Introduction
I like it here. I like you people. I think I'll stick around and write about the web, techno-oligarchs, and things we can do to push back against this looming technocracy. Sound good?
My name is Jason. I'm just a 43 year old boy trying his best. I guess you could say I'm a technologist. I've been a freelance web developer and digital marketer for over a decade. Before that, I was a VP of marketing at a mid-sized real estate firm. I'll sell my socks before I ever go back to corporate America.
I'm also a writer. I mostly publish to my blog, and write about things happening in the tech world. My most popular post is Where have all the websites gone? which made its way to Hacker News and a few other forums.
I've been causing trouble on the internet for as long as I can remember. Back in 2018, I made the news cycle for a week by trolling Rudy Giuliani on Twitter. He made a typo in a tweet that caused an inadvertent hyperlink. I bought the domain, then published a website with a single sentence— “Trump is a traitor to our country.” It went viral. I got death threats. It was fun! Unfortunately, the site no longer exists as I let the domain expire. But, you can view an archived version of the site. Thank god for the Internet Archive (donate to them if you can).
I also wrote a lot of the Biden & Obama memes back in 2015. Remember those? Simpler times. That was back when I was firmly a liberal and had a little more faith in the Democratic Party. Today, you can call me a leftist, I guess. But really, I'm just someone who believes in us; the people. I believe that no one is coming to save us, least of all, American politicians. Vote, sure. But it's up to you and me.
Fair warning, I'll be critical of Democrats on this page sometimes. Not in an effort to deter people from voting, but because I have this crazy notion that our elected representatives should know when their constituents are not happy with how they're governing. And let me tell ya, I haven't been happy since Taco Bell took the Mexican pizza off the menu.
Anyway— I think a lot about this last ten years of chaos, and Trump's first term. I think about the things we got right and the things we got wrong in our efforts to fight back.
Something we got right, is when we used the web to come together and cause havoc against the fascists. Remember when those TikTok kids bought out tickets to Trump's rally in Tulsa? He was so mad. It was fun. Or that kid who wrote a script that repeatedly filled out the ICE Tip Form? Those were good times.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we're limited to trolling on the web when it comes to resisting. I'm just staying in my lane. I understand the web, and this is the lens in which I will view things.
When I think of the things we got wrong, I think a lot about the sort of Blue Wave, resist lib social media accounts who gained fame around Trump's first term. For a decade they basically just kept us scared and angry with very little calls to action. Many of them were able to make their tweets into a business though. They all have podcasts and merch now. And good for them! But I think it's time we stop platforming those type of activists this go-round.
I look at the last ten years, at all the hypocrisy p*rn and quote tweet-dunking we did