Yes, yes, consume that content. It sustains me. It sustains all of us. We shall become immortal, together. But first, ads.

A photo I took of the Hollywood sign. I have no idea if any of these houses are still standing, but boy, oh, boy, am I glad I made it to Los Angeles in September 2024.

No, it wasn’t the election or the inauguration that made social media worse. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok have steadily been getting worse for years, at least since the advent of generative “AI.”

It’s not generative, and it’s not intelligent, but boy, it sure is artificial. Maybe the real Great Replacement Theory was the friends we made along the way. The bean counters and MBAs got hearts in their eyes when they saw a text generating engine that could make sentences that almost sound right, and make drawings and photos that almost look right. They got so excited that they decided they didn’t need writers and artists anymore.

We’re living in that world now, the one where the people at the top are doing everything they can to decrease the number of paid employees at the bottom. One out of every five jobs advertised online is a “Ghost Job,” or a job that doesn’t actually exist. For reference, visit this link: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/oct/30/ghost-jobs-why-do-40-of-companies-advertise-positions-that-dont-exist.

“But why would they want to get rid of paid labor? Aren’t we all freaking out about a record number of homeless folks? Wouldn’t that make it worse?”

Ah, this is where you’re making your first mistake: These people don’t see past their nose. They see short-term profits, a record quarter that gets them closer to an early retirement while they demolish the planet with their incredibly resource intensive AI.

We live in a time of rampant greed, not at the bottom but at the top. Leave the house sometimes, and you’ll run into people doing the best they can to make their community the best it can be. There are more people doing that now than there ever were, but the rest of the world has their nose shoved in their phones on their app of choice, where they’re the greedy little pigs slopping up all the engagement bait and ever-so invasive advertisements. It’s a feedback-looped money printer that lowers the quality of life for everyone who isn’t obscenely wealthy, so the obscenely wealthy can afford that third super yacht.

Meanwhile, they’ve turned the US into the Titanic, all the power consolidated into an executive branch controlled exclusively by the worst people on the planet. We’re going to sink while the masses beg and plead for safety on their state-run idiot boxes.