporations literally vacuum up the serfs’ data and art without attribution or compensation. I mean…

Have you seen the carry on? Absolute toddlers. Spoiled, narcissistic, crybully, pointless, entitled and tone deaf toddlers.

My hot take? All of those people should bite the big one, eat my poo, and do it as fast as possible, and everyone else should ignore them and focus on the housing crisis instead. And the genocide.

But that’s just me. What do I know about anything. I didn’t go to Harvard. I only care about real social change, where single mothers can have on-site daycare and everyone can go to ANY University. But, I’m not smart and didn’t come out of a merit-vag, and my Dad couldn’t afford to buy a wing at the library. I had to absorb $150k of debt and earn my way into a ‘non-elite’ university. I mean, I thought it was about knowledge.

But, I’ll admit I have been wrong about a lot of things lately. Like, merit, being a good person, and being authentic, honest and telling the truth was what mattered, and ‘hey, tell us about your day in this little box, we promise we won’t do anything bad*’ was a good idea.

Instead, I will defer to the geniuses at these institutions to figure out the most pressing issue of our time: figuring out whether nepo babies really deserve their degrees and positions.

Which, when my interest is in the politics of the internet, with large parts of my day spent observing professional opinion-havers leap from armchair to armchair on every topic from constitutional law to epidemiology to international relations, I wonder how they possibly find the time to do any research, or look stuff up… oh… that guy just said Biden is a communist and that other one said Trump was fighting against the elites. Never mind. 

Despite my frustration, and frequent impulse to say “fuck it, stop defending these fools, shut ‘em down”, I do try my best to give people the benefit of the doubt, because, like I said, I too am kind of an inadvertent arsehole, and I want to help. 

People respond to fear, trauma and grief differently. Some turn inward. Some drink. Some lash out at others, and some are drawn to conspiracy theories. My impulse is to do an intensive literature review and meta-analysis, and learn everything about The Thing That Happened for everyone else so I can analyse it and then explain it logically to people …usually without their consent. In this here October of 2023, when everything is awful and everyone is upset, I want to let you know that making politics the only lens through which you see the world is probably a mental illness in its own right. And you can take that to the bank, because I spent ten years at University studying politics, law and psychology, and… yeah, y’all are not okay.

Sorry, I know you didn’t ask, but I have to let you know. Here’s my bibliography.

I’m trying to help, I swear.

I have watched everyone gradually lose their minds via the Internet, with accelerant poured on all of it in 2020. Some have made it back, kinda. Some, not so much. This phenomenon was why I decided to shift my focus into trying to diagnose what broke the internet and where it all went wrong – noticing something really off with the way marketers and campaigners were using data with no regard for the political, social and psychological impacts, and seeing, well, this, coming down the pipe. All of this.

What we see, right now, in this here October of 2023, when everything is awful and everyone is upset, started out innocuously in the form of the good-spirited internet flame wars. But, over the years, the marketers decided people’s brains were fair game and little disagreements and benign brand loyalties turned into full-blown religious wars. Coke vs Sprite, Mac vs PC, Republicans vs Democrats, right vs left, increasingly more refined and progressively more vicious, until it was left vs left, worker vs worker, family vs family, sister vs brother, friend vs friend …and us vs ourselves. All imploding, with our identities as cynical market segments, for the benefit of the rich and powerful, with all of us being nudged into taking up arms… first in a Twitter mob and now… for a literal religious war.

I think we can all agree that everything is pretty awful right now. Just as I start to hope that we may be over the worst of it, along comes something else, asking us to hold their beer. 

The brutal attacks by Hamas on innocent Israelis was… horrific. I have no words. The treatment of Palestinians in Gaza is horrific. I have no words. Israel being given carte blanche by world leaders to “defend itself”, with everyone knowing full well that the response will be unspeakably cruel, is a slow motion nightmare that we can’t wake up from, and have no power to stop, lest we brush up against the propaganda machine that calls the stating of facts “siding with Hamas” and calls for ceasefire “antisemitism” and calls for adherence to international law “blood libel”. I have no words. I don’t feel I should even try to have words, but still, I have none. I want to have the answers, all wrapped up in a neat little bow, and… I just can’t make sense of something that is senseless and illogical.

All I do know is that the issue seems to become far less “complex” with every day that passes, and if I hadn’t seen this neoliberal-turned-fascist Weapon of Mass Distraction play out with so many issues for so many years, I’d be a lot more surprised. Instead, I am more despondent, because even though I am happy that South Park is still skewering Woke Disney, John Oliver chips away at the edges and everyone sees through corporate ESG bollocks, I know the real problem: people have had all their best impulses and most vulnerable blind spots weaponised by an industry with zero ethics and far too much unchecked power. And the good guys on any side of any debate in history usually don’t have to rely on astroturfing, coordinated dark PR campaigns and witch hunts. That’s one thing I do know.

I saw this coming, and tried to warn people for years that this was a bad path. It didn’t work. Nobody cared. Ultimately, I had no options other than to decide to not be complicit in it. I also had to accept there was nothing I could do or say to stop what I saw coming. And, so long as people met their quarterly KPIs and could distance themselves from the impact on users through a series of dashboards and fictional personas of people that don’t exist, it didn’t matter. But of course, internet being internet, the opinion-havers are settling into their newest armchair and “Middle East correspondent” hat, now allowing themselves to be a billboard or cheerleader for religious fundamentalists who want to bring about the Rapture with everyone else on Earth acceptable collateral damage.

How… Christ-like.

Meanwhile, most decent and ordinary people just look on, speechless, trying to process all this seemingly unending and escalating violence. It’s …a lot. The anguish I feel over all of it, the powerlessness, the despair, the guilt at thinking that what I think about it matters at all, the anger at the media and the cold and callous corporate ghouls who sit in Raytheon earnings calls and rub their hands in a way that would make Hannah Arendt recoil. It all feels so big, and so I break it down to my little lane where I can maybe help find answers. But, I still know that’s my response. I also know that people respond differently to fear, trauma and grief and that the opinion-havers and all the people I love and respect who are not acting like themselves are just trying to make sense of an awful situation. I know how people interact with social media, how it is abused, and that nobody other than a handful of billionaires has any power to stop it.

All I can do is analyse it as best I can, try to have answers for anyone who asks, and …not participate and not be complicit in making any of it worse than it already is.

Situational awareness was never something that came naturally to me. It has taken over four decades of noticing deep sighs, shifting bodies and audible groans to teach me that not every “how’s things?” is an invitation for a monologue, and that sometimes, Téa, your need for a captive audience can sometimes turn into a hostage situation. It hasn’t been easy to learn, but if there’s one thing I know, it is that there is far more to life than being smart, or right, particularly if you want to keep friends, and especially if you want to change hearts and minds.

People are generally not persuaded by people they don’t like. People don’t change their minds based on facts, even when they aren’t freaking out. The way you say things, the timing, and the emotional states of those you are talking to are far more important than rallying of a list of facts. Thank you, Captain Wikipedia, I only asked how your day was going but thanks for the essay.

I know this better than anyone. I cope with stress in odd ways. It can be endearing, but it is also really confusing and counter-productive. I will sweat the dumbest and smallest things, and yet, as soon as shit hits the fan and the emotional stakes get real, the cooler and more logical I become. Let’s just say, you want me by your side when the world’s falling apart – I step up, learn, and organise while others are crumbling. Whilst my response is one of almost-maladaptive disassociation (and frequently read as a clinical coldness), I also understand after all the sighs and groans and hey-I-gotta-gos that not everyone does this, and sometimes people just need some space to freak out, lash out, and deflect and, and you know, maybe even accidentally find themselves on the side of genocide because they aren’t in their right minds. Maybe, everyone just needs a minute, might just want a hug and a white lie and some reassurance that everything is going to be okay. And a little love and forgiveness when they finally come to their senses and realise that maybe they should not have access to Instagram if they’re going to… umm… you know. That.

I have talked before about how I was in various online communities during 9/11, when Americans lost their goddamn minds. Now, this is different, because as much as Americans would love to tell us otherwise, the Twin Towers were not prophecised as the site of the boss fight to end all boss fights where the son of God returns and the people who let children starve to death, pollute the planet and bomb civilians …get to go to Heaven for …some reason. But, the main point is that everyone lost it.

And there I was, final year of my politics degree with my big mouth and list of facts, to analyse the situation. To explain to a bunch of traumatised and very confused Americans who truly thought the world loved them that it was, in fact, not the case, and that this was a natural consequence of decades of shitty policy that had killed way more people than the Holocaust.

There I was, spitting the truth when all they wanted was a hug and to tell them it was going to be okay. They of course lashed out at me. And, rightly so. I then doubled down, like an arsehole, to the point where a few people that were willing to hear what I had to say said “enough”. I was the recipient of everyone’s grief, trauma and fear, and, frankly, I deserved it.

I was factually correct.

I was also wrong.

I was also never going to change anyone’s mind in that moment, because people were hurting and they weren’t looking for a lecture. They were scared, and confused, and propagandised and had been given a shock that would take them some time to process.

What’s my point? Well, for one, even if you are right, maybe you are still being an arsehole. Nobody is waving away the plight of the Palestinians. Most people are just dealing with things in different ways. Some with cold hard analysis, some with scapegoating and misdirected anger. Some have had a really rough few years and have finally snapped. Others simply just don’t know what to say, or do, or feel and so try to make people laugh.

And some want to bring about the Rapture, who we all know, if they do find themselves confronted by Christ, they come to realise they fucked around and found out, because if there is one thing Christ taught, it was to forgive and to love. Oh and all that Old Testament don’t murder and don’t lie and don’t covet thy neighbours goods and all the other inconvenient rules.

We are powerless to stop what is happening right now. There is nothing any of us can do to change the minds of the ghoulish, bloodthirsty psychopaths that run the show. But one thing we can do, is exercise our compassion equally. Try to understand that people are stupid and say stupid things and respond differently to horrible situations. We’ve had a horrible few years, and people aren’t okay, and so those of us who are able to keep it all together have a duty to forgive people who aren’t.

So what I will do is remind you of theoretical concepts like the hot-cold empathy gap and normalcy bias and fear responses, and help people behind the scenes. Because that’s what I do. And you can scream and yell and flail, because that’s what you do. But I hope, in the end, that we can practice what we preach and forgive each other, work towards peace, and understand who the real enemy is. And understand that a lot of the anger is not because you are correct, but, because you’re being an arsehole.

I’m not saying any of this to dismiss everyone’s pain and suffering. It’s…. fucking horrible. But I am sticking to just one armchair, and saying “please… just… stop.”

When everything is awful and everyone is upset, it’s all I know how to do.

I’m here if you need me to spit facts at you and do admin in the meantime.

He was the life of the party, a gifted musician and artist. Everything he tried, he would excel at, and do it effortlessly. Imagine someone like Billy Connolly… he was like that. Larger than life, a brilliant joke teller (my love of comedy didn’t come from nowhere). He should have been a comic, but comedy wasn’t an option like it is today. He was just… wired …that way. If you know, you know.

When he was sober, he’d work as a nurse. He loved the Psych ward night shift. I think he felt at home there, working the weekend nights so he couldn’t go out drinking, paid double time and a half to read a horror novel set in creepy hospitals, overseeing the craziest people in town who were currently in a blissful, drug-induced sleep. I think he felt an affinity for those who weren’t doing so great with the world, and the world not so great with them. He’d befriend those same crazies at the pub when he wasn’t sober, too. He’d go on benders and be a no-show at the hospital and disappear for days on end. And sometimes bring them home so often that I had to install a padlock on my bedroom door.

He was always about the contrasts, the incongruities, the absurd. The confusing and the painful.

Everyone loved Kev. Or, more correctly, everyone was always rooting for Kev whilst he burned through everyone’s love. My grandma always said he had nine lives, but by the end of her life, she’d given up on that too. I, of course, had a complicated relationship with Kev, because I was just like him. In every way. For better and for worse.

“Her father’s daughter”… much to the chagrin of my mother, who never forgave me for it.

Kevin had one of those cursed minds – so nimble and adept that it freaks people out and you never quite fit in, are always on the outside looking in and see things others don’t. You walk through life operating on a specific frequency, and whilst that can be a strength with the right environment, it is mostly just tremendously lonely because not many people can be bothered tuning in. And you either self destruct from the spiral of self loathing and wishing you weren’t this way, or you try to find a way to harness it and tweak your signal so that people can hear it.

And try to go in a better direction than screaming from cirrhosis because you tried to quiet it all with booze.

He was a good man, but cursed with that self-destructive streak, that I too fight every day. Thankfully not with alcohol, but definitely with self-loathing and sabotage. I feel that isolation and disconnect every day, as I try to just… pretend to be normal.

As his alcoholism got worse, he became more selfish and even mean. My grandma said that my Dad would “die roaring”, and he did.

But he also died trying.

I always remember that he tried hard, every day. On, off, on, off. He’d be sober in 6 week or 3 month stints and then something would happen and he would fall off the wagon, over and over again. He’d start painting again, get it together, and then, the other foot would drop and we’d be left with a pile of unfinished paintings, empty bottles and I’d come home to find the CDs I’d bought with the money I’d earned trying to support myself through all of this… gone because he’d pawned them.

He really tried. But sometimes the world is too big and too much and too lonely for some people, and it envelops them. I was angry about the CDs, but I also understood that he had an addiction, and it wasn’t who he was. It was who he was, but wasn’t who he was.

