That last panel hit me like a truck because… yeah, that’s what people think happens when they do their little personal choice things to pretend they matter.
They really buy like a paper book once and go “ah, yes, Bezos is fuming right now” while he makes another billion.
We have lost all sense of how to influence society and all ability to gauge scale. For all the folksy traditionalism in this (which includes driving a gas guzzler from the 70s, apparently?) the Internet has created this entirely disproportionate sense of our footprint on the world and this strip is as much a result of the hyperconnected dystopia as everything it’s complaining about.
In my experience this is extra bad for Americans who, frankly, didn’t need that much of a push to go from their individualist, self-centered perception of society to this vision of sitting on a couch listening to a walkman as activism.
Also, it’s getting harder and harder to live without modern devices.
Try living in the modern world without a cell phone. It’s hard to do almost anything without one. If you get a flip phone that can handle text messages you can get a bit further, but it’s a matter of time before that’s not enough.
And sure, you can listen to cassettes on a walkman. And maybe you saved some tapes from 40 years ago, and maybe they still work. But, how do you get more music? Sure, you can probably find a place to order tapes online. But, then they want to verify your account and that means texting a verification code to your phone and…
As for print media. Sure, you can still buy paper books. But, if you want a real newspaper, good luck. There are a few that are still around, AFAIK you can still get the NY Times in print. But, I really doubt you still even have a local newspaper, let alone a newspaper that prints on paper.
I’ll buy something other than a ‘gas guzzler’ the second I’m not required to trade away my privacy to go electric, and can disable every single last beep, ding, screech and other unnecessary sound some stupid fuck thought was a good idea.
I’m a fan of big screens myself. What I’m not a fan of is putting everything into that screen. I want the screen for the infotainment system only. All hvac and essential controls should still be physical buttons and dials. And of course, ditch all the tracking and data collection that comes with the car.
Honestly that exists. Just bought a BMW i3 (their first electric) and you can disable just about everything, even the sound it makes to alert pedestrians, the infotainment warning screen everyone hates, and seat belt chimes, through an app and a BT OBDII dongle. The 2014-2017 models all have 3G cellular antennas so they mostly don’t work anymore (3G is totally gone in my area). It also has buttons for climate and their great iDrive infotainment controller. It’s a fantastic quirky electric at dirt cheap prices.
BUT, your point stands since that’s 1 out of how many electric vehicles? Yeah, sucks.
We have lost all sense of how to influence the world and all ability to gauge scale.
Absolutely correct!
I believe in “voting with your wallet” and I do little sacrifices to respect my ideas, but I’m conscious that I’m just one step above people clicking on petitions online in terms of impact.
I think the point is that we’re deluded to think that voting with our wallets does anything. You still work. You still buy. You still support the system. The one step you’re taking only gets you partway from the couch to the refrigerator. It doesn’t get you out the door and into a protest that would actually make a difference.
Indeed, you are thoroughly pacified. Your objections and moral outage quelled and your sense of significance sustained by the illusion that simply buying from a different conglomerate will have any impact.
Any suggestion that your impotent protest is inadequate must surely come from a childish fool.
I must be imagining all the Governors in the northern states begging us Canadians to start visiting again. Voting with you wallet does work if enough people get on board.
The comic is hyperbolic and not in a good way. “They wouldn’t like it” - yeah, if millions of Americans did the same. And it isn’t even necessary to go pre-digital or pre-internet to “cut out the middleman”.
I agree with you on most, but this:
which includes driving a gas guzzler from the 70s, apparently?
is hyperbole on your part.
First of all, by-default internet connected cars haven’t been a thing until relatively recently (10 years max I guess). And then, gas guzzling does not necessarily correlate with age. Cars consuming less than, say, 5l/100km have existed since at least the 80s (1st hand experience, and the car was already 20 years old at that point).
Your comment made me remember how 25 years ago it was unthinkable, even illegal, for a company to spy on you without consent. Tech isn’t the problem, regulation has also become a joke, that’s what gave tech bros free reign, as long as they make loads of money fast so rich investors can concentrate even more wealth.
I guess the car thing comes from the use of “pre-computerized”. Cars have had computers in them much longer than they’ve been connected to the Internet by default. I guess my mistake was taking the panel at its word there.
Also, man, I appreciate the alignment, but the “millions of Americans” really made me feel icky. Beyond the moral and political refusal to give Americans primary decisionmaking power on these things, these trends and companies are global. Even in the US you probably would need tens of millions to make a dent, but some of these userbases are in the billions. Millions of Americans decided Facebook was for old people and left it and it’s still the biggest social media platform on the planet by some margin. That’d be the collective inability to gauge scale in a dystopia of global monopolies I was talking about.
this is it. guilliotines exist. is organizing against corporations, or actually understanding the tech we use so hopeless for regular people that they feel have to maintain 1980s shit just to be rid of it?
That last panel hit me like a truck because… yeah, that’s what people think happens when they do their little personal choice things to pretend they matter.
They really buy like a paper book once and go “ah, yes, Bezos is fuming right now” while he makes another billion.
