How much is your soul worth?
Is it cheap enough to sacrifice for a world like this?
Is it worthless enough to call this living?
Ask yourselves those questions at least. If the quick dopamine hits and the instant AI slop and the fucking dystopia offering you comfort has shortened your attention span and empathy too much to finish reading this, at least ask yourself those questions, at least know where you stand.
The internet began as something safe. A little box for people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, disabled individuals, outcasts, everyone who felt they didn't belong. Everyone who has been in danger, felt lost, been abused or hurt. People understood each other and themselves better than they ever had. They carved room into a world that said it didn't have any.
It was for all the kids who couldn't go die in riots.
For the disabled who couldn't spill their blood in the streets to show they were people too.
For the people of color who did not want their life to be another statistic.
For every poor fucking soul being told they didn't belong and they should rather spend every day carving out the pieces of themselves that didn't fit, going hollow, instead of being alive- and could do nothing about it. So many of them still die because of it.
I'm 16, which is a number that matters here. But it doesn't matter as much as another number I have, a number that isn't 0. The number of kids I've known who's numbers will never reach 18. The number of kids, like me, who didn't make it this far with me. And I'm trying not to, but I'm starting to cry.
Because they should be here with me right now. We should be healing together. It shouldn't matter that the world hates us. I'd rather be traveling the world in a shitty fucking car with the ghosts of kids I knew than stuck in this house with the monsters who still have pulses. I'd rather be starving and holding their hands than knowing I'm fed and they don't have hands to hold anymore.
How many friends that I never met are dead too? How many people that I would love did I not get there for in time, because I lost them to a world like this? How many hands should be in mine that aren't? Every day we lose more kids. Every day I watch you all grow more complacement. I saw a this morning. Followed within a few minutes by YouTube shorts. Followed within a few minutes by an ad.
The video showed me how to bypass a new AI system if it flagged me as a minor. No, not how to bypass the whole thing, only how to if it flagged me. It was on YouTube, who will now be using all the cute personal data that they collect from you and sell to every higher power who wants to control you to determine your age. This will not be a request, the AI will monitor everything you watch and search, then use that to determine what kind of content you're *allowed* to see based on if you're determined to be an adult or minor.
That wasn't even that shocking. EVERYTHING does this. Collect and collect and sell what they know. And it was during that video that it really hit me.
The space that every opressed group has used to hide, to speak up, to feel safe in, to be heard, to EXIST in- is now the space selling us all out to the people who want to hurt us.
Your identity is not safe. That trans kid who uses big companies like Discord or YouTube to meet friends who don't want them dead? About to be sold out to their parents.
That person of color trying to get their story heard, to find safety? Their identity is being censored by the algorithm.
That neurodivergent individual trying to open up about their experience? They're a hazard now. A risk to normal brained society.
When you go outside, into the real world, you will notice you are generally pretty safe. I've witnessed big poc, LGBTQ+, & neurodivergent creators alike say that the internet is just trying to make you afraid.
So just go outside, it's safe outside.
And it is. It is for now. It's safe outside right now, in the real world, because they're busy taking away the places where you hid when it wasn't. And once those are gone again, do you really still think it'll be safe to go outside?
The message above is for those in countries where it is save to go outside (for now), but do NOT forget our sisters, brothers, and others dying in the streets of places where they are not so fortunate. Not only are they what we will become, even if they weren't, their names don't deserve forgetting. If you're a kid like me, crying in your room, watching our world burn- don't.
You will be the safety people need.
When we lose the internet, the outside, the inside, the everything, you will be the safety. You'll be the adult who rescues the kid who has no community. Don't give up here, they will need you. Don't lose your communities. They separate you with meaningless words, meaningless fights. Don't let them. Even your enemy's back deserves to be watched, deserves the right to disagree with you.
The YouTube shorts. I, regrettably, watched some after the video. To numb my pain like a fucking coward. Living the same complacent and zoned out life as everyone else. Then I got an ad. An ad telling me, that if I wanted to sing, but couldn't, just give my voice to an AI!
To let the artifical sing my songs for me, take my voice and make it sound pretty.
I was horrified. I still am, as I write this. People do this. They talk to C.AI, they make songs with AI, they depend on fake people. Where are the real ones? The sense of community?
The little queer kids that once roleplayed in shitty Discord servers are now talking to fake robots that spy on them.
Our brains are numbed and serving the companies that survive by shining the boots stepping on our faces. Fuck YouTube, fuck Twitter, fuck every app selling us out to AI and taking our freedom away.
Fuck every law trying to spy on the kids so they won't have the safety to form opinions.
I'll be an adult in 15 months. In 3, I won't have much to worry about in regards to being found out at all. But I refuse to let that complacency get to me. I refuse to forget the kid I was. If I were still 13 and these kinds of laws were being passed, these kinds of apps taking over, I would be terrified. There'd be no one to protect me. There was no one to protect me. But it was okay because the internet kept me safe.
It won't do that ever again.
My only request through these tears that mourn the dead kids I knew, the artists who will never be, the kids who will never think, the people of color who will die before an algorithm let's them express their pain, the neurodivergent people who will no doubt be monitored for their "safety," is that you stop complying.
Get off the big sites. Find your communities, build them on platforms brave enough to resist. Take our safety back. Don't let our humanity go. Your soul should be worth more than this world.