But even though I am like him, I was sure as shit I didn’t want to be like him.

We were close when I was younger, because we were kindred spirits, but I decided early on that I needed to go in a different direction. He always took those choices, and my refusal to enable him, as a judgement of him. That I thought I was better than him. It wasn’t. It was because I am like him, and I just didn’t want to let the world get to me and make me implode the same way he did. I didn’t want to become a massive fireball of potential that never eventuates.

Of course, now I am in the same point in my life. The same age he was when his alcoholism went from “Kev is the life of the party” to “Kev, you’re not a kid anymore”. I have made different choices, but I am still mostly a ball of failure and unfulfilled potential. I often wonder if he was wiser than me. I wonder if he knew how futile it was to try. I wonder if he knew, on some level, that we were never going to fit in, and threw it all away to spite everyone. I often wonder if surrendering to that was actually the smarter move than sitting, sober, feeling all the pain, loneliness and frustration that comes with being different. I want to self-destruct a lot, and it all feels pointless …and hoo boy would I like to drink it all away.

But then I remember that he still died trying to quit.

So maybe that is the point… to keep trying, and to die trying?

Maybe the trying is the point.

You want to know why I am voting Yes in The Voice Referendum?

Because 80% of the people affected, have asked me to. They haven’t used violence, or declared war, or fought back. They’d be well within their rights to, because of what we have, collectively, done to their people. We’ve seen some pretty brutal imagery this last week, of what happens when Imperialism and Power supersede humanity. It’s clear, especially this week, what the correct choice is. I’m not going to judge you, or call you racist for Voting No… but I am just going to ask you to think.

Think about this week. Think about all the suffering, and bloodshed, and “it’s complicated” (when they mean complex, it’s really not that complicated).

There’s been no bloodshed, no fighting back.

All Aboriginal Australia has done is ask nicely for a say in the things that affect them.

And the people who are perpetually on the wrong side of that history have asked me to Vote No.

Now, you might want to quibble about the details. The fact that it is backed cynically by the banks, corporations, and the network of professionals who do very little to help anyone on the ground and only see a payday for themselves. This is a valid criticism, and definitely enough to make me give Yes the side-eye. You can also quibble about policy details (they’re available) or Executive Powers (constitutional scholars disagree) or that you think it is racist (it isn’t, don’t be fucking daft). I get all of that. Some are valid, some are complete and utter bollocks. Some have a point but have jet fuel poured on them by opportunists who want to exploit your gaps and your doubts and lie to you about our political system.

I am not going to quibble about the details. In most cases, I will put to you that you don’t even know the details, nor care about the details, because if you did, you would realise it is fine. Our system is robust. It was designed to have the best parts of America and the UK and create something uniquely stable and …quite extraordinary. There are checks and balances at every step of the process, and the people who prey on you not knowing that are also telling you to Vote No. The information is available. Everything is out in the open. But the people who prey on you know that you can’t be arsed, because unfortunately, when designing our system, we also inherited remnants of the Empire. We not only have a system where psychopathy is rewarded, but we also left a bunch of people out when our constitution was drafted. That needs to be amended so that Australia can be made even better and stronger and more democratic than it is. And despite what culture war numpties who can’t even tell you how laws are made telling you that we are in “authoritarianism” or have “fallen”… that is simply not true.

We are at the mercy of Empire, ourselves colonised by US Imperialism with no means of escape.

But, we do need to make it better. We need to make it right. Even up against the ESG whitewashing and glomming on and culture wars being used to nudge your Votes in whatever direction suits the rich and powerful… let’s not forget: we also declared human beings to be animals and did (and do) genocide too. And I think we should probably fix that.

Despite the Liberal Party’s claims to the contrary and serving hefty doses of misdirection and fear, I know they know that they have first hand experience of how stable this country’s political system is, because they have made it their personal mission to our social democracy to shreds for the last few decades and still… haven’t succeeded against the Australian public’s innate sense of justice, a Fair Go, and love of this land and sunshine that we ALL hold dear, all enjoy, and all want to protect and serve.

I am not going to call No voters racist, but all racists Vote No. Do I have a side-eye on all the Wokewashers and yuppies and urban wankers who stand to benefit? Of course. And the beautiful thing about our country is that we get to scrutinise that and fight that. But that is not the question before me. That is a separate battle. The question before me, tomorrow, is whether I want Aboriginal People to have a say in the stuff that affects them.

I am just… sick of all this suffering, and exploitation, and talking over and for Indigenous people. I am tired of sociopaths, and psychopaths calling the shots. I am tired of opportunists and liars sowing doubt in people’s minds and keeping them in the dark and I am sick to death of Murdoch and his desire to stop you from knowing that you actually have a lot more power than you realise, because we are one of the most democratic nations on earth if you just get off your fucking arse.

We were designed to take the best parts of the US and the UK and make it our own. The No campaign represent the worst parts of the US and the UK, not the best parts.

I want us to get back to having the best parts.

I also want Indigenous Australia to have a Voice, so I don’t feel I HAVE to speak to get them heard on shit that affects them. It’s not my place, and the least I can do is use my Vote so that I can speak less and listen more.

Because they asked.

They asked nicely, when in other parts of the world people who have been treated in a similar fashion have not been so nice about it.

I am Voting Yes, because 80% of Indigenous Australia have asked me to.

I encourage you to do the same.

I’m sure it goes without saying that it’s not the event itself, but rather, 22 years of the same ridiculous behaviour, where, blissfully unaware that that the rest of the world doesn’t care (and in many cases, or even realise there is a rest of the world at all) and, like clockwork, start losing their minds over memes and wrong-think (okay, more than usual).

9/11 is almost as annoying as when they wish us a Happy Thanksgiving. Almost.

It is extra funny this year, because right wingers in the US are going through a particularly batshit phase of their usual batshit (you guessed it… more than usual), and they are the very same people who are perfectly happy for their fellow citizens starve to death, die from poverty-related illnesses and lack of health care – at the rate of roughly one 9/11 every two weeks. Oh, that’s not including COVID deaths, children, and… drum roll… US foreign policy. That number is just from poverty.

See, I was on the Internet when it first happened. It is extremely difficult to explain just how …batshit it all was.

In retrospect, sharing my thoughts about United States foreign policy and how it wasn’t entirely inconceivable that this would happen at the time was probably a bit much. Especially in the September 2001 Babies Yahoo! Group, Téa. Geez. But even despite my tonedeaf trolling of American conservative women, the reaction was still way over the top.

Americans lost their fucking minds. And rightly so. Initially. As the months rolled by, it got bigger and bigger and bigger. I was there as Americans started selectively deifying soldiers and policing everyone else’s thoughts and jokes, cry-bullied, cancelled musicians and later… passed The Patriot Act in its name.

Which, in case you aren’t clear… wasn’t good. 9/11 was a major turning point for the Internet. The original sacred cow was cynically exploited in the form of the Patriot Act, resulting in the massive overreach, and the erosion of privacy and civil liberties we see today. Oh, and it also set the stage for the ‘cancellation’ playbook we see today, like, you know… manufacturing consent for war, mass surveillance, and cancelling and smearing anyone who objects and that whole War on Terror thing, that hijacked people’s lizard brains to get them to act as hall monitors, foot-soldiers, vigilantes and assassins on behalf of anyone who wants to ‘nudge a needle’.

9/11 is the Internet’s ground zero for the deplatformings and systematic dismantling of digital rights as we know it today. So yeah, I’m gunna take the piss. You know what? I’m still kind of mad at what they did to the Internet, that had so much optimism and hope for a better world. Instead, they wrecked it, put banner ads all over it and made it absolute fucking garbage. And, because Americans Online in their Eternal September tend to have zero situational awareness (okay, more than usual), nor bother to notice the emotional toll their never-ending trauma dumping and death cult infighting takes on the rest of us, some people need to use humour to make the internet… fucking bearable. Okay, more than usual.

So, here’s my favourite 9/11 meme, sent to me by my 14 year old. El oh El.

I also mentioned that I gave birth to my daughter that day. Folks, I kinda have my own stuff going on. It was traumatic in its own way, but also, over the years, has become more painful, as I reflect on the kind of mother I hoped I’d be, and the kind of mother I ended up being. Which is not a great one. I thought I could have it all. Much like the internet being democratising and a platform for freedom of expression, that was a lie too. And so I do what I do best: make dark jokes and try to suck the poison out and make the pain at least count for something, or result in something good.

Even if it’s a dumb joke that makes people laugh for a second and breaks tension when everyone is being annoying.

So, as if the Eternal September 11 carry-on irritation isn’t enough for me at this time of year, I also have to deal with it being my estranged daughter’s birthday.

This year, it has a particular sting to it, because I also logged on to see members of the gentrified US ‘left’ who all preach ‘kindness’ and ‘compassion’ and are constantly moaning about ‘stochastic terrorism’ when it suits them … cheering because Elon Musk is estranged from his child over the gender issue.

Look, I have my issues with Musk. But, truth is, those who think they are punching up, probably think this about me too. It must be great to be able to oversimplify every issue and live in a world of good guys and bad guys, where I am a bad person who deserves it. That seems like a far less healthy way to deal with pain than humour, but who am I to judge. Shit’s complicated and people gotta do what they gotta do. But, I also know that there are people who I consider friends and political allies who also think this about me, because they refuse to understand where I am coming from. I have accepted that.

Thankfully, for me, the political isn’t always personal and I have thick skin and, gasp, priorities that don’t change depending on what mentally unwell strangers on the Internet think of me. I’ve been at this game too long for that.

Righteous cruelty.

People have a tendency to show you who they are when something bad happens to someone they don’t like. And especially when they can wrap it in an ideology that gets them off the hook and turns their worst qualities into ‘analysis’. I speak not only from my own personal experience, but for many when I say this issue of sex vs gender has ripped families apart, a lot of it having gasoline poured on it by bad actors, and the mean-girl sociopaths of Twitter/X continually cry ‘stop hitting yourself’ not because they are about social justice, or policy, because they can’t see past their ridiculous and childish clapback politics. It turns them into playground bullies, who goad, and goad and then rub salt in the wounds of everyone who has had to navigate this problem… and then hide behind their distorted version of class politics because BOOMER BAD BILLIONAIRE BAD FASCIST BAD so let me, by proxy, bully ordinary people who have experienced some of the most painful shit anyone can go through: estrangement from your child/parent as a result of manipulation by outside forces.

Or simply paying for an edit button and long tweets.

Righteous cruelty is a helluva drug.

I haven’t seen my daughter in five years – partially (and I emphasise partially) because she’d been hanging out in various online communities that were telling her that fairly common mother-teenage daughter dynamics made her a victim of abuse. Without my knowledge, my flawed assumptions that it was normal teenage girl stuff and normal I-made-mistakes-or-misread-the-situation were constantly being spun on its axis and given the worst possible interpretation, and the most extreme solutions, because I was a ‘TERF’. Which is not even true.

I have to emphasise that I am not saying it is the only reason, because, you know, I’m me, but Tumblr ‘feminism’ and fandoms poured kerosene on my far-from-perfect parenting and everything else so we weren’t given an opportunity to work through our mother-daughter stuff. Let’s just say that if the mother-daughter stuff was a plant that was in need of some TLC, those communities were definitely the glycophosphate that killed it off for good.

Since then, I have done the painful inner work, see it as it is, and I am far more aware of what is going on. I can’t go back. I messed up. But there are also entire communities dedicated to giving people terrible advice, telling children to go no contact on their “toxic” families, as a first resort and as a conflict avoidance response, rather than a last resort. I promise, I am not crying victim. I totally get it. More than most. It is something which I am most definitely an advocate for, because I have done the same with my own family. So, I might not agree with it, but I definitely respect it.)

Top of funnel.

Social media was intended to be a place where we could share, interact and create. I truly believed that. I still believe it is possible if tech can get our priorities right and some of us old schoolers remember why we do what we do. Instead, through a series of blind spots and being over a barrel with VCs who lied to us about making the world a better place – and, well capitalism doing what it does best and worst – it has instead become a weapon of mass distraction, a tool for propaganda, and a never-ending maze of radicalisation funnels known as ‘political marketing’. They blame Trump and Russia and Biden the Communist or whatever other boogeyman they can (and they certainly don’t help), but it was actually the Obama campaign that made it what it is today.

Compare the Ladder of Engagement it to the ISIS radicalisation funnel. I dare you. Oh and it also looks like a standard marketing funnel too. I have been in marketing long enough to know that most marketers aren’t evil. They’re just too stupid and have too narrow focus on ‘nudging the needle’ – sorry – doing omnichannel data-driven campaigns to drive quarterly performance indicators – to understand that what they are doing is wrong.

Social Media is designed from the ground up to promote, incentivise and elevate sociopaths and psychopaths. It even makes good people have to pretend to be, or rationalise behaving like one to succeed. I won’t do that.

I must emphasise that my work has never been about the ‘gender wars’, even if part of my motivation was trying to understand what had happened between me and my kid and try to see it from her perspective. Everyone has a point, this is an unresolved political cleavage, and honestly, if I never had to think about this internet stupidity ever again, to be honest, it would be too soon.

