Here we are again. Heading into my own little corner of the internet to scribble some thoughts down on the wall like some deserted toilet stall in Kensington Market. A Canada Post box completely decked out in stickers and graffiti. Some discarded piece of mind hidden in the lost network of alleyways reminiscent of the great rivers that once gave this city it's name.
I have these two friends with a wall of gratitude in their home. It's a space where people who are invited write something down on the wall that they're grateful for and the continuing project is a beautiful art piece and one of my favourite features of any home I've visited.
I grew up with one of them. Well sort of. I used to hang out at his parents place, and he showed me this old wall in the basement that they had let him draw on as a kid. I've made jokes before that one of the keys to my friendship with him is the fact that both our families let us draw on the walls. (I also had a bedroom wall growing up designated for drawing)
I remember all these waterfalls. Colourful lines moving downward in different directions from a single point. Taste of raw freedom on the tongue and a vintage faded glow of a childhood memory. The colourful lines twist and turn on the fringes of fantasy, almost like a dream, but with a realness to it like a physical place you can visit again and again. Oh man those waterfalls. They were glorious.
The simplicity of community. A mixture of some colours on a wall. An invitation for gratitude. A connection to a time, or a space, or both. Capturing a moment. I feel so connected to this memory of this wall.
I have been very critical of this weird sort of homogenization of culture that I feel is in full swing right now. I would even go so far as to say that in a lot of ways it feels antithetical to the communal wall-drawing practice I feel such an affinity for. Before I spill more thoughts out here, I would like to highly recommend the poignant and insightful video essay, “The State of the Dead Internet” on YouTube. The creator, “Jules” goes into great detail regarding this topic and does a far better job at articulating the nuance than I ever could.
The erasure of this community though.
The world of big data analytics and automation is one I believe to be scary by design. To quote another friend of mine, picture German brutalist playground architecture with pigeon spikes. This of course is a digital landscape I'm characterizing, but it's also important to recognize the dominance of these digital landscapes in today's society. The sheer amount of time spent roaming their streets or comparing notes about their infrastructure. I had a conversation with a guy who worked behind the scenes on one small component of interactions on a banking app. There was a whole team of people dedicated to this one microscopic piece of the system. It's funny for me to think about that sometimes. The teams of people behind all of these systems we interact with everyday. I mean I'm swimming way out of my depth here when talking about specific functions of technology, but the user experience does seem pretty universal.
Forced integration through social pressure or absolute material necessity. Adoption into everyday usage. An update is recommended and can only be ignored for so long before being mandated by the threat of obsolescence. The update completely changes features or melds in features deemed successful from other platforms. Platforms and technologies struggle to mirror each other in an ever hastening competition for human attention. Algorithms pushing for more content. People seek to appease the algorithm to ensure more engagement with their content. Bots talking to bots. We haven't even seen the worst yet.
Finger print and location data, facial recognition software combined with hardcore consumer data profiles and algorithmic preference processing. Pigeon spikes abound people, play at your own risk. The nefarious element of government interference and involvement in these platforms and technologies is no longer a behind the curtain phenomenon either with regular appearances of politicians on podcasts and social media, echo chamber bot farmers littering comment threads with very specific and desperate linguistic flavours, to very real and observable instances of blatant corruption. (Think US Congress and Palantir Technologies or Doug Ford and GFL for a more homegrown example)
Republican and noted demon, Marjorie Taylor Greene invested heavily in Palantir Technologies and then became an essential component in ensuring they received lucrative government contracts to increase the company and her personal stock share value tremendously. Palantir Technologies is an interesting example in itself as their only customer for many years was none other than the CIA…but do your own research people! Corruption lies lurking in still waters.
The homegrown example of Doug Ford is an interesting one as well. I believe it can all be traced to the success of the Trump campaign in 2016 and their usage of targeted voter suppression campaigns compiling massive amounts of data from the relatively unknown at the time but now notorious company, Cambridge Analytica. There was a huge surge of right wing populism globally after the success of that 2016 campaign and many successful politicians of today took notice of the tactics on display.
