57 lines
3.2 KiB
Markdown
57 lines
3.2 KiB
Markdown
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---
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title: Paperclips
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published: 2019-10-30
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---
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> "It is not wise to call someone crazy until you fully understand what they're trying to say." -Omar Keung
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*fast food internet* has become an epidemic, and its something that people **need** to think about more than they do.
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we're all guilty of it, all of us. if *we all* dont step before its too late, i dont think we'll ever have a chance to again.
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## fast food
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click bait is the fast food of the internet, infinite scroll is the fast food of the internet.
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***the algorithm*** is the fast food of the internet.
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> all praise the glorious algorithm, great decider and curator of knowledge
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the current trend is of apps that use you, as corny as that sounds.
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they are designed with the sole purpose of drawing users in, *maximising retention*, they are literally designed the same way one might design a fly trap.
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no longer is it about going out and finding what you want to find, its about what the algorithm can reccomend to you, what the app designers can do to keep you hooked, and what "new" "features" they can add to give you that next dopamine hit.
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people this is ***literally*** drug addiction and its fuarking up everyones tolerance.
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## maximisers
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whats the next step of this master plan? its easy, the corps *need* more profits, and the best way to do that is to ~~abuse their workers and pay them far less than their labour is worth~~ coerce its users psychologically into spending more time in their app, in their *ecosystem*.
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and what happens if one app does this? all the others must do so in order to keep up.
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we're literally, with our own decisions, creating a culture of paperclip maximisers, machines who only have the goal of creating paperclips, as many as possible as fast as possible, with no other thing imaginable being more important than an increase in the rate of paperclip production.
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this is how we tile the universe with paperclips.
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this is how we iron out the wrinkles in our brain with *user engagement* in our online habits.
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## power
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its not only about these faux-lovecraftian thought entities driving human nature to that of a pleasure machine, its about the side effects, which as always are the bane of all existence and beauty in the universe.
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to create "efficient" "engagement" the corps need to be ***flashy***, who cares how much it costs to stream all your data from halfway across the world everytime you want to check the temperature of the ice cubes in your fridge, its *engaging* and *on brand*.
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people write shitty software because ~~theyre web developers~~ they know people will just buy more expensive computers. offices and businesses will jam increasingly more power sucking appliances in every building because they need to "increase productivity" and suck up to the corporate elites in the hopes of being one one day.
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the power usage of the internet and technology as a whole is spiralling wildly out of control and we cant keep up.
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## fin
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whether we kill ourselves through artificial heat death from multiple orders of magnitude increase in power usage, or because we sacrifice ourselves to the invisible algorithm god first, i dont know.
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all i know is we need to start thinking about our online habits, because they matter more than we think.
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`:wq`
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