But unfortunately, it is also the intersection of the worst problems that have plagued the internet: platform manipulation, all the wrong incentives, cults forming through fandoms, radicalisation funnels, dark money laundering through not-for-profit organisations, engagement pods, politicians being idiots about the internet, marketers being stupid about politics, abuse by state and non-state actors and every black hat marketing tactic known to man. And people aren’t okay. Kids aren’t okay. Families aren’t okay and are being torn apart because people refuse to understand this: Cults always hide behind something real. That’s how people get duped: because cults exploit real concerns, fears, and problems. The fact the far right have co-opted this certainly doesn’t help, but there are many, many people on the left who have been called fascists for so many years now you’ve basically diluted it, now that it is an actual threat.

So, I’m a TERF, apparently. Which isn’t true. I am just a feminist. Because I happened to agree that “ROGD”, especially in young autistic girls, needed more research (and saw those that tried be harassed out of it, which to me seemed suss) and I dunno, maybe women are allowed to set boundaries in our hard fought spaces and that was in conflict with trans rights in some areas and one side was being shouted down. All of this was well before the far right in the US glommed onto it, and I didn’t know what I know now, and anybody who claims otherwise is lying. It was wild. To this day, despite seeing many who came after me drift towards the clicks and the dollars and catch terminal brain worms, I still hold those perfectly reasonable points of view. Sorry, but being born female has different experiences and disadvantages than being born male. That is a fact. Grow up.

Thankfully, after COVID poured accelerant on a lot of these problems and melted everyone’s brains, with a little more time passing, the playbook overreaching and the cycle repeating itself often enough and enough people having their particular issue or innocent question make them the worst person on earth, everyone who has managed to keep their synapses intact for the last decade sees it for what it is: propaganda and radicalisation that hijacks people’s lizard brains causing a dystopian fusion of politics and marketing campaigns. We all know that little Idiocracy playbook by now – just repeat and omit information and sling mud often enough and do it long enough to make stuff true. And if you happen to be Rupert Murdoch or Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or have a controlling share of a massive media conglomerate…. even better.

That tactic is called milieu control – an earmark of cults.

Also, basic Chomsky.

Or choice architecture.

Or… nudges.

They’re the same picture.

It’s never been about any one issue. The TERF Wars are ground zero for all of this. That is my only interest in it. Everyone who has dared to stick their neck out over it has been systematically harassed, enabled by dumb and unethical marketers, bad actors and unmanned algorithms.

It’s not a conspiracy, just powerful interests that favour this setup as it is, that catches good people in its net, because activists believe everything is about the one issue they happen to care about at the expense of all other issues. Single issue activist lizard brains, hijacked, as far as the eye and the infinite scroll can see… in order to disorient, distract and deflect. It’s a playbook that that makes Big Tobacco and Big Oil look positively amateur. Because Tobacco and Oil weren’t able to use the threat of suicide or ‘terrorism’ (sound familiar) as a threat. Pharma (who cynically refer to the ’emerging market of gender dysphoria’ in their financial documents – how’s that, socialists? Cat got your tongue? Doesn’t that make you a little suspicious? No? How do you not see the Oxy thing, and then Monsanto… how about now? How do you not see it? Good heavens.)

So, 9/11 memes.

I tried to make a point about how the original internet sacred cow that was 9/11, paved the way for the Patriot Act. The thing that was used by the US government to run roughshod over human rights, speech and privacy… much like the ‘hate speech’ laws are doing today. Any questions about these vaguely worded and heavily loopholed laws that rely on ‘trust us, bro’ when that trust has been so severely undermined in literally every previous case suddenly means you are ‘pro hate’ and ‘literal murder’.

If you object, you are a terrorist. For the love of God would you look up the Propaganda Model if you are a ‘leftist’. Please. For fuck’s sake.

So, yeah, I’m going to make fun of 9/11, to provoke the people who are currently screeching over speech, to – I dunno – not be a hypocrite, and maybe even get them remembering that time, where everyone got swept up into a cult frenzy and allowed for a lot of terrible laws in the form of the Patriot Act that actually came to bite them in the arse.

And I dunno, maybe look at your own behaviour and trauma and stop letting it be weaponised? If you oppose something, at least have your head and your facts straight and maybe cut people some fucking slack.

It’s really, really hard to hold a mirror to your own behaviour. Trust me, I know. Especially when you are in a situation where you could have done things differently and wish you could go back and can’t. I know better than anyone that facing that you might be wrong, or selfish, or not as great a parent as you thought you’d be and you can’t take any of it back. All the parenting books, brigades and deconstructionism in the world cannot help if you are unable to face your own demons and blind spots… and own it.

Own it.

Look at your behaviour when you are joining in a pile-on, or mobbing someone in their replies. Do you recognise yourself and who you wanted to be? Is this who you want to be right now? How did you get here? How did you end up a slave to dopamine, cortisol and adrenalin and just retweeting and re-blogging everything like it is a 2001 chain email whilst making everyone as miserable as you are? Going along with everything because it is easier than breaking rank or putting the work in to fully understand an issue and all its areas of grey – or worse – actually believing that your family are all domestic terrorists and rapists?

You don’t have to live that way. It’s hard to live honestly and face who you are with radical self-awareness, but it makes you bulletproof. The structural stuff can change, but it’s a slow ship to turn around. It takes generations of trial and error and setbacks and mistakes. It needs everyone who outnumbers the psychopaths and sociopaths to say ‘enough’ and work together and through our differences and cleavages and we can only do that if we know who we are, recognise our blind spots, and not let them get hijacked.

Failing a change of leadership, I tell you, we are stuck with this structural shit for a while, and for Gen X, probably for the remainder of our lives. But we can choose to not do this psychopath factory’s bidding. You can choose to not become your parents. You can choose to break the pattern and listen and learn and try harder. It won’t always work, but you can try. I am not saying you have to speak up, because of course, people have to survive, but you can choose to not be a shitty person or participate or believe the narratives that shitty people are pushing. You can not financially support certain behaviour. You can model to your 10, 100, 1000 people in your circle that you won’t treat people this way. You can not participate. You can, instead of doubling down, decide to be better from now on.

It’s okay to be a pacifist in the culture wars

You can break free of all of this stuff. You just have to see things as they are and know that there is more support than you think if you operate from a place of truth and good faith. You have to understand how your brain and its biases are used to manipulate you and get your rationalising behaviour. You can praise people when they get it right, and criticise them when they get it wrong, without turning into a fan or anti-fan.

Cults have rules for thee, not for me. So does out-grouping and scapegoating. And fascism. And polarising marketing campaigns and team sports. All of your rotten, abusive and cruel behaviour is fine, so long as it is righteous and for the right cause or team or brand. That person over there? They are a Suppressive Person (and yes, as someone who has closely studied Scientology tactics online, there are various bad actors and dark marketing agencies who use those in online communities and radicalise people, away from their families, by convincing them they are abused… parents… have a conversation about this with your kids.)

That ISIS & Al Qaeda playbook where they get vulnerable angry young people with a righteous cause to go do stuff for the sake of the cause?

That DNC and GOP engagement pod telling you to share what they tell you to share that kicks you out if you won’t?

That Not-for-Profit who has a Donor-Assisted Fund and campaigns against ‘hate’ who sends you emails saying that Elon Musk is coming to get you and your family because they included the use of the word ‘cunt’ to inflate their ‘hate speech’ numbers?

That Apple vs Samsung war?

That political cleavage between radical feminists and US neoliberal feminists?

Which has a higher body count? Oh, sorry. We’re not allowed to think about the numbers and the common enemies, lest we be securitised and branded a terrorist.

So yeah I’ll post a meme to release some of that pain and make people laugh at a 22 year old holiday where Americans act ridiculous. So what.

Be the change you want to see

And this is to the online left who still have some synapses remaining: if you’re going to lecture people about compassion, harassment and ‘hate’, I dunno, maybe model that behaviour rather than selectively Fair Game people because it is convenient to you? Maybe – just maybe – despite the painfully idiotic (and yes, fascistic) rhetoric of the right – there is also a – cult mindset in parts of the left too? Not trans people, eff off with that nonsense and start listening to each other.

Scientology says it’s about ‘self-improvement’ too – which doesn’t make everyone who supports self improvement a cult leader, and everyone who says ‘that’s a cult’ anti self-improvement or pro Psychiatry.

Consider if this is who you wanted to be. Look at yourself gloating over the suffering of others. Hiding behind an issue to justify being a bully and terrorising people online. If that’s who you wanted to be, then that’s fine, but then I want to ask why you consider yourself to be on the left? Because if there’s one thing we are supposed to do differently, it is to accommodate difference, show compassion, listen, and work with evidence. Not cool. Check yourselves, please.

You can hate on Musk all you want, but take the time to pause and understand why. “I don’t like the guy” is not a reason in a policy or discussion of an issue. I will defend where needed, and denounce where needed. I don’t live in a world of heroes and villains, black and white, and thought terminating clichés. And for the love of God, learn when someone is joking.

It’s no wonder Musk thinks he doesn’t need to pay rent, when he is so accustomed to living rent-free in everyone’s head. Personally, I am less concerned with the richest man on earth doing richest man on earth things and more concerned with you and why you are obsessed with him and using that to harass your neighbours, alienate your family and cancel your peers. What are you avoiding? Why do you want to wound others so much, especially on an issue that has cut so many, so deeply, on all sides. Yeah, sure, make it about the billionaire. But know that when you do, you are kicking people like me in the teeth too.

Maybe hurting someone like me is what you want? If that’s the case… well… what did I ever do to you?

Tweet? Disagree? Exist? Good heavens.

Did I tell some truth and suggest that you may be in a cult based on a lifetime of work and research, all the evidence and literature in this area around radicalisation funnels, internet geopolitics and policy, the history of Red Scare and anti-communism and where it leads? The ‘ladder of engagement’, Donor Assisted Funds and Political Action Committees and dark money and how corporations and the state spend tremendous resources on co-opting ‘the left’ in order to implode it from within?

Or, do I remind you of your own mother and therefore you feel like you can displace all that crap onto me? I dunno, maybe you need to work on that. Or at least, be more mindful of it and stop turning your trauma, intellectual blind spots and susceptibility to corporate messaging and authoritarianism everyone else’s problem and calling it activism. It ain’t. You’re a vessel for propaganda and your lizard brain has been hacked.

If only there were precedent for that.

Is this who you wanted to be?

Anyway, yeah so what I posted a meme. Oh no, I also pay for longer tweets and an edit button. I defended Elon Musk on a handful of issues. I, of course, deserve all of it, despite working on myself more than anyone I know. Despite simply trying to understand and analyse and help, and occasionally misreading a situation that is new and batshit. Anyone who is in the same place they were five years ago has not done enough work or is lying. I was there. They’re selling merch, not answers.

People who bully others online aren’t activists. They’re bullies who are rationalising their behaviour and calling it activism. Anonymous bullies. It’s easy to use any dumb little ad hominem attack you can find and not have to do the years of work that I have done and come out the other side a better person. It’s easy to distract, attack, insult and then keep moving the bar, all so you don’t have to face the fact that you’re behaving more like a Scientologist than an activist.

It’s hard to persuade people and change their mind.

But, if you do genuinely care about this problem I have been talking about for years, and I know there are some of you who do, maybe, at least consider that other people exist and have feelings too. Maybe consider that once in a while, you might be wrong. I am frequently wrong, self-correct, and try to get it right next time.

Fun fact: smart people actually fall into cults more because we are better at rationalising when dissonance hits. I have had to remain vigilant on that too, even being pretty much an expert in ‘online cults’. Ideology provides the perfect rationalisation for a lot of people on the left to escape themselves and their discomfort. I know. I’ve been working with annoying left-wing fucks my whole life and you get on my tits, frankly.

Beyond this… just don’t be a dick. You may not have a lot of freedoms right now, and may be feeling angry and resentful at the world and despairing at a system that is painfully, ruthlessly unfair, but you do have some agency, and sorry, but I am not letting you off the hook for being horrible to others because of some misguided anger. I’m not letting you off the hook when you say that Elon Musk’s autism or Kanye’s bipolar disorder is ‘irrelevant’ but then cry victim when it is you. I will not let you have morals of convenience without calling it out. Rules for thee, not for me. Huh.

Maybe you should do some self-improvement. Reflect. Is this who you are? Who you wanted to be? You are no different to the lunatics carrying on about 9/11 like it just happened and was the worst thing ever and justifying all sorts of terrible laws because you’re too lazy to think things through or face yourself. You are no better than Matt Walsh sending his followers to harass people for living their lives and having their own thoughts and telling us we are all broodmares.

Get it together.

I say this as someone who wishes they could go back and change things. I, for one, don’t want you to suffer. I don’t want families broken apart by politics. I don’t want misunderstandings to have gasoline poured on them because a corporation is telling you what to think. I want us to love each other, work together, and see things as they are. I want you to be consistent, based in reality and facts, and actually persuade. Not pitch a fit because you’re a little bit uncomfortable and can’t be bothered. There’s too much at stake.

And if that makes me the bad guy, so be it. We’ll see who ends up being correct.

In 2007, 2018 and… very nearly about six weeks ago.

Thankfully, this time I was in excellent hands, so “nearly died” this time is probably a tad hyperbolic, but… rule of three, etc.

The good news though, is that my tendency to be unlucky means that every so often I am reminded how lucky I am to be here.

I’ve been recovering from surgery, which was a repair of complications from the grim events of 2005, when a straightforward overnight procedure resulted in a perforation of my stomach, severe sepsis, failing organs, a lung collapse, an induced coma, my 25 year old husband with two small children being told to prepare for the possibility he would be a widower and raise those kids on his own… followed by a miraculous turnaround, a month of recovery in hospital, and several gruelling months after.

