Nobody wants junk mail clogging up their inbox. To stop the tide of trash piling up there’s the handy click here to unsubscribe. How’s that working out? This isn’t an ad for a new app that filters the glut of garbage clogging up your inbox. I’m not trying to sell you another useless security program. We may as well rip out our eyes to permanently avoid seeing unsolicited email ads. It’s impossible to get rid of unwanted spammy telemarketers and sleazy targeted sales pitches. They know what you like, love, and hate. Or do they? I get robocalls all the time about stuff I don’t give a shit about.
No, I don’t need to pay down my student loan or donate to the fraternal order of police. Our lives are splayed open like a book of flesh. Your table of contents spilling out on the screen in HD. Privacy is a luxury item. We were compromised the same day we clicked our first text, email, Twitter, Instagram, GPS directions, or ordered our first pizza delivery online. They got us by the scrawny hairs. Your first Amazon purchase started an irreversible chain reaction avalanche of data intel compiled instantly into a mega database somewhere in space or in the basement of some weirdo government analytics firm. And it’s anal the way information is gathered, harvested, dissected and tailored to fit your personal file. But they got it wrong. They don’t get you. The real flesh and blood individual that cancels out the 1’s & O’s. Not the lonely one that follows anyone and buys anything.
I prefer the days of door-to-door salesmen. The Fuller Brush man. The encyclopedia hawkers. The rag man. Christ, god forbid, even the Jehovah’s Witnesses. At least there was some human interaction connection there. You could engage in polite conversation or slam the door and kindly decline. In the case of the Watchtower magazine church ladies, you could get creative and tell them you’re Satan and very hungry for love. They’d scram, making a beeline back to the church to pray for your possessed soul.
Cold impersonal emails do nothing, and offer less to anyone who falls for the crap. A photo op at the donut shop to post on all your social media simultaneously in a new kind of solicitation. I shop here and I eat there. Any recommendations for this or that Next Big Thing. It says a lot about the you that you want them to see. The photo selfie is a new creature. A common species selling ourselves with our selfies. There are no returns or deposits. No one’s buying it. You can’t give it away at the foot of Broadway. Some guy named Fuzzy Cupola wants you to join him on LinkedIn. An 18-year-old wants to share their naked photos, with you exclusively. Bubba wants you to forward his message of hope to 12 other friends who in turn will do the same.
Alexa refuses to talk with me. I had a brief affair with Siri and a nice chat with Cortana and her sidekick Google. With those googly eyes.
Ssshhh! They’re listening to us. Recording our conversations to use against us when the shit hits the fan. The walls have ears and the eyes are everywhere. So let them have their fun. As it all crumbles. Let the watchers keep watching. We have nothing to hide from the searchers. We’ll never run from the seekers. What we yearn for, our every desire is but a voice command away. It’s out there for all to see. Our dirty drawers hanging in the breeze on the info/intel clothes line. A new kind of scent. The ozone before the deluge. The stink of the obvious. The scam is on. The pyramid scheme is built. Maybe we’re not paranoid, though we should be. The funny thing is there’s a long line of takers. Shakers and movers clawing to the top of some corporate sitcom rerun for all-day suckers.
The National Do Not Call registry is about as useful as an empty cardboard toilet paper roll. My only fear is they will win. My last regret is that I’ll buy in. I’ll become the very thing I try to avoid. A good consumer. An obedient viewer. A hapless participant in non-events. I’ll eat up all the profits and drink down the solution to the problems. Cash in my chips for a half-baked business plan selling dingy souls to the highest bidder. Our buying power is null and void. We cancelled the checks on our freedom. The bank is the prison, saving up disgrace. The numbness takes over like a mountain of cheap prescription drugs.
We gaze downward and shuffle along. Like a cheesy local television commercial played to the point of an absurdity. The genuine artifact is a Fugazi. A cheap-suited salesman with his foot in the door. When the next security data breach happens it won’t matter. All the personal stuff is out there already. There’s nothing left to harvest. Your real private history exposed to the unreal world. Spinning a web of discount deceit and wholesale lies. The evil overlords rule from the pulpits of the auction block. We can get you a better price. There are no business hours in space. We’ll still buy it. The pandemic price paid to conduct business as usual in a bankrupt place. You can bank on it. This is a forced read. We are extremely dangerous to ourselves. We are out of order.