We have Signal and the Matrix protocol (Element and Jami). Why would anyone feel the need to chat on some sketchy app like Discord, Telegram, WeChat and/or WhatsApp, particularly since companies like Tencent (and, by extension, the CCP) have more than a passing interest in them? I have seen good things about Utopia, but I've yet to check it out. It was difficult enough to persuade people to move from WhatsApp and Telegram to Signal as a means of communicating with me, back when I had people occupying places of significance in my personal life. I doubt I could persuade anyone to do another migration. (Even the potential of earning crypto doesn't interest a lot of them and Utopia doesn't seem to be one of the main/popular ones, from what little I've seen of the cryptosphere.) I've had the same lack of success with promoting using encrypted email and using GNU/Linux.
But, but, but, because, you know, it's all about having as many convenient ways to spread scams through short-link spam, to fill my non-existent free time when I'm not eating overpriced fast food. It's all about the scam spam and targeted advertising. It used to be all about the Pentiums, hey! There's nothing unique about that. We are mindless drones enslaved to the Big Tech Machine; expect us. Resistance is futile. It's not just centralised Big Tech, but centralised anything with a hierarchical power structure set up to give the most advantage to the person at the top ... Oh, hell no!
Sadly, I suspect that most of the people don't even know that they are in this situation of being abused/taken advantage of (that thing about "the minds of the people we are trying" being hopelessly dependent on the system). As for those that aware, they don't seem to care that "Google is recording and analysing every minute of my life". If anything, they actively embrace their perceived powerlessness and being controlled. What can they do in the face of something so huge? Show them a way to freedom, and humans will don their shackles and crawl back into their cages while calling for the prison guards. How bizarre.
I find it incredible how unaware, or willfully ignorant, people can be. They will believe just about anything and everything, at first take, full face value, with no questions asked. The conspiracy theories generated by qAnon, Info Wars and the like (and the community around them) are absolutely unbelievable to me. (If there is a deep state/secret world order being run by the Illuminati and Satanists, they're doing a piss-poor job, in my opinion. These are supposed to be the cream of the crop when it comes to "very smart people".) Every time, a coconut! Careful with Occam's razor, folks ...
Yet, throw facts at this crowd of gullible half-wits, disprove their thumb-suck "theories" (or at least make them look highly implausible) and they flat-out refuse to believe, most of the time. (That reminds me, I've got an idea to write a book in rebuttal to one put out by a Creationist. I'll quote relevant parts of ones on Biology and Evolution written by Coyne, Darwin and Dawkins. It'll be titled "Don't Breed the Creationists", since it's a play on "Don't Clothe the Dinosaurs", the creationist twaddle that mainly relies on Answers in Genesis for its source material. I've already put together the introduction, but haven't got further than that since I can't find funding to carry on. Maybe I should try Flopstarter or something similar, but I digress from my point and what I'm supposed to be doing today: Looking for opportunities to farm fiat, since I also can't escape the Capitalist system, despite my best efforts.) We all live in America. He who doesn't to dance is very much aware that he
If you want an conspiracy, how about the Lightbulb Conspiracy (planned obsolescence)? There are no aliens involved, just a global consortium (an oligopoly) of big manufacturing companies. Hooray for the infinite growth model, on a planet with finite resources. (I've put some links down below, if you care to know more. Alternately, you can take my word for it ...)
Right, rambling rant over, let's return to the boring real world and the things I have to do for money ...
Thumbnail image: Signal Messenger's logo, from Logo Wiki