I was extremely lucky. It is still burned in my brain, waking up in the ICU with no idea what had happened. The smells, the sounds, the pain relief that barely touched the sides, the daily torture of having my back beaten like a sadistic drum roll to get the fluid out of my lungs. The nasal tubes. The no-more-than-a-few ice chips rule and begging for water after a month of nil-by-mouth, accompanied, ironically, by the feeling of drowning and gasping for air that would usually end in me violently hurling fluid out of my lungs. Being told that two weeks before I woke up to all of this, I had actually been awake for a day. I was talking and fine in the post surgical ward, only to suddenly let out such a blood curdling scream from the acid that was leaking into my organs, that I stared straight in the eyes of that same nurse, told her I was about to die, and she’d had nightmares all week… and I still, to this day, can’t remember any of it.

I remember four different surgical consultants, their faces go from grey on the day I woke up and lost my breathing tube… to laughing at my dark jokes and the colour restore to their faces once they saw I was out of the woods.

I remember calling the ICU night nurse a cunt because she told me I needed to “find a way to manage my pain better”. I remember my high school economics teacher who was now a part time PCA wheeling me to the ward. I remember swearing at the physio who would punch my back several times a day. I remember sobbing every time I heard the sound of the tea trolley, never sure if it was the tea trolley or the other horrible trolley, that contained my daily shot of heparin and blood draws that were delivered in the same spot every day for a month, whilst I begged them to stop and try somewhere else. I remember being gutted having to give my Ben Elton tickets away, but to the nurse who had the good humour and empathy to call me Starburst, and make me laugh (and then cough a lung), because she saw how humiliated I was from having diarrhoea explode all over the hospital room floor from all the antibiotics the first time I got out of bed.

I apologised to all of them. For all of it. They understood. I think they were grateful that I was here.

I remember all that… and just desperately wanting to be able to sit up, drink some water, see my babies and go outside.

In case you don’t know what started it… I had decided to get a lap band. I was struggling with my weight, and no amount of sustainable diet and exercise was helping (turns out, I had other things going on, but that’s another story). It was sold to me as straightforward. No big deal. In and out in a day and your life will be fixed. You’ll never have to worry again.

In this case, quite literally. I may never had gotten to worry again.

My life was almost taken away. Gone. Forever. Never seeing my kids again. Never living long enough to have my daughter hate me and break my heart. Never seeing my third child be born prematurely and survive and grow into a gifted guitarist and leave a pizza box behind his desk that is now forever etched in my memory as “pizza spiders”. Never going through the pain of caring for and losing my grandmother or the pain of divorce, and the messiness of life and co-parenting.

Never having had my heart break into a million pieces, fuck up, move across the country like an idiot, learn from my mistakes and then return only to meet the love of my life and actually be happy.

It could have all been gone. All of it. The good, the bad and the ugly. I could have never had to worry again.

Had I not woken up, I would never have learned about my ex-husband’s despairing Blogspot post to the internet about my situation asking for well-wishes, the outpouring of love and support from readers and friends around the world, the meals sent to him from my friends in Los Angeles and presents from the UK and Canada. Waking up to an outpouring of love from all those who had read my stories that I shared on the Internet, and made me feel such gratitude and love for the ability to know every single one of my friends in the ugly beige box.

Those who had hated me for years, flooded my comments with harassment, and hunted me in packs for sport just fell away. I just felt loved.

I would never have learned that all that writing on the Internet would be misunderstood and hurt my kids as they grew up, nor that sharing all your ‘secrets’ on the internet was a ticking time-bomb, and probably not very good for a healthy relationship. Had I not woken up in 2005 – something that was 85% likely because I found myself in the 0.1% of unlucky people – I would just be a relic, on an old abandoned website from 2005 that may or may not have made it into the Archives.

I would not have posted my first Facebook post. No Twitter. No public humiliation on Twitter. No inside out shirt on the news. None of it. I would not exist outside the minds of a couple of people who wondered whatever happened to that young woman who called everyone cunts on the Internet.

I’m just grateful to be here.

In 2018, I visited a surgeon again because I was having all sorts of stomach problems. I was again gaining weight with no answers, and being fobbed off, told to exercise and do paleo – the usual shit. But, I persisted, found a GP who would actually listen to me, and got a referral to a surgeon. I was obviously traumatised from the incidents of 2005, and so had just resigned myself to being fat and miserable forever, and nobody ever believing me, that I ate healthy and did a reasonable amount of exercise. I would land in the Emergency Department frequently with what they would call “gastritis”, but, because I was fat and had chest pain (and had had an ablation on my heart years earlier for a congenital heart problem), they always assumed it was a heart attack, put the leads on, then gave me a lignocaine/antacid combo (the “Pink Lady”), a shrug, recommend a diet that I was already on, and send me on my way.

Of course, after I finally got a referral to a bariatric surgeon to check on things, I was promptly talked into having a gastric sleeve. Which had a twofold benefit: 1) I would lose all this weight I was piling on with no explanation and 2) he would be able to repair the giant diverticulum that had burst out of my stomach and the mess in my diaphragm from the lung collapse as a result of the sepsis, that not a single Emergency Department in Sydney or Perth had bothered to check. If a single tube had gone down my throat any of the times I presented with gastritis, I would have been spared all sorts of suffering. And weight gain. And misery. And have more Superannuation. Oh, yes, I paid for it with some of my already-limited-because-I-am-self-employed-and-live-invoice-to-invoice-haha-savings retirement.

Even though I was just happy to be here, of course. I was also really pissed.

So, ten years later, that [supposedly] gets repaired. Good as new, or so I thought. I lose a chunk of weight. Yippee. I feel like shit, but who cares, right? At least I won’t get told to go on the diet I have been on since I was 18 years old.

Hey, I am just be grateful to be here.

But, nine months later, I try to die again. I develop recurrent gallstones (note: you can get gallstones even without a gall bladder with extreme weight loss). Which takes 3 visits to the Emergency Department to diagnose even though the first visit showed my liver was failing, and by the time it is, I am, yet again, within 48 hours of not being on this planet. I’m again, lucky. but find myself again part of the unlucky 1%, and the ERCP to remove the gallstones perforates my bile duct and I develop pancreatitis. The worst pain I have ever experienced (or, rather, remember experiencing… see aforementioned nightmare-inducing blood curdling screams) and months of recovery. I still live with chronic pancreatitis, but yet again, I just feel lucky and bloody grateful to be here.

I am just grateful to be here. Because if I hadn’t made it, again, I would have left this earth as just an owner of a digital agency, an influencer in the business community, a totally respectable adult, happily married and life was going great. I would have died still afraid of video, hating the sound of my voice, keeping my concerns about the shift in tech to myself, and …making money. Yay.

I would have died keeping my opinions and thoughts to myself. I would have died… respectable. Sensible. At the end of my redemption arc where I had overcome all the drama, bad luck and fuck ups of the years before, and learned from it, and was doing better. I had met and married the love of my life and had my happy ending. I had lost all that weight. I had a good business and happy kids and that would have been that.

I would have died… respectably. That moment in time was respectable, but …sanitised. A version of me that was removed from my distant past of struggle, turmoil and snark. I was loved, having made enough of a mark, and made just enough mistakes to be interesting, but I would still just be a blip in most people’s memories: that lady who once went viral for a day and whose name you need to copy and paste because you can’t figure out how to put the accent over the E. Slightly more memorable on LinkedIn. I’d be more memorable than 2005, and would at least pop up in people’s Facebook Memories every so often, alongside the handful of friends on my account that hadn’t been so lucky over the years.

I was just grateful to be here.

But, to be honest, I didn’t want to die respectably. I wanted to die having contributed something meaningful. To make all my bad luck, crazy stories and borrowed time count for something. I was supposed to be on borrowed time in 2005, actually live …and I had lost my way.

So, I decided to start speaking up more. I decided to start being honest about my concerns, and fears, find that love again, tell more stories, and have more fun – even if I had to overcome fears (and I did), even if it cost me my respectability (and it did). Even if it made me a target for harassment (and it did). Even if I was shadow-banned, mass-reported, head-fucked and sidelined (and I was). Even if it made me lose everything I had worked for (and it did). Because I was here.

I want to live. I want to do more than be just a corporate blip. I desperately missed the people in the beige box and the beige box had become a sleeker and much more expensive Space Grey box and that box was now 16 hour work days and a tax deductible box of burnout.

Fast forward to over 600 hours of videos, a million still-unpublished words and easily another million unwritten ones, over three hundred thousand hours dedicated to speaking up, speaking out, researching, figuring out how best to make a difference… with very little to show for it. No money. Loads of daily stress and confusion as to why everyone is being so horrible on this thing that is supposed to promote love and connection, not misery and division. Why are you all being so horrible?

I’m just grateful to be here, guys.

Pushing through confusion, fear, never-ending harassment, mass reporting by people who aren’t as happy as I am to be here, and now, ultimately, tumbleweeds from the algofucking as I use my borrowed time to try and love the Internet back in the way that the Internet showed love to me, and should I find all of this frozen in time, I at least feel like I did something.

Fast forward to six weeks ago. I again found out that my insides were a complete mess. I was again, one of the unlucky 1%. I’d been suffering from severe reflux and stomach pain, to the point where I was regurgitating in my sleep at least once a week, and aspirated acid into my lungs on more than one occasion, for about 3 years. Unlucky me. Lucky I’m a tummy sleeper, or I might not have made it.

Phew, am I grateful to be here.

The surgeon from 2018 that had claimed to fix the diverticulum, my diaphragm and the structural issues with my stomach had actually, in fact, just given me a gastric sleeve without doing any of the repairs. He’d also inserted a mesh into my diaphragm, which temporarily made it possible to sneeze without pain, however, the adhesions around it had caused a herniation and drift, causing a stomach obstruction.

My health insurer had messed up when we switched to save some money on Premiums, so I was having to re-do our waiting period again. And, because it started from a bariatric procedure, it was not covered by the public hospital system.

It’s been an extremely expensive, debilitating few years. But, I finally got there.

I knew roughly what to expect going in, and so, yet again, I found myself on the bariatric route of having my bowel re-routed into what was remaining of my stomach, and about 8 hours of unplanned surgical repair to all the adhesions and mess. It should have been 45 minutes. I didn’t know this until the night after the surgery when my surgeon came in, in his scrubs, and said “man, you messed up my schedule today. Your insides are the worst I have ever seen”. Then he left. I laughed. I was on drugs. It was hilarious.

He was so direct, but with confidence that somehow never comes across as arrogance. And I was high, and at least it wasn’t fucking pancreatitis or a coma.

I am just grateful to be here.

And aside from the blood-curdling screams of the worst, most painful shit of all time two weeks later (that I definitely remember), I have come through pretty well. All things considered.

Anyway, In our follow up appointment two weeks ago, assuming it was all fairy routine, yet again I hear that all-too-familiar phrase: “Téa, you have no idea how incredibly lucky you are”.

“It was going well, obviously a little challenging as we discussed… nothing I haven’t seen before. But then, out of the blue, there was a wandering piece of mesh from the diaphragm. A less capable surgeon might not have seen it. It was pretty routine, but then it got very dangerous, very quickly, but thankfully you were in capable hands. Even if you messed up my schedule”.

Okay it wasn’t just me being high. He is hilarious.

Right now, I am stressed, because I am supposed to be writing an essay. I have been dumping on myself all week because for some reason I am crippled with Academic Essay Due Date Anxiety that comes from having ADHD. I am stressed out about lots of things: work, study, money, life and the meaning of what I do. Feeling useless. Feeling unappreciated. Feeling resentful that others make loads of money doing far less work. Doing work that is stressful and not appreciated. Unable to really promote myself in any meaningful way because I had to go and make myself un-respectable to pretty much everyone.

Right now, I am stressed, but I am still just… grateful to be here.

But also, it occurs to me that if I had, yet again, not made it through, this time would have been different. I was living honestly. I know what is important. I still have all my friends in the Space Grey box, even though they tell me they can’t see me anymore from all the mass reporting. Twitter and Facebook probably won’t even tell anyone I am gone. Most people might not even notice. Some may even cheer, because the Internet is still full of people who hunt in packs for sport, and who don’t like me, and that’s okay. Because even though I know what matters in life – my kids, being able to drink water, and to go outside and feel loved – I also know that I am doing something that has some chance of having an impact one day. Maybe. If I make it.

I write about some grim shit sometimes. I attack the powerful, and the powerful treat me with disdain because they have nothing I want. I just want water, to see my kids, to love and be loved, and not die respectably.

That pisses people off, and I sometimes make myself a target in all the wrong ways. But it comes from a place of wanting everything to be better. It comes from a place of wanting everyone to be better and do better, and not take their lives for granted. I want them to have what I have. To stop being so miserable, sweating the small things, being horrible to people who may not be here tomorrow, or being so crippled by alienation, fear and apathy that you may find yourself on the unlucky side of the greatest thing on earth: living a life.

I know that when I finally stop being the luckiest unlucky person on earth, at some point, everything will just …stop. All of this dumb writing and my dumb videos and stupid ideas and overthinking everything and pain and regret and fuckups… everything I do will just freeze in a moment in time and stay there. I am acutely aware that there will be a last blog post. A last Tweet. A last stream. A last kiss goodnight. People I won’t meet. People I won’t reach or inspire to do better or think more clearly or help understand that they’re actually really lucky, and should be a little more grateful to be here. People that won’t be born and, if I am really, really lucky, my kids will outlive me and have experiences and adventures I won’t get to see.