We have lost all sense of how to influence society and all ability to gauge scale. For all the folksy traditionalism in this (which includes driving a gas guzzler from the 70s, apparently?) the Internet has created this entirely disproportionate sense of our footprint on the world and this strip is as much a result of the hyperconnected dystopia as everything it’s complaining about.
In my experience this is extra bad for Americans who, frankly, didn’t need that much of a push to go from their individualist, self-centered perception of society to this vision of sitting on a couch listening to a walkman as activism.
Also, it’s getting harder and harder to live without modern devices.
Try living in the modern world without a cell phone. It’s hard to do almost anything without one. If you get a flip phone that can handle text messages you can get a bit further, but it’s a matter of time before that’s not enough.
And sure, you can listen to cassettes on a walkman. And maybe you saved some tapes from 40 years ago, and maybe they still work. But, how do you get more music? Sure, you can probably find a place to order tapes online. But, then they want to verify your account and that means texting a verification code to your phone and…
As for print media. Sure, you can still buy paper books. But, if you want a real newspaper, good luck. There are a few that are still around, AFAIK you can still get the NY Times in print. But, I really doubt you still even have a local newspaper, let alone a newspaper that prints on paper.
I’ll buy something other than a ‘gas guzzler’ the second I’m not required to trade away my privacy to go electric, and can disable every single last beep, ding, screech and other unnecessary sound some stupid fuck thought was a good idea.
Oh how I long for the day someone invents a car without a touchscreen.
I’m a fan of big screens myself. What I’m not a fan of is putting everything into that screen. I want the screen for the infotainment system only. All hvac and essential controls should still be physical buttons and dials. And of course, ditch all the tracking and data collection that comes with the car.
Honestly that exists. Just bought a BMW i3 (their first electric) and you can disable just about everything, even the sound it makes to alert pedestrians, the infotainment warning screen everyone hates, and seat belt chimes, through an app and a BT OBDII dongle. The 2014-2017 models all have 3G cellular antennas so they mostly don’t work anymore (3G is totally gone in my area). It also has buttons for climate and their great iDrive infotainment controller. It’s a fantastic quirky electric at dirt cheap prices.
BUT, your point stands since that’s 1 out of how many electric vehicles? Yeah, sucks.
Absolutely correct!
I believe in “voting with your wallet” and I do little sacrifices to respect my ideas, but I’m conscious that I’m just one step above people clicking on petitions online in terms of impact.
I think the point is that we’re deluded to think that voting with our wallets does anything. You still work. You still buy. You still support the system. The one step you’re taking only gets you partway from the couch to the refrigerator. It doesn’t get you out the door and into a protest that would actually make a difference.
Of course, because I’m no more 16 arguing that a revolution is the solution.
Indeed, you are thoroughly pacified. Your objections and moral outage quelled and your sense of significance sustained by the illusion that simply buying from a different conglomerate will have any impact.
Any suggestion that your impotent protest is inadequate must surely come from a childish fool.
Ping me when you changed the world with whatever you are actually doing behind that keyboard 👋
Masturbating, I’m masturbating. And so are you when you think that voting with your wallet does anything.
I must be imagining all the Governors in the northern states begging us Canadians to start visiting again. Voting with you wallet does work if enough people get on board.
I agree that such large-scale action is effective.
Wow! Do it in public fully naked with the reasons of the protest tattooed on your body. You may hit the news and reach lots of people!
The comic is hyperbolic and not in a good way. “They wouldn’t like it” - yeah, if millions of Americans did the same. And it isn’t even necessary to go pre-digital or pre-internet to “cut out the middleman”.
I agree with you on most, but this:
is hyperbole on your part.
First of all, by-default internet connected cars haven’t been a thing until relatively recently (10 years max I guess). And then, gas guzzling does not necessarily correlate with age. Cars consuming less than, say, 5l/100km have existed since at least the 80s (1st hand experience, and the car was already 20 years old at that point).
Your comment made me remember how 25 years ago it was unthinkable, even illegal, for a company to spy on you without consent. Tech isn’t the problem, regulation has also become a joke, that’s what gave tech bros free reign, as long as they make loads of money fast so rich investors can concentrate even more wealth.
Big tech does have consent. They hide it in the TOS that hardly anyone reads.
I guess the car thing comes from the use of “pre-computerized”. Cars have had computers in them much longer than they’ve been connected to the Internet by default. I guess my mistake was taking the panel at its word there.
Also, man, I appreciate the alignment, but the “millions of Americans” really made me feel icky. Beyond the moral and political refusal to give Americans primary decisionmaking power on these things, these trends and companies are global. Even in the US you probably would need tens of millions to make a dent, but some of these userbases are in the billions. Millions of Americans decided Facebook was for old people and left it and it’s still the biggest social media platform on the planet by some margin. That’d be the collective inability to gauge scale in a dystopia of global monopolies I was talking about.
this is it. guilliotines exist. is organizing against corporations, or actually understanding the tech we use so hopeless for regular people that they feel have to maintain 1980s shit just to be rid of it?