#188

Just want to say that to me, using the word "Libra" as a proper noun for your currency sounds too much like Final Fantasy, first and least of all. I think you fucked up, facebook*. It's not tough to get what their marketers were going for, you know, liberation, unchaining the world through the blockchain (irony**), it is the Spanish word for granting or gaining freedom, certain currencies, and also the pound in ounces, which is also a former British currency, the British being the arguable founders of modern currency and banking, but this is the new shit and the revolution because Libra, etc. 

But look. Look. Don't name your currency the same as an astrological sign, no matter how obvious the symbol is for what you are trying to do (the scales invoke justice and balance, like facebook is very concerned about what is fair and just). Someone should have stopped you a long time ago. I am glad that you are not trying to cure cancer, facebook people.

Guess a bunch of people are on board, though. They'll make money hand over fist for a second, before facebook fucks each and every last one of us right up the ass and for real something like Black Monday goes down, once again with our own personal lives collectively raining out the windows along with the cashrats who played so fast and loose with them.

*

So. The Internet. 

Referring to internet just so, as though I were pointing at a dog without a name, is a quirk I picked up from Jeffrey Rowland of Wigu fame, internet's poet cowboy godfather. Maybe this assessment of the man's imprint is specialized; one of those "you had to be there, in order to think and feel as I do" things (everything? "you had to be there" is one of the most boner-killing tautologies, and it's usually hiding a kind of lie). But as I discussed yesterday, breaking ground is deceptively humble, and everything that comes after must make it seem tame and quaint.

This is known as proof of concept.

*

It begins and ends with webcomics, of course. I liked the internet okay initially as an information-gathering and communication tool (as I will confess, I was not always such a lurker), but the .jpeg had to hit its stride before internet truly seized my faculties. I started using internet about 1998, but did not truly get into it till 2002, and wasn't deep till 2003. Webcomics were the portal, the food that drew me to the rabbit hole, and they were themselves a great object lesson in how internet culture was to refract, warp, bend, and ultimately give rise to establishment and merge with a corporate economy. Among other things.

*

When I say deep, I think of individuals that were among the first perusing snuff sites and buying sex slaves that come with a bonus bag of heroin crammed into their rectum, or were building their own open-source operating systems in order to make themselves into powerful virtual entities by various computing methods. When I say deep, I do not mean that I have posts out there on defunct forums that told all my "friends" how to crack the system into a million triangular little eggshells and from the slimy mess that is the corpse of the Deep State raise up a new and perfect society. To simplify greatly. I am not claiming anything approaching the hardcore when I say "deep". I don't know how to code.

What I like to do it just take a good long look at whatever I happen to find, and what I have happened to find includes resources for all of the above and a world's worth more. Thing is, it is very very easy to look around on internet (you just click around, that's how it works), you can go very very far without actually doing anything, and you only matter if you make yourself matter. You can get very good at knowing where to go for interesting new ideas, unusual art, and the type of news that doesn't make the news, and without wasting a ton of time typing, you can get a lot done every day.

All I can really say is that I have looked at a lot of words and pictures on internet. But when I say a lot, I mean a fucking lot. I don't even so much as surf incognito. The volume and breadth of my trawling is its own signature and its own defense. Also the stuff I check if  I'm just quick popping open the browser to do my little routine is so pedestrian it's laughable. Just picture me opening a newspaper and skipping straight to the funnies in a sunny kitchen, a cup of coffee at my elbow and my tie an affable half-windsor, my hat waiting for me on its peg and the dog content with its water dish and large white bone. A federal agent literally thinks of this man as their best customer as they go about their work.

*

Social media brought every toxic thing we learned how to hurt and troll each other with on forums into public life, right up to how our elected representatives seem and behave. That's okay. We will either digest this poison and mature as a culture or tear ourselves apart and what is left can try and learn. 

*

Okay, more internet tomorrow! Got stuff to do.

internet, internet, the world wide web, if you were really any good, you'd have gotten us Jeb!


--JL

*every time I say facebook has fucked up or done something wrong they make another billion dollars net and change society for the worse/more interesting, so this is very good for them and presumably for the blockchain. Don't say I never did nothin' for ya. I'm totally kidding about this fucking evil company ruining the world by getting directly into the money these fuckers have shown their blue-and-white sigil and it is spattered with gore and human pulp how is this company still legal why has no one stopped them fffffffffffffffffffffffffffff***

**this is why Amazon is the company that is good at irony and facebook is staffed by affectless psychopaths who think they're philosopher-rogues: facebook's most ironic thing will always be their company name, and Amazon never offers any explanation for actions which seem destructive but which over the long-term solve problems those who loudest cried "foul" on Amazon had always wanted solved and never did. Amazon continually draws pistols from its coat and points them at the forehead of the terrified consumer. Their face grim stone, Amazon pulls the trigger, and a little flag that says "BANG!" shoots out and a puppy appears in the consumer's arms. Elsewhere, a CEO's head explodes and a whole industry collapses, its ancient bones serving as a delicious and powerful fertilizer for the new economy. Meanwhile facebook changed how the things on its hell of ass website are organized and sold a picture of your kid's genitals to a German murderer while giving the sum total of your human data away for free to people who cosplay as the Illuminati. (this is a cola war scenario of course, I like Amazon better for wholly personal reasons but none of these fucks are your friends; you are their food and never forget it)

***seriously congress is all "facebook demons, are you bad?" and they tell congress, "No! We are good!" and congress is all "Then do you know how I can get my printer to talk to my screen?" and now it's all "We're gonna save the world by giving everybody money-power! Did you know that not everybody can even hold money, and this makes things bad? Now everybody can hold money, though! If someone robs you blind, we can give you more to hold, no problem!" and Visa and Spotify and lord knows who else are all "Sounds real, let's go" and everyone in the facebook building rubs their little claws together and slips their forked tongues out from between their lips.****

****ok who cares though ultimately I am being a Chicken Little about all this, get out of here and try to have a good day without thinking about internet anymore, that's my plan