This will all move on. Everything moves on. But I am here. I am doing my best to make every moment in time, every typo and misspoken word in every moment in time, every joke, every stupid tweet or exchange with an internet dickhead… try to be something that captures who I was when I was here. Warts and all. The full story of who Téa was in the database in the sky. Because there have been so many times when that might not have been possible. There have been so many times where I have been on the receiving end of so much shit – partly due to my own mistakes (whether it be a surgery, as a parent, in friendships, on my blog, or in tweets), but partly, because I am just… alive.

I’m living.

I’m taking in the sun. I get to drink water (albeit with some difficulty) and be outdoors. I get to laugh with two of my kids. I get more days with the love of my life, loving deeply and being loved in return. Stressing out too much, freaking out too much, yelling, fucking up, being a dickhead, burning bridges, messing with lights far too much for someone with so few YouTube subscribers, not having a perfectly clean house, going on tangents, annoying people, attracting critics, fearing the people who will find a way to nitpick someone’s choices and blame them for it, such as choosing to have an elective surgery that has resulted in 17 years of suffering, or confusing possessiveness with love and having children with the wrong person, or struggling with my weight, or my crooked teeth, or the grey roots, or my rapidly ageing face and not being a natural performer or comfortable on camera, or speaking too much about certain topics, or being too boring, or too lippy, or insubordinate or impolite. Or being late on all my bills and uni assignments, or taking way too long to get to the point, or telling bullies and zealots to “fuck off” and that they are free to waste their time on this planet, but they don’t get to waste mine.

Because I am grateful to be here.

And I also know that those people are living their lives, the best way they know how, and they will have to live with themselves and leave this earth too, at some point, frozen in time. And I want that frozen moment to be good for their legacy too, and for them to change course and go on a redemption arc of their own. They are living their life.

And I am living mine. And I know that when it comes down to it, if you have lived a good life, and made peace with how you live and who you are… all of that fades away and you only know love.

And frankly, I am just grateful to be here. I wish more of you could be too.

Currently laughing at all the companies saying that mass layoffs will occur “due to AI”.

It’s the “due to COVID” of 2023.

Does anyone seriously believe this shit? Are we supposed to believe that economics is a law of nature and not ideological, and that these supposedly “good and kind” corporations just want to help? Are we expected to believe that they are forced to make impossible decisions and that being God is just so hard, you guys. And what about AI? Oh no, we’ll be forced to fire people. Alas! Alack! Give me a break.

Folks:

It’s a choice.

Stop buying the “difficult decision” shite. It wasn’t a difficult decision, it was a callous one, borne from self-interest, cowardice and a refusal to stand up for what’s right.

They’re cutting you for their shareholders, nothing else. Not a pandemic (in which most increased profits and used public funds on share buybacks), not on the supply chain (many have artificially limited supply to gouge people), AI (it is dog shit), a gust of wind, or a Twitter mob…

It’s a choice to put profits first, people second. Stop defending it.

Stop making excuses, and take some “personal responsibility”, which is what those who make the world so much worse than it needs to be tell us to do, daily.

Corporations choose to put prices up/gouge us, and fire people rather than absorb it, even though they can afford to. I’m not talking about SMEs, who feel if they remain quiet on this shit they might end up a billion dollar corporation (you won’t). I’m talking about corporations with billions of dollars in profit that was gained off the back of human suffering.

Companies who are all on board with United Colors of Bennetton billboards, but still keep people in bonded labour, sweat shop conditions and under surveillance. And they appoint the corporate cops, HR, to tell that YOU have a choice.

Well, so do they.

They choose to manipulate supply. They choose to cause inflation by putting up prices to keep their margins intact whilst you struggle to pay your bills, and small business’ overheads explode.

Then, because of a lifetime of propaganda that told you economics is a law of physics, you sit there, defending it, like it isn’t a choice.

Pay attention: the one time they need to do actual corporate social responsibility, and maybe not put their prices up, or keep staff on, or help people out: they don’t.

Remember this next time you see some HR asshole talking about sustainability, social justice or whatever. It’s a cloak that distracts you from the fact we are ruled by psychopaths.

They could absorb the costs. They don’t. The costs trickle down to you.

And they use whatever veneer they can to wriggle out of that fact.

Replacing people with AI is not a random act of nature that just happens out of the blue and is outside people’s control. There is not an invisible hand of a vengeful God, sending a flood of AI to drown all the sinners and their families, or a swarm of locusts to lobby politicians to cut their taxes, or a massive bush fire telling everyone there aren’t enough homes for everyone. The CEO is not trying to build an Ark to save you all from a vengeful God.

It is a choice. And they choose profit over people.

It really is that simple. Stop overcomplicating it. Stop defending it like it isn’t a conscious decision by individuals with agency. Stop pretending that corporations give a shit about you, the world, social causes or anything.

And worse, stop bloody defending it.

The only thing that trickles down is the suffering, the starvation, and the exploitation. And you keep making excuses for it.

It is not inevitable. It is man-made and you let them get away with it.

For crying out loud. Take some personal responsibility.

The pay was good. It was a permanent full time position. I could make a real difference to people’s lives. It felt really good to be in The Meritocracy.

From as young as I can remember, I had a goal to go to University. I was blessed with the prodigy gene, but cursed with having a prodigy gene in a family for whom education was pointless, and educated people a threat. University was my ticket out. I worked really hard, living on my own from 15, juggling shitty cash jobs, no parents and rent on my roach-ridden flat to overcome the odds. By the time I finished high school, I’d already overcome more than my fair share, and that ‘pointless’ degree was something I valued more than anything in this world. It showed that The Meritocracy existed. Asterisk.

Despite the deck being firmly stacked against me, and having settled into a marriage and motherhood with someone who also didn’t think I needed an education, I graduated in 2002 with a shitty Arts degree, in political science, economics and legal studies.

I’d worked harder for that three year degree than most people do for a PhD, but I got there.

Post graduation, following another three years of shitty casual and contract jobs in child protection, recruitment, retail, hospitality… my first real, proper full time job offer had arrived.

I think its important to give you that context, because this was not just an ordinary job offer to me. It was representative of everything I had worked for.

Security! Finally! An upwardly mobile middle class life from my hard work, sacrifice, and education! In the area I trained in!

Proper merit. Oh, man, it’s true! You can make a difference if you just work hard. Asterisk.

My life was on track. Asterisk.

The Internet was not a real job.

In the decade leading up to this moment, “the Internet” was something I did alongside my actual goals. I played with friends from around the world who lived inside the ugly beige box in my living room. I fucked around, occasionally found out, I made people laugh, I helped people out and learned new skills in the process, paid in exposure, laughter, self-righteousness, occasional cash payments and many, many free tickets and even more merch.

I loved being creative and learning new things. I became good at community management. My policy training and political skills had made me a good and fairly reasonable moderator, so even when I wasn’t an official mod, people would come to me to settle disputes.

Over time I was appointed to run a bunch of communities, but it wasn’t a job, it was just something I had fun doing. I liked solving problems, making a difference and helping people out. If people asked for my advice, or needed help setting something up, I’d just do it for them, or show them how and explain it.

Over time I became known for that. Okay, that, and my writing. Two sides of myself that are in perpetual conflict: competent, serious me; and smart-alec funny writer me. Both smart. Both important. In perpetual conflict, even to this day.

People look at me like I am crazy when I say this, but there are two things you need to grasp about the Internet prior to around 2003. First, the internet was where you put your secrets. Second, it was not even a job, let alone a career or degree. You may laugh at me when I say that I wrote on the Internet to my imaginary friends under my real name with the expectation that nobody would see it. It seems ridiculous. But in most cases, if you were one of the un-famous on the Internet, this was a fair expectation to have. The idea of becoming famous on the Internet, especially under your real name, was also not a thing. And, the odds of your family or people you knew in real life knowing what you said about them on the Internet was close to zero. Asterisk.

It is hard to explain unless you were there. Only a small number of people you knew were on the Internet, and even fewer of them knew how to find things. This all famously came to a head, of course, in 2002, when Heather Armstrong was fired from her job for telling the Internet about her co-workers. You just don’t get it, guys. That shit was wild. You mean… someone… can… read this? Like… from the real world? People can Google you even if you don’t submit your site to a directory? You can not only get famous from the Internet …everyone can read what you wrote?

Well, shiiiiiiiiiit.

Oh, I’d better say sh*t in case my boss or sister can see. F*ck. Real Asterisk*

That is a real thing that happened, kids. Gen Y didn’t invent cancel culture, you dumb motherfuckers. My generation openly trash talked our colleagues, families and kids with abandon thinking we wouldn’t get caught. It’s our Generation’s Woodstock – calling our infant children cunts and bitching about Tracy from HR microwaving fish and having no idea they were going to read it at some point. Every word. You’re welcome. And fuck you, Tracy. You still suck.

Un-famous people could write whatever they wanted. Fuck, shit, cunt. None of this f**k to avoid algorithms crap. The internet was asterisk free. Asterisk.

You must also remember that “the Internet” was not a real job for anyone other than a handful of nerds who were either computer programmers, network engineers or hardware tinkerers. Heather happened to be a graphic designer who was employed in early tech, surrounded by more people than your average person and therefore way more likely to be found out, and even she had no idea what was coming.

She was one of the more savvy people, whilst most designers were barely grappling with the idea that websites were not paper and you couldn’t lay it out like a magazine, (and no, whilst your 7pt Helvetica grey on dark grey text does create a nice aesthetic on your $20,000 Mac, you know, people can’t read it and it doesn’t work on PCs and resolutions over 1024 and no, pitching a fit won’t change that… yeesh).

Web Design (and especially digital more broadly as its own vocation) just… wasn’t a thing in its own right. Unless you were blessed with being in the inner circle in the dot-com boom and one of the chosen few, “webmasters” were mostly volunteers, or, if you were paid for it, consisted of programmers who were shit at design yet lacked the self-awareness to know it, or graphic designers who didn’t understand programming (or programmers), and the occasional Flash animator who just did their own thing in between gallery openings. Fun Times. People like me just made stuff on the Internet, had fun with all of the tools, wrote with abandon, slagged off our neighbours in lengthy manifestos over minor transgressions, and we had absolutely no idea if anyone was reading it, or who. This was before people kept stats. Asterisk.

For the ten years before I went pro, if a programmer or graphic designer asked me a question, I just helped them out. Sometimes they’d offer me money, but it didn’t really matter. It wasn’t my job. Digital was separate from real life. It wasn’t my job. It wasn’t a real job. The Internet was Not Real Life. Asterisk. And it certainly wasn’t a viable business unless you were a programmer or graphic designer, or one of the chosen few in Silicon Valley, and I was neither of those. I’d of course done a few internships at graphic design shops and printers, and wrote for some street mags, but there was nothing that resembled being a “digital strategist” or User Experience or Internet-whateverthefuck I am now, until many – many – years later. Asterisk.

I was a policy person. I would work in policy roles, write lots of things, change the world and then maybe one day run for office or start a Think Tank. Pfft… Internet? That’s just entertainment and nerds, man. I just like making things and writing jokes and ranting for fun. I’m somebody on there, and I am free to be me, and people like me for who I am. Asterisk.

But, I was good at it, and so over time people kept asking me to do stuff for them in exchange for money because people kept telling their friends about me and my willingness to help with… whatever. The engineers would ask me to design for them (ugh) and the graphic designers would ask me to code their designs for them (ugh). I even learned how to smile behind gritted teeth when people would “design” things and ask me to be the “technical person” – a skill I would hone over the years and still use to this day. For a decade, it was just a thing I did, got a little cash from, and acquired skills as I went along. All whilst writing shit about everything and everyone on the Internet with a plan to have a real career and a real job and have this creative outlet where I was free to be myself, without asterisks in my swear words. Asterisk.

Then, in 2005, I was offered that job. I was 28 weeks pregnant with pre-eclampsia, on bed rest and had been forced to take leave from my current short term contract position. I was already finding it difficult being the first Mum to drop my kid off and the last to pick her up, and I was expecting another kid. My contract was ending and I was about to have a baby with no maternity leave, and I had been applying for jobs, knowing it was pretty futile.

I had also just been paid $500US to do a website for someone. That was nice.

Then I was offered the job, but I’d have to go back to work when my son was 6 weeks old. I faced a turning point.

So, I declined that job and decided to go pro with web stuff. Asterisk. It was now my full time business. Asterisk. I remember at the time, saying “if this stops being fun, I’ll quit and go back to policy work”. Asterisk.

My whole life and career that didn’t exist, and made up as I went along, was built on a premise that I was having fun, that I was helping people and that I could go back to my ‘real job’ if it didn’t work out. Turns out, that premise had a whole lot of fine print and asterisks that, had I known – I would not have signed up. I just wanted to help people, and have work-life balance and maybe make a difference. I have had to face the fact that I not only bought these lies myself, I also sold it to everyone else.

I bought the promise. And, what a promise it was.

Win-win! The Internet is a meritocracy where you get back what you put in. Asterisk. Win-win. Innovation. Freedom. Merit. Agency. Choice. Here, just sign the Terms of Service. Sure, what you get back will be that we insist you insert asterisks on your words and thoughts and connections, but you’re totally free. It’s fine. By checking this box, you agree to the Terms of Service.

