I’m in a pickle with that smartphone bull.
I didn’t use no iPhone nor Android for the past decade because I knew that once you get sucked in, it’s over. You probably won’t change, ever.
I wanted to make sure that I had that choice. Thus, I didn’t choose either, and life was pretty good. Decentralized AF, doing my thing.
I also kind of knew what would happen at a bigger scale and I didn’t want to participate into that:
I could go on and on.
Those things are not just the result of a decade old market dominance, they happen because those two companies are so big and pervasive that they are above the laws, literally. Brands >>> Sovereignty
They make so much money they can buy anyone, any government on earth. They did and will continue (we need to step up here).
And because there’s a brutal amount of spam, scam, tracking, wasting time on pointless apps or games on those platforms, I am not looking forward to spending time dodging and setting up stuff I didn’t have to care for ten years.
I feel so free. It feels right.
Yet I kind of need an iPhone? And so it’s super weird because at this point, I don’t even really have a reason for it.
Payment? True, Cashapp and Zelle are often mentioned and I can’t do them and it’s starting to look suspicious. But payment is easy to solve, we did pay each other before GoogApple. I got some cash the other day or PayPal still does it or direct deposit or a check. The idea of setting up everything on an iPhone (device, Apple ID, Zelle app, Zelle account and all the surveillance with it) to get $200 back from a friend is not mentally exciting, you know. And then I’m locked and dependent. And then Zelle starts adding fees once we are all locked in. That bait & switch culture has got to go.
Social media? Nah, I don’t need this on my phone anymore. It’s the 20s, we off that shit bro.
App to record everything if I get stopped in traffic? ACTUALLY, this might be it. This might be the app that I need very much. This is sad.
I have two iPhones laying on my kitchen counter. Both in great shape, new batteries, up to date.
I play with one, I notice that new text messages, new calendar reminders and new notes buttons are at three different locations. I know damn well that this is not a mistake. It’s Apple’s designers making sure that I am my device’s little hoe. The phone is supposed to make me feel whimsical, looking for stuff around, having “fun” (haha, that autocorrect is so bad it’s so cute!) because that’s how brands work: you’re supposed to bow down and feel grateful.
I don’t want to bow down and I am not feeling it.
Maybe RATM’s Fuck You I Won’t Do What You Tell Me stayed in my mind the whole time, but even without that, I have a hard time deciding why I should get stressed and enter a world of pain that –and that’s batshit crazy when you think about it– everyone these days it looks like, is trying to quit or minimize as much as possible.
People getting viral on social media? They don’t like it like that, usually they get 1,000% more anxious after and never or rarely post again. People addicted to virality burn the hell out trying to keep up with obscure algorithms.
These days many people give the advice to use the least possible apps, always. Turning all notifications off etc. This is exactly how I lived with my phone in the past decade, I know that’s healthy! But so then, I don’t need to switch do I?
The mix of some kind of need to conform and simultaneously being right at how insidious this all smartphone thing is, is exhausting. Maybe I read too much. Maybe I shouldn’t care at all about anything, ever.
But the idea of 2021 children digging their own neighborhoods as slaves, so that we can power up devices that are lobotomizing us and making us more anxious than ever, while giving a duopoly everything about us including our biometric data (bodies and voices) now, doesn’t sit well in my mind. Probably never will.