I remember having an argument with someone years ago about what an awful mayor Rob Ford was because he closed all these homeless shelters and they were telling me how good he was because he tried to stop the privatization of garbage collection in the city. When in fact, he was actually the one responsible for privatizing it. (We must have been in the early days of full-blown disinformation crisis in those days)
Anywho, GFL was the recipient of that private contract. Now his brother Doug Ford is Premier of Ontario. The new Ontario Line construction going on across the city of Toronto, all those GFL trucks pulling in and out of the dusty lots. The dots seem ripe for connecting these days and we all know corruptions roots grow strong in the political arena. One might venture to find robust roots in the waste management and construction industries as well. Of course Rob Ford has since passed (RIP Crack Mayor) and sincerely may he find peace in the afterlife. But I can't help but shake the success of his mayoral campaign, how quickly it turned into an absolute circus. How the rise in prominence of platforms such as 6ixbuzz which pump blatant and poisonous political propaganda are now the consumption norm for millions of people from all sorts of demographics in the GTA. How these nefarious online actors continue to advocate for conservative government subtly or not so subtly because it benefits their shady e-commerce tax incentives. Look at the influence of these major tech companies on politics in recent years. And seriously not just talking Amazon, Instagram, or YouTube here, research Palantir lol.
But to stay with the homegrown, and the Ford family. There's the Science Centre corruption fiasco lining the pockets of developers, the green belt corruption fiasco pitting desperately needed local farmers against the grotesque and somehow prioritized practice of aggregate production, the speedy passing of Bill 5 in recent weeks for “special economic zones” hand picked by big (and I mean fat) Doug and his social media propaganda stewards. I wonder if we'll spot GFL in any of those special economic zones. Anyways. Who knows how deep the Fords roots run with GFL. But the surface seems disturbing enough.
It reminds me of this bus stop I'm standing at though. I can catch the streetcar in 3 minutes and 36 seconds according to my app. I feel the buzz of my phone in my hand reminiscent of the buzzing anxiety I feel to check some notification I receive. I feel some coins jingle in my pocket. I think back on my friendly interactions with the streetcar driver when I was a kid. Them smiling at me as the coins rattled in their metal chamber and the sound of the paper transfer ripping as they handed it to me. Sometimes I would only have a 5 dollar bill and they would smile and shrug it off and say to break it at the station. There was a real sense of community. I would take the 5 dollars to the booth at the station to break it too. I felt a duty to pay my fare because of the recognition of service on both sides. Now I take my cash to a machine and put it on a card so I don't ever even have to look at someone when I get on or off. I tap this card and hold it there for a second to hear this menacing tone to admit my entry.
I have a friend who drives the bus. It's actually the same friend who used to colour on the walls and has a gratitude wall at his house. He tells me crazy stories about driving the bus every time I see him. I'm sure it's all under the guise of safety and convenience as these forced technological integrations often are…but we can't sacrifice community here. My friend drives the bus. My friend.
The community services itself through the acts we all partake in together. Regardless of dividing lines that some big data corporation might seek to enhance.
I can't help but feel we've got something backwards here. Of course there are good people doing good work everywhere. “Look for the helpers.” To quote Mr. Rogers' mom. But interactions with these people are limited by the day.
The streetcar driver doesn't have to look at me or anyone anymore. There's no interaction. Just focus on the road ahead in their little boxes. While we hold our littler boxes on our journeys and they take out their littler boxes on their breaks. It's the same at the grocery store. Maybe we can see each other and interact with one another through our littler boxes. I'll go pick up medium boxes from my little mailbox without ever seeing the delivery driver because my littler box told me it arrived. I'll film my unboxing of my medium boxes with my littler box to show other littler boxes how cool my boxes contents are. It seems crazy because it is.
We gotta step outside the box here. Or at least pick a wall to colour together.
It's funny I typed this all out on my computer and I will post it to a platform I pretty much overtly criticize here. But I think we have to start small. Start aiming towards community again and scribbling something out on the walls when we can. That's one of my goals with this blawg and this website I guess. To forge my own weird little corner of the internet, and to discover more weird little corners and nooks and crannies along the way. I don't wish to seem too cynical all the time. I think the power is in our hands…literally. We can steer the bus where we wish. Maybe right off the edge of a colourful waterfall.
Anyways freakin ways. I digress. in the efforts of continuing the practice, I am grateful for my friends Dan and Kayla and all they've taught me about love, and family, and friendship, and life. I'll have to write that on the wall sometime.
Love y'all.
Dust