Asterisk.

By using our products and services, you consent to your data being collected and used for various purposes, including sharing with our partners and to make your experience better and improve our products, of course. We’re all about the open internet, and of course we value your privacy. Just read 19 pages of our EULA written in 7pt grey on grey Helvetica and tell us you consent. I mean, we know you don’t read it because we measure every click and mouse over and scroll to improve our product, but the main thing is… you checked the box. Don’t worry, it’ll hold up in court because we have unlimited resources and you have none. And we’ll make it so you have to come to California to fight it. Deal?

We know you don’t read the Terms of Service, but, you checked the box. We’re off the hook. We’re the good guys. This is a totally free and fair contract where you are free to create and connect. Would a guy wearing jeans and sneakers ever lie to you like those men in the suits? Of course not. We’re wearing sneakers, you see.

We’re just here to help. Create a movement. Tell us how you’re feeling and what you’re up to every minute of the day. Be authentic. Slag off Grandma. Write fanfiction that is a thinly disguised plot to massacre everyone who chomps raw carrots in the office. Connect with your friends and family. Send grandma pictures of your kids and write down your thoughts. Don’t worry, we won’t tell grandma. Asterisk.

Connect. That’s what you gotta do. Answer the questions in the box and connect. Asterisk asterisk asterisk. The brands come to you now, and meet you where you’re at. Asterisk asterisk asterisk. Find more clients who need help with their websites and don’t you know, Word of Mouth is the most powerful form of marketing? Asterisk.

Express yourself freely and share stories with each other. Warts and all. If you have an idea and you put it in the box that is asking you how your day went, you will likely find a way to build an audience and the brands will come to you. Branded content. Win-win. I mean, we own it, and you don’t get paid, but… we’re sure you’ll be right. You’ll find paying customers.

Speak your mind. No, not like that. Express yourself. No, not like that.

Oh, just a heads up: the Coke Brand Manager gave us a call and isn’t very happy with your views on sugar. You can say anything you want and connect with anyone you want, just don’t mention Coke. And please, it’s okay to be authentic, in a branding “we’d like to buy the world a Coke” sense, but not…like… authentic authentic. Also, please put asterisks in your swearing so that people aren’t offended by your swearing. Kthx.

Don’t you know, the rules changed 3 hours ago? Got a problem with it? Delete your account. By continuing to use our service, you agree to our Terms of Service, lack of support, and politicians and intelligence agencies harvesting of your behavioural data from quizzes, presented as harmless fun.

You have a choice. Comply, or delete your account. The account that we promised would be free, allow you to connect, and find an audience, and actively encouraged you to abandon your website for? Well, if you don’t like it, you can leave. Good luck in court. Hahaha we’ll exhaust your resources and then settle so there’s no precedent that says it’s an unconscionable contract. What are you gunna do? Create something elsewhere? Connect elsewhere? Innovate harder if you have a problem. Start your own platform or something. Hope you have good lawyers.

You dumb m*therf*ckers. Haha. You’re our b*tch.

I’d like to invest in your app. Asterisk. Just build that MVP first and hand it over. Asterisk. Sign this NDA. Asterisk. Work with this incubator. Asterisk. Don’t worry, it’s your IP and we won’t steal it and cut you out and give it to a man we think might be more suitable as a Founder. Asterisk. If you work for us for free, we’ll help you later. Asterisk. Come work for us to help us fix our shit. Asterisk. Start your own Agency. Asterisk. Retainers. Asterisk. Help me with my SEO. Asterisk. Send me an invoice, I’ll definitely pay you. Asterisk asterisk Asterisk. 15 years of Asterisk after Asterisk piled up and eventually there was 50 pages of fine print to every one-page brochure.

Try to make your own thing? Well, you can do whatever you want. Asterisk. Don’t think about going back to policy work, because the stuff you were encouraged to write on the internet is now a burn book against you. Don’t complain about it, or say anything about it, or you’ll have every troll farm in town mass reporting you for years, limiting your reach. But by all means, be authentic, grow your influence, find an audience. Asterisk. Asterisk. Asterisk.

Needless to say, I backed the wrong horse. I fell for a scam with a whole bunch of fine print. And as the fine print got larger, and I had to face the fact that I had not only been scammed but was also the scammer… I had to face that it was not only no longer fun, but the programmers who are shit designers and even worse at reading humans are now in charge. The people with $20,000 Macs pitching a fit over aesthetic were now in charge, and the people like me, who had enabled them, had been exploited and left behind. Furthermore, I am no longer able to grow an audience with my “authenticity” and “candour”, because algorithms and Tracy from HR now decide who gets a job, or builds an audience, or makes a living. Unfortunately, now, because I have spent so many years calling people cunts for fun on the internet, that I can’t even go back to a real job. Turns out, I sacrificed it all for a career that didn’t exist.

I sure had fun, though. Asterisk.

F*cken c*nts.

* actual asterisk: I actually found this out in 2001, because I worked in a computer store and had been blogging about being pregnant with my daughter and not telling anyone. My boss said “congratulations” as I walked in the following afternoon. So I found out earlier. Still…shiiiiiiit. And no, I never asterisked my swearing. Fuck that shit. Asterisk people are the worst. Swear or don’t swear. Shit or get off the pot, fuckhead.

This is the first year I haven’t written anything* for #iwd, because, frankly, I am more concerned with the growing fascism/totalism coming out of America, and with all the nonsense spouted by Corporate HR and Marketing ladies on International Women’s Day becoming a big part of that, well, it makes me instantly suspicious.

For the first year in many years, I am not interested, nor wanting to participate in International Women’s Day. I am far more interested in everyone seeing the real threat right now: one that affects everyone and needs to be taken very seriously and with great urgency: the rise of totalitarianism in the United States.

Watching so many apparent-lefties run interference for all of this is deeply, deeply upsetting. Your ‘corporate partnerships’, your ESG buzzwords, your ‘synergy’ and jibber-jabbering on made-up, nothing-concepts that mean nothing and do even less. Surely you’re not actually falling for this? Where the fuck did you go? History is on repeat, and I am watching my supposedly-progressive peers drift into the banality of evil and tell everyone they disagree with to eat cake. This stuff is literally fascism. It’s plain as day. And it is bipartisan. Like, what the fuck.

Oh, that’s right, you’re out of that whole historical materialism thing now. That’s for poor people and teenagers. You’ve matured. You’re wise. You’ve carved a nice little gig for yourself disappearing so far up the arse of the Military-Industrial complex, I can only see your Manolos.

I mean who cares about Blackrock, Raytheon and Vanguard so long as they sponsor your morning tea, fund your ‘research’ and meet ESG targets? Nestlé, the company who said that water should not be a human right and those who think it is are ‘extremists’, has donated free bottled water for your #IWD goody bags. You’re alright, though. You won’t make a call to your mates who work there on behalf of those without clean water, because that might make things uncomfortable at your next brunch.

You definitely won’t conscientiously object yourself. You wouldn’t want to be negative or unprofessional.

Nespresso is B certified. You’ve done your bit. Successful campaign! A job well done.

I don’t know about you, but I could not be less concerned with the plight of the female half of the 1% right now and their sycophants. Especially those who see human suffering as a career opportunity and as fucking “content”.

Lean Out from #iwd. These women who post “what feminism means to me” do not care about you. I care about you. All of you. Even when you kick me in the teeth to make yourself feel better about your role in all of this. But I want you to know, ordinary person doing your best in this shitty system, will always be a mere supporting character in their Instagram Feed. You are a token to be pulled out whenever there is resistance to their egregious acts of exploitation, pollution, manipulation and corruption, so they can make ordinary people think they care about the plight of those icky bag ladies they step over on the street.

They pull you out, ordinary person who does their best, to lie to the younger impressionable women who haven’t figured it out yet. You are a woman whose stories they appropriate and shoulders they step on to further themselves, only to pull the ladder up behind them when they get there. Don’t be their billboard. Be honest with those young women about what truly awaits them. Do them the kindness of figuring it out earlier than you did.

Not sure if you know this, but this year, they are telling young impressionable women, much like they did displaced and confused young men a few years back, to “Learn to Code”. Back then, it was called a ‘linguistic dog whistle‘. Now, four years after #metoo and #timesup where those men were cast as misogynists and racists, they are saying it to the rest of us, whilst our lives and material conditions get exponentially worse.

They’re encouraging young women to go into cybersecurity, where those young women will be taught that they are fighting terrorism and disinformation. Not that they are being used as mules to silence and securitize striking workers, target whistleblowers and journalists, and censor all dissidents and spy on all the everyday people who are just doing their best, lest they step out of line – both domestically and overseas.

I know you know what I am saying is correct, even if you don’t like the way I am saying it. You’re working more hours than ever, with nothing left, you can barely afford electricity or housing, and your kids are still traumatised from the last few years. You’re starting to wonder what the point is, and why you bothered listening to them at all.

You’re watching everyone barely keep it together and can’t tell what is true anymore, after years of gaslighting by a corrupt corporate media that does their bidding. You’re working too much, so you don’t have time to check if what they’re saying is true, and even if you tried, that information is wiped off the internet because of ‘disinformation’. You see all of it, it feels too big, so you switch off, and numb yourself with endless 10-second clips of rich kids dancing. I get it.

I know you know I am right, because I am one of you. A former-working class woman who turned her back on my people because I thought those rich ladies would by my allies if I Learned to Code. Now we can’t even afford the cake they tell us to eat. Learn to Code. Linguistic dogwhistle, indeed.

They will use empty slogans every year to make you think you have a shot and that things might change. I swallowed all that shit too. I ‘learned to code’ in the 90s. I have been ‘coding’ and ‘a woman in tech’ for three decades. At no point was I told that it was also conditional on me shutting up, and going along with their bullshit, until I found out the hard way. It is. I won’t.

Know, though, that they will dangle outliers (who sold their souls and 70% of their business) to tell you that you, too, can ‘have it all’. Many of them even genuinely believe it, because they’re just comfortable enough/not smart enough/compliant enough to not feel the full brunt of institutional power that will come down on any woman like a tonne of bricks for speaking out about real structural issues.

…yet.

To the young working class women who still buy all this crap, I want you to know they will use your goodwill, dreams, hope and kindness as a weapon, but also as a mechanism of control so that you comply just long enough to get to your 50s and see it is all a load of lies. They kick the can down the road until you either run out of fight, are old enough to be invisible, or have enough stuff to lose. Thankfully, for you I have some fight left, nothing to lose, and don’t give a fuck if I am invisible.

Please don’t get distracted by aesthetics. You know that’s what it is. You see it and live it every day. I know you do. Even if you can’t bring yourself to care about others, look at how it is for you, and then think about how hard it is for those who earn less, or don’t have a mortgage, or rely on gig work. Pay attention to the things you are told, and then compare it with what you see and feel.

Look at the poverty and abuse of power around you, whilst everyone pretends some imaginary intangible threat is to blame. Look at the wars, destruction and fear and who benefits. Ignore corporate pinkwashing, Wokewashing, Rainbow-washing and greenwashing. Tell ESG and DEI grifters to go fuck themselves and tell them to donate to (or volunteer at a Food Bank) …or pay their goddamn taxes… or pay a living wage and stop union-busting behind Inclusive veneers one one hand, and distracting everyone from that with anti-Woke outrage on the other.

It’s all lies. You know it.

The United States is descending into fascism. The same pattern as Italy (yes, I said Italy), and at minimum is totalistic. No big deal. People can’t afford a roof, can’t afford food, are dying from diseases of despair… and these same people are pushing us into World War 3. And, none of the #leanin ladies give a crap. If they cared, they’d tell their ESG mates at Blackrock to stop inflating the housing market. If they cared, they would feed people and get them clean water. If they cared, they would tell their mates at Raytheon to knock it off.

They don’t.

They don’t care, and HR are their cops on the beat.

But if you must get your IWD fix, you can read last year’s post. I have more important crap to focus on.

#paytheprice

*Oh look I did write something for #iwd2023. I meant in advance.

In the early days, even though I liked Ben Folds Five okay enough I guess, at 17 I was way more into the girl rock: Alanis Morisette, Lisa Loeb, No Doubt…

…

Okay, look, it’s a 90s thing.

See, unlike Gen Z with their mashups, cross-genres and ironic ukulele-over-techno placement, if you were in high school in the 90s, you could not simply like music. You either liked Top 40, R&B and Hip-Hop OR Nirvana and Pearl Jam OR Ben Folds Five and Jeff Buckley. You had to choose.

It was high stakes. The radio stations played specific playlists and the station you listened to determined who your friends were. Serious business.

Bootlegs and mix tapes gave you social status among peers. A high quality, ad-free recording of a song from your Top 40 of choice was both art and science. You couldn’t risk changing stations, because you might miss the song, or even worse, miss the beginning and have a bad recording for a whole week. The shame.

The radio station had tremendous influence over your identity. It determined whether you watched Rage or Video Hits. Whether you spent your limited funds on Triple J’s Hot 100, Smash Hits or Top Hits. Whether you went to Sanity at the mall, or took the bus to 78 Records in the city. It determined which magazines you bought for posters, and most importantly, the Sophie’s Choice of which cassettes you’d gotten for Christmas you’d be sticky taping so you could record your favourite songs from the Top 40 Countdown.

Who you listened to and became a fan of was a big decision. We had to pay for it. With money.

