Choke the Machine
black the black mirror
Bukowski once said the thing about the cops is they’re here to keep things the way they are. If you like things the way they are then you love the cops. if you don’t like things the way they are then fuck the police. This is not an oversimplification of the defund the police argument.
This isn’t about the police at all.
In the upside down reality we find ourselves in, this are you kidding me jackpot of all things goofy timeline, the ai and social media companies the data harvesters they are the cops in the analogy. They are the cloud, they are the machine. The big tech oligarchs Musk, Altman, Bezos and Thiel are propping up a fascist government. They are the intelligence and security backbone of ICE. They are propping up the war in Iran. Anthropic and Grok and GPT are crawling inside the walls of the pentagon like rats. The data harvesters prop up Israel. They prop up the Epstein class and big oil and crypto. The six or seven companies that constitute the gig economy that sustains the phantom economy also cannibalize the stock market.
The data harvesters like things the way they are.
They are also how we communicate. They are how we search and network. How we sell and trade. All of our money changers are slithering in the chapel inside the machine. They feed and train and sustain the machine with our data. The cloud spins with the vapor of our slow death by a thousand google cuts and we make those cuts voluntarily.
Nobody you know likes the way things are going.
They respond by posting memes and protesting on Saturday.
If you scroll back to 2020 consider the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. The black lives matter marches and protests made an impact because they weren’t roped off to Saturdays. On the other end of the meaningless dissent spectrum were the random hashtag Tuesdays where everyone posted a black square to show their solidarity and millions of black squares later the cloud kept on spinning unperturbed. The no kings protests on a Saturday likewise make feel good video footage for the feed but otherwise not a ripple.
If the ninety nine percent want to rattle the oligarchs we must come together for a general strike. For one week everyone who works on the ground just says no for seven days. If you punch a clock you can choke the machine. The workers rise then they stop scrolling. If we pick one day a week either taco Tuesday or this is Sparta Thursday where everyone for 24 hours puts down their phone and refuses to scroll, the oligarchs will notice. The machine will flinch if everyone refuses to like or post for 24. If the peasants refuse to open facebook or instagram. If they refuse to tweet. The next Thursday nobody searches. Nobody touches tube or google for a day. Nobody uses maps. Nobody buys anything on amazon. If we can implement a day of uncivilized shopping frenzy and call it Black Friday surely we can groundswell the opposite. Surely we can mobilize a few million people to spend 24 hours dedicated to choking the machine.
Or can we.
Can we black the black mirror.
The following Thursday everybody deletes chatGPT. Then we come for substack and tinder.
And so on.
Edward Snowden said the people should not fear the machine.
The machine should fear the people.
The posting of black squares and marching on our days off does nothing. We must occupy the cloud.
If you don’t like the way things are going you choke the machine.
Occupy the cloud.
Shut down for a day. Stop scrolling stop shopping stop liking bullshit. Stop double tapping the tiny hearts. Those hearts are meaningless now. The algorithm is already coiled around your amygdala. The machine knows what you like. Those little bloodless hearts are the final fuck you. The machine knows the things your friends and followers like. The machine knows what you want. It gives you the perfectly timed shopping tips for all the shit you didn’t know you didn’t need. The machine feeds you the propaganda mashups meant to trigger you. It serves you the curated ad content you asked for.
Stop scrolling for 24.
For one day black out the sky to prove we can.
Before the machine does it to us.
If you don’t realize the government will throttle the cloud with rolling blackouts as soon as it suits them, you aren’t paying attention.
Did you think they would make a formal announcement when skynet was in place. Palantir is skynet. The CIA operates on amazon servers. If they put claude into a million tesla optimus bots, read the terms and conditions Mister Anderson. Grok drone swarms are next.
Shut down for a day. Put down the phone. Black the black mirror. Occupy the cloud refuse to play choke the machine before they do.
The people should not fear the machine the machine should fear the people.
Refuse to scroll for 24.
If we can’t put down our phones for a day then we are lost.
The 27 club is coming for this century. It’s coming for us all if we fuck this up. If we lose control of alignment we are finished. If we lose control of the printed word we are already lost. In ten years we will be selling paperbacks hand to hand like contraband. The elder gen Z kids the emo outcasts need to rise up. This is your time. You are the last generation to glimpse the analog. The crossing from the liminal timestamp to the splintering of shared reality into the exponential fracture of the cloud happened while you were coming into consciousness.
What do you remember.
They will sell your memories back to you like a drug.
I don’t know what else to tell you. I don’t have a million followers. I know what I’d be telling them if I did. Go on strike before the gig work disappears. Go on strike before the robots take all the warehouse and customer service jobs. Black the mirror and choke the machine before they black it for us. Choke the machine and demand universal basic income to share the wealth of the cloud with the masses. Occupy the cloud. Black the mirror. Go on strike before the petrol rations. Before the next pandemic. Before the energy lockdowns. Before the dissident witch hunts. The ai terrorists are next. Data center bombings are on the wing. If you zoom out to look at the big picture we are running out of time. The daughters of gen x are out there remember that kid Newt from Aliens?
This little girl survived a year down here well fuck it put her in charge.
Choke the machine.
Occupy the cloud.
Black the black mirror.
If we can’t put the phones down for 24 hours we deserve what’s coming.
Endnote. It all comes down to do unto others and the four agreements.
One. None of this shit is personal. You must get that especially if you’re an artist. Everyone is lost in their own bubble running their own sim within the big scheme. They aren’t thinking about you. The shit they say is not about you. The shit they do and think is not about you. That shit is about them. Their backstory. Their damage under their skin.
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Two. Don’t make assumptions. It makes you an asshole every time.
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Three. Try like hell to be impeccable with your word. Say and write what you mean and mean the shit you say. If you fuck up go back and fix it. Time is a flat circle. The real stays real. If you’re a writer, find an editor you trust. Find a first reader who gets it, another writer who gets you and who you want to be there for.
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Four. Do your best. No more no less. This is key because writers and poets and artists, we are sin eaters and caretakers. We are contortionists and confessors and chaos machines. We are empaths. We are addicts and autistics and manic depressives. We are freaks. We forget to heal and soothe ourselves. We forget that when we have done our best, we have given all of ourselves. There is nothing left to give. Your best is all you have.
These are the four agreements.
Otherwise do unto others as you would have done to you. Nobody owes you anything. Nobody broke your heart you broke your own. If you marry someone remember you don’t own them. They don’t own you. You don’t owe them your body or your soul. Everyone dies alone in the tunnel of light with their own angels and demons. Learn to make peace with your angels and slay your demons and forgive yourself or you run the loop again. And there is nothing in anything Jesus ever said that says your body is your husband’s property.
The manosphere is the darkness.
The good samaritans swarm the feed with light.
Remember what Marla Singer said. The asshole tax always comes due.
peace.