It was a 90’s thing, kids. Your playlist was a commitment. We even listened to full albums. Cough. Fucking hell Zoomers, get it together.

Basically, music in the 90s was kind of what online political media is today. Fandoms. Market segments as identity. Religious wars over dumb shit, even though everyone is fighting over the same American commercial music. Coke vs Pepsi. Both really bad for you and, ultimately, neither give a fuck about anything but nudging the needle for an extra 1% market share. You’re not allowed to just like good music.

You can’t simply be a political scientist (fun story) and measure and observe behaviour and appreciate democracy and love doing good policy work. You must be in a fandom, it must consume you, and the main way you show your love and appreciation is by hating on the Goths, who kind of have a point but are super annoying.

Okay, that’s kind of fair. Everyone dunks on the goths. They’re right to do so.

White noise and monkey farts

If you don’t know, my career in digital started out as a fan, and for the first decade, didn’t really feel like a proper job. I was on the Internet very early, and some of the first communities I fell into were “online street teams”, email lists and forums. I participated, enthusiastically and with oh so much cringe, but over time I built up credibility as a moderator, mediator, and both fixer (and occasional stoker) of conflict. I learned to handle tension in a forum the same way a standup comic handles tension in a room – release here, tighten there, let it figure itself out, intervene there, bomb, learn, adapt and keep it all ticking along so that everyone has a good time.

My ‘career’ in digital started by moderating (and eventually running) Lisa Loeb’s fan forum. That community was a breeding ground for developing skills. Understanding how people interact online, as I graduated from running a fan guitar tab fan website, to running the community, to designing the entire website, to a small amount of fame writing too-cerebral rant-comic essays specifically designed to goad American conservatives, to what became a quarter-century career in digital strategy, design and … whatever this thing is I do now, where I am basically shouted at and attacked by troll farms and mass report scripts. It’s fun. The internet turned out great.

So great.

Working with Lisa and a few other artists and comedians over the years, and being, first and foremost, an advocate for fans (and later, users), I would push hard for them to actually use their own forums. I’d nag them to put out unfinished music more frequently, and go direct. Years before the True Fans Principle went mainstream and the marketing gurus all moved in on my Internet, I was pushing this stuff. LinkArtist was the name of my business. Linking Artists with Fans and I was a link artist. Get it? Cringe.

It was a hard sell at the time. Being in Australia, and being somewhat of an anti-marketer didn’t help. People were also still embedded in the “use the Internet to leverage a record deal” mindset. Even as MySpace started to break artists, the focus was still on getting the attention of A&R reps and signed by the Big Four. I wanted artists to be free to connect with fans and go direct. In 2007, I even prototyped a similar version of what is now Spotify (except it was also an indie label where artists got 95%), but when I went to secure seed funding, I was told nobody would stream music. Being condescended to in this way was a theme that would emerge frequently in my always-5-years-too-early-to-make-money-from-it career. But oh well.

When talking about this, I would always use Ben Folds as as example. Again, this may seem odd in 2023, but there was a time where people only put out polished and finished stuff from a studio and nothing else. You didn’t know about their day, and most definitely not the minutiae. You didn’t hear demos or work in progress. You only saw what was in the magazines and heard what was on the radio station, and even as late as 2010, even the most internet-savvy artists were only using their websites to post about their appearances in traditional media.

Lisa was sometimes hard to convince, but generally open-minded, and I learned a lot. One of the coolest experiences I ever had was receiving a bunch of Lisa’s reels, music videos and every imaginable appearance in a package for me to digitally encode and upload to YouTube. I was a fan first, always, and I wanted to share all I could with the other fans.

Trying to persuade artists to put demos out online, or present an unpolished, more intimate version of themselves for their fans and going direct… well…. that was a hard sell. Especially to any signed artists who were more private and measured, and had a carefully curated image for radio, TV, and Smash Hits magazine. Also, artists were far more dependent on infrastructure provided to them by a label – eCommerce, marketing, PR, merch… that stuff was expensive, time-consuming and technically difficult (usually custom) to implement. And, also… record label contracts and lawyers. Yikes.

But, I still pushed them wherever I could.

This is an actual thing I said once:

“You don’t get it. Fans will buy white noise and monkey farts if it has your name on it“.

Enter Ben Fucking Folds.

Like I said (good heavens, this post is almost as long as 2020), with Ben, I started out as a casual fan. Ben Folds Five was my boyfriend-then-husband’s thing, and I was along for the ride. I, of course, went to every show. Loved them. There is even a bootleg of him doing Song for the Dumped in a Minor Key floating around the Internet, and because the guy who recorded it turned out to be sitting in front of me, I am now “goofy laugh girl” till the end of time. Yes, there are cover songs and cringey bits all over the Internet of me and yes, I have a demo album because of course I do because I had a computer and a microphone and play a bunch of instruments and have an ear for arrangements, and, no, you can’t.

(There was one weird week where one of them was popping off on Napster in Japan, though. I don’t understand it either. What a weird fucking life I have. Crash Test Dummy through and through. Or in this case, goddamn Mr Sparkle.)

There was always something odd about my Folds ‘fandom’. It always felt kind of …sacred. Like, he was just my bro. Having worked and been acquainted with varying flavours of celebrity over the years, I don’t tend to get star struck or get hit with the fan bug. I like to consider myself fairly immune to parasocial feelings. It’s just not my disposition to put people on pedestals. Especially ones they don’t ask for and can’t ever live up to.

But, much like I’ve had an uncanny ability to show up and be in the right place at the right time when [admittedly much fewer] people need me, over the years (up until the great Gentrification of the Internet post-2016), he’s ended up being that for me.

It boggles the mind to think that it is one of the most stable things in my life. For 25 years, Ben has been in my life, with absolutely zero idea who I am. He’s been there through babies, ugly divorces, deaths, illness and …pandemics. When my daughter was born on September 10, 2001 and America went bonkers, there he was with an album. When I was getting divorced and grieving my grandmother’s death, there was an album (this is where my ex-husband decided he wasn’t a fan anymore, because Way to Normal was a pretty angry divorce album, hence the joke that I got Ben in the divorce). When I was grieving my father’s death, there was an album. When I was returning, tail between my legs, from Sydney, having severely miscalculated a relationship’s chances… there was an album. When I met my new husband, Ben was branching out and growing and so was I, and there…. was an album.

To put someone on a pedestal and to be a Superfan is to be blind to the fact that they are a human. Humans are flawed. We fuck up. We try harder. And it seems that, for some reason, this person who has no idea who the fuck I am, really, yet seemed super human, super flawed and yet wise… was someone I looked to for guidance.

North Star.

Professionally, he was also an artist I would highlight as an example of putting out Demos on iTunes. He was one of the first artists to adapt in this way. He would do fake albums that would show up on Napster and Limewire. He got it, and I would nag people to death to follow suit and find different ways of earning income outside touring. Not only because touring is gruelling and sometimes unsustainable as you get older, but because you already have hungry fans online that will give you money if you just show up. It’s also good, you know, on the off-chance that, say, you couldn’t do a tour anymore.

Because of his focus, flexibility and always uncanny timing, over the years I have taken it somewhat for granted that Ben would show up when I needed him to. Despite knowing I am one of a million identical faces who blend together and all feel the same way, it is still a weirdly sacred thing. Right place, right time, right words, right key and I could feel instantly better. It’s cringe as fuck, and parasocial as shit. Shut up.

I try to be like that for others. I’m not perfect, and often a complete asshole, but generally my goal has been to make myself a crash test dummy and report back. Sometimes, I miscalculate and go flying into a wall. And, sometimes I fly into a wall and have forgotten my seatbelt and it fucks me up. But, I learn from it, adapt, and for the most part I know how to manage tension and release, know pressure points and release valves and where people may need to see someone else rant about how they’re feeling so they can feel some relief.

Over the years I have somewhat accidentally created this larger-than-life persona (which, in current year, has come to bite me in the arse, but …alas). Using myself and my tiny experiences as scaffolding for a bigger point, or using myself as the target of the joke to I can talk about an uncomfortable subject, created a version of me that leans into extreme vulnerability that others can maybe relate to and feel less alone.

I also do that to process my own emotions. I tap the keyboard and feelings come out. Sometimes accidentally and mostly in first draft. I do nothing but unfinished thoughts, unpolished work, incomplete answers. Literally millions of words. I put out demos, white noise and monkey farts so that others can maybe understand how they feel.

Folds is for me what I have been in my little world in varying small ways – tapping the keyboard to make the feelings come out, poking something that looks a bit uncomfortable and seeing what happens next. And every time I need some comfort, Folds shows up to help me process my sperged-up inarticulated emotions and helps me find words for how I feel.

2020.

At the beginning of the pandemic, like many, Ben found himself stranded in Sydney in the middle of a tour. He had to cancel a bunch of dates, including Perth, and, well… you all know by now that a whole bunch of shit went down.

Everyone was confused, scared, and trying to adapt to a new normal that we really had no template for. Most freaked out, some made way too much sourdough, some cleared the supermarket shelves, some tried desperately to micromanage every aspect of something that scared the shit out of them. And, you know, culture wars culture warred because that’s what the culture war does and it just wouldn’t be a poorly managed global pandemic with no universal healthcare and economic inequality without somehow making it all about the trans.

Me, native internet person, felt like I needed to help. Somehow. I offered to admin a bunch of Facebook groups to manage the varying trauma responses and tribal wars that were threatening to implode everywhere. A few COVID groups had exploded into 100k members within a week, with admins who had absolutely no idea what to do or how to manage it. Fan communities were going ballistic and shattering in two over George Floyd. America was losing it and it was fast becoming everyone else’s problem.

I offered as much free advice as I could give to anyone who needed it. I hung out on Twitter, trying my best to try and keep people thinking straight. Which, of course, failed. My attempts to get people thinking straight and managing tension and release and meet them where they were at and try to pull them back, well that completely blew up in my face, and I found myself on the shitty end of all of it.

I had no template for that, either, because I was a Pied Piper and my instrument had been taken away.

The closest experience I could recall was when 9/11 happened and Americans lost their minds on every internet forum. It was insane. Funnily enough, Ben Folds was there for me then, too. So, I tried to show up in the same way, just being there and trying my best to help within my skillset. As someone who had been trying to diagnose all this fandoms-gone-wrong-shit that was already about to implode pre-pandemic, well, it did. And… I failed.

But, everyone failed. Tone-deaf celebrities. Community Managers. Brands. Politicians. Media. Beloved Authors. Tech companies. We watched everyone who was supposed to be in charge completely drop the ball, abandon us all and many their principles, and leave us to our own devices, because they had no fucking idea what to do either. I sure didn’t. And whilst I came out relatively unscathed (still haven’t had COVID…), professionally, I failed. I dropped the ball, I misjudged so many things, and am still trying to crawl back and get my flute back.

It sucked.

But there he was.

Again.

Whilst everyone else was scrambling to figure out how to use tech (if only they’d taken my advice), the man who I always used as an example of new ways to do the music business, who would show up when I needed him, without fail… did it again.

Stuck in Sydney, with no belongings, a tiny apartment, a cancelled tour and an uncertain future, he started live streaming on YouTube. He didn’t start any shit. He didn’t mouth off. He didn’t make it about him. He just… showed up and started playing.

Like clockwork.

Obviously I have been a Patron for many years, so watching him do this was no real surprise. I was just… proud of him for being Ben. As I have said, I tend not to ‘fan’ out on people (this post excepted), and I like to be in the background and quietly appreciate the fuck out of people without making things weird. Or, having the misfortune of being attached with any of the dumb hyperbolic internet performance art that is ‘brand tealou’.

But even in the face of everyone being weird, and everyone wanting to claim Ben Folds for their Fandom whilst they were collectively losing their shit and punching in any direction that would land, he just got to work. He showed up. We even had the odd exchange where I checked in, and one time completely overstepped, by kicking his arse and telling him he was being an asshole.

But, he showed up. He listened. He took the time to connect and keep people as sane as he could in those moments, and, much like I have tried to do on the ground, even with all my stuff taken away, I showed up as best I could to meet people where they were at, and do what I could.

I even had to be the asshole, too, sometimes. It sucks.

He did writing exercises where we would take headlines and turn them into songs, mostly so that he could make himself write an album when the world had absolutely no idea how they felt, and were all banging the keyboard and making feelings come out 24/7. I still have half-written essays from that time. I was trying to help, but also suffering (both figurative and literal) paralysis, and it was all just… too much.

People who were not super online were suddenly all super online, and people like me who were trying to help, and explain what was happening, and give people advice on how to keep their communities from imploding… were suddenly in the cross-fire between Coke, Pepsi, Big Juice, Cottees and letterbox drops from the Cult of Harvey Fresh. Being neutral was not an option and if you were, you were being punched in the face, kicked in the rear, and, even worse in my case, violently fucked in the arse by algorithms for doing absolutely nothing wrong except finding myself on the wrong side of a mass report script.

But, Ben was there.

And this week, the first song of the new album I had the privilege of witnessing come to fruition, is released. A song, that takes a moment in time, and in true Ben fashion, humbly understates and yet entirely captures how we all feel. An album that will be a time capsule for a time where I won’t forget who showed up and who didn’t. An album that has one track on it about QAnon shit that I called him an asshole for, but I know he didn’t mean it that way and was just trying to help with no template.

I could have just tweeted a link to this new song, and believe it or not this started as that Tweet and it appears to have spilled out of me. But a tweet isn’t enough. To you, it’s just another song on a streaming service among millions of other songs with ironic ukuleles and confusing mash-ups. And now, it is more likely to show up on 94.5 than Triple J. But, like always, he was there. I was there. Our little community of not-Nirvanas and not-Goths and not-Woke and not-MAGA and not-Coke and not-Pepsi and simply fans of Ben Folds, figured out a way to put aside our differences and just like music, and somehow keep it all together. Ben showed up, which helped me to show up for others at a time when everyone else was letting their fans down and had no idea what to do. He showed up when our leaders didn’t, and the media failed us, and traumatised a generation in a way that we are still trying to unpack.

He showed up, and he chatted, and he played through 25 years of memories, life events and intense emotions that in some way have always had Ben Folds show up in them. He will be humble about that, understated, and always glib, but he will always show up.

This is no different.

Thanks, old man. PS. You’re a fucking asshole. We love you.

Here’s the album (edit: I no longer use Spotify. Should have invested in my app, huh…

What Matters Most on YouTube Music

Twitter is full of stupid, loud, entitled, angry and entitled Millennials who are mad at Boomers. Facebook is full of stupid, loud, angry and entitled Boomers who are mad at Millennials. LinkedIn has both: stupid and angry Boomers and Millennials who, whilst yelling at each other on Twitter and Facebook, are also on LinkedIn, where they’re all forced to behave, because they have to co-exist in meat space. With sexy results.

Gen X, all but forgotten, just hang and laugh at the stupid, angry chaos, because we hate both Millennials and Boomers and see that they’re ultimately the same agents and defenders of the status quo and are only in a fight to the death to run it. (Gen Z are off doing fuck knows, but entertain Gen X with their zero fucks).

Where other social platforms have a slight glimmer of sympathy, and pay lip service to, the working class and the disadvantaged, LinkedIn’s mission is clear: you are capital’s bitch, and if you want to eat, you’ve gotta play along. It’s… refreshingly honest.

Every day on LinkedIn, you see a rich kid who is winning awards for their “achievements” for doing the bare minimum. Hustle-bros who scam people, live with their parents, and call it “merit”. Woke Billionaires telling us that they really do super care about inequality, because look at my beard and jeans, not my actions. And definitely don’t look under the hood of my business. Look over there.

Don’t forget that you, too, can make a difference like me, if you just slept a bit less and just decided to be less poor, more male, and went to an Ivy League University and stopped being so negative. Poor people are so negative all the time. Why are you complaining so much? Don’t you know I’m a Forbes 30 Under 30 winner and why haven’t you looked at my jeans?

LinkedIn is capitalism’s most brazen bullshit, in all its glory, on tap. I love it. Everyone mostly existing in a structure that none of us want, but all of us perpetuate, because it’s just …easier. Ironically, LinkedIn is more human than any other platform, and culminates in a fascinating phenomenon that I call “capitalist cope”: thinking you can capitalism your way out of problems that are caused by capitalism by simply ignoring it.

LinkedIn is like jumping out of a plane, face first and then asking gravity to maybe be a little less negative as it pulls you toward the ground at 100 miles an hour. It’s funny. And delusional.

LinkedIn is a 24/7 capitalist cope machine, mask off, for all to see, and Human Resources professionals, brand managers and venture capitalists are here to run interference on the off chance you might look at all of it, contrast with your ever-increasing cost of living, lack of power and sleep deprivation and say “yeah, what a load of shit”, and start demanding a slightly fairer deal. Duh, it’s a free market. Don’t you understand basic economics? Like… supply and demand?

Without getting too boring and engaging in dumb quibbles (and so we can just move on so I get to my actual point) “Capitalism” is simply an approach to a free market, not the free market. In both socialism and capitalism, you still have a market, but they function differently, and prioritise different things. You still exchange goods and services and have money and iPhones and food and colourful clothes that aren’t hessian sacks. Socialists (well, the ones who know what they’re talking about and aren’t annoying), simply use “capitalism” to describe laissez-faire economics.

Socialism simply suggests that maybe capitalists have a slightly (cough) utopian view of human nature and history, and unregulated markets have had a tendency to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few. And, perhaps people are more than just units of production on par with dirt, water and wood.

Under capitalism, society orients towards profit, and because it tends to accumulate, we ultimately end up serving the interests of those who accumulate the most capital (because we all have to survive). So, ultimately we design a society that encourages exploitation. Capitalism, *drum roll* prioritises capital over social. You know, people-are-human-beings-not-robots, and tend to have a breaking point and heads of the wealthy tend to spontaneously fall off every hundred years or so if you keep treating everyone like shit.

Capitalism and socialism are in direct conflict with each other, because each system prioritises one class’ interests over the other and those interests don’t align. So, ultimately we either function to serve the 1% or we function to serve everybody. Get it? Can we move on past first year Pol Sci? I’m bored.

Which is why I find it really odd when I see otherwise-good people who work in Human Resources, or Brand Marketing, or their adjacent peers, posting on LinkedIn how they “love what they do”. I understand that there is a widespread fundamental misunderstanding of what capitalism is, does, how it behaves and how it always ends badly when you look at historical trends. I know that people simply don’t think about it. Mostly because socialists tend to be really fucking annoying. But… think about it now for a sec. Go on.

What is the real role/function of what you do?

When you say you “love” what you do, what does that mean? Do you ever think about the bigger picture? I get it… the small wins are good in a shitty world. But what makes it shitty? You like hanging with people and helping them. So do I. So why not do that for everyone? I also completely understand that you’ve gotta eat and pay your bills somehow, and you’re just trying to get by. But an awful lot of people seem to “love” what they do, when their job’s very function is something they should at least feel a little shame over.

I get it. I worked in marketing and thought I could nibble at the edges of this stuff for two decades. I tolerated it. But I never loved it. I saw it as necessary to live, until eventually I could no longer reconcile that I was contributing to an industry that was doing harm. I never “loved” what I did. I was ashamed of it, and even today, any job that I may take, I see as a concession based on my need to survive.

I used to joke that if I were more attractive I’d choose sex work over marketing, because at least that is an honest transaction …and you get to charge more for being fucked in the arse.

But, moving on.

You are allowed to see jobs as necessary, without “loving what you do”, or lying to yourself and others. It’s okay to admit that you need a job for money and would rather have time to write or paint. Geez. At least charge more for anal.

What is your real function here?

Zoom out.

For example, HR’s entire premise is built on the idea that people are resources to be extracted for profit by corporations, and are a “problem” to be “managed” if they step out of line. HR’s job is to extract as much labour from that “resource” as possible. Human beings are no different to the ground, air and water, and we all know how much corporations respect natural resources.

Just think about your role in it and what your primary function is. For one second. You don’t have to don a Che Guevara t-shirt and wear a beret and write slam poetry. I promise. Just think for a sec.

You “love what you do”?! Why? How?

HR’s function is to facilitate an egregious imbalance of power, whilst providing the illusion that the “resource” has a say in it. Those who are especially good at it make an employee think their exploitation is their own idea. You know, win-win.

Try saying no, or challenge this in any way and see how friendly HR is then. Try telling them that the way people are treated when applying for jobs is disrespectful, dehumanising and not at all okay for anyone who claims to be in the people business. Try telling them that the fact they say they love what they do when they know this is the stuff they do to people, actually makes them a terrible human being.

Try telling Human Resources that they are a salve, and actually run interference for an abusive, exploitative and dehumanising system. Point out that they call people Human Fucking Resources.

Watch them scurry, or shift in their seat, or deflect and call people like me negative, for asking for just one second to consider that maybe their ‘brand values’ are a little bit bullshit. Try seeing through the Woke veneers or corporate jargon and ESG platitudes. Try saying no to RUOK? Day or Pride Month because your employer has no legal right to ask about your private life and they know it. They’re friendly. They’re family. They care. They just want to accommodate you.

It’s definitely not bonded labour, because that would be bad and only bad guys force people to do labour in exchange for little to no pay to pay their debts. You are free to leave at any time. It’s not as if you will starve if you say no to it or anything.

Free market. Choice. Team Player. RUOK?

Unfortunately, modern government’s function is to (ideally) protect people from the excesses of this, and mostly to ensure people don’t get angry and start doing the numbers or reading the fine print and start getting ideas about changing things. The government’s job is to mediate between the interests of the wealthy and the natural and human resources the wealthy totally earned through hard work, like the air, water, earth and people in it. They earned it. Why would they pay taxes? Taxes are for socialists who hate the free market and don’t understand basic economics like supply and demand, you see.

Of course, governments also end up stuck with their own HR Departments, because we are now in a situation where corporations have claimed everyone’s resources, and therefore governments are starved out from tax avoidance, corporate lawyers and privately-owned public goods.

Government staff also have rent to pay and fast fashion to buy, and we all know that austerity is the only acceptable way to run a society. So, don’t go getting ideas, like that if we made it so people didn’t starve for not signing a predatory contract where they rented themselves out in exchange for shelter, food and water that is owned by a handful of people (which is definitely not slavery, that would be bad), HR would have far less power over the “resources” and unable to extract as much labour. We can’t have that.

Marketing (and by extension Media)’s function is to make inelastic goods and services out of elastic ones, and emotionally manipulate us to sell things at a higher price and therefore a higher margin. If they’re really super extra good at this, they can put a B badge on it like Nespresso, or make suffragette M&Ms.

The Media’s job is to tell you it is all fine that we’re in a cycle of indentured servitude of being harvested for profit, treated not as human beings but as ingredients in a rainbow cake on RUOK Day. Ignore the wars. What are you, a Russian bot?

I suppose I can understand why people don’t think too deeply about it. It’s painful to think you might be hurting people, unless, of course, you’re a psychopath. And I know that most people are just trying to get by. But this is why I want you to at least consider before you say you “love what you do”. Do you really? Do you really love this? Why?

I don’t. I hate that I am stuck here. I hate that I am surrounded by people who are part of a system that benefits so few, and hurts so many, and they have to find a way to love it. I understand that it feels overwhelming, but as much as we try to quibble over economic theory, and semantics and engage in a massive capitalism cope, it really is as simple as “do you prioritise people over profit?”.

Thinking too deeply about why you do what you do and who we are serving, and owning it, requires us to take stock and look at ourselves honestly. That can be really difficult, especially when the system just feels so large and the solutions are inconvenient.

But, if there’s one thing I hope it’s that people can at least be more conscious about it, and not be deceived by a system that makes all of this seem like our own idea. And for those who reject what I am saying here, I want you to examine what your priorities truly are, and to stop saying that you love people, or that you are in the “people business”. The line between bonded labour and trafficking and how capitalism functions at its core is simply a matter of semantics and branding, at the end of the day. Some are just better at lying to themselves than others.

It’s easier to pretend, or theorise, or quibble, or rationalise with ideological semantics than it is to look at who, ultimately, we are serving, why we are serving them (and yes, survival is a valid reason, up to a point), what our real values are, and how we might change the system that has been built from the ground up to benefit those who can rationalise putting profit over people.

I actually love people, which is why I am saying this. And I put my money where my mouth is. Zoom out.

So, I tested an AI-generated content detection tool. You know, because I like to test these things and see how they can be misused by bad actors and report back on exploits…

The tool correctly identified AI written text in a test essay I generated.

Good.

However, it also said that all my other articles, that I definitely wrote, in my unstructured and unique very-Téa rhetorical style, were also AI-generated.

I mean yeah, I am kinda like the boss fight for the Matrix and I am very talented at writing fast and good and stuff, but I distinctly remember writing it.

I really hope people don’t start relying on these tools like they do “reputation scores” in HR, to avoid doing any real thinking.

Yikes.

As someone who has watched people rely far too much on social media data (which is wrong, doesn’t accurately represent how people interact and is easily exploited/gamed), or tech that is really, really stupid and doesn’t understand context, strategy, intent, irony, or any of it…

My concern isn’t AI tools, but humans having far too much faith in them, when they are easily gamed.

My concern is how the powerful will use these tools recklessly, take them on face value, and wield them as a weapon and justify it because “the tools said so”.

I get that these shiny tools help you to browse TikTok for longer every day, but you need to know that the data is bad. Bad decisions have been made because of platform manipulation, arbitrary biased algorithms, human failures and bad actors… and the lazy among us can do incredible harm to innocent people, by forming policy based on bad sentiment analysis data, bad content strategy ideas because tools told them that XYZ was popular/trending (even though it is astroturfed and everyone else is censored/quiet), and making really unethical and insane hiring decisions based on stupid tools like Brand Yourself, where the mere mention of politics can put you in the “high risk” category – yes – I’m a POLITICAL SCIENTIST who deradicalises people by meeting them where they’re at so they don’t go further and if you talk to me for two minutes you’d hire me on the spot, you effing nitwit.

Tread carefully. And maybe – just maybe – do the actual work of talking to people, listening to people, paying attention and learning a craft.

That said, I know the data cult will data cult. And they will continue to make terrible decisions and drive us into the ground because of it.

Sit back, enjoy the show, get back to basics and learn an actual skill that doesn’t involve a bunch of predesigned dashboards, spreadsheets and corporate wank.

You cannot replace an experienced, competent human and you most certainly will never attract them if you use these tools to filter them out. You’ll just get more mediocrity. More laziness. No creativity.

Best of luck with that. I happen to be on team human, clever, competent and creative, and I am not threatened by any of it because of those things.

Have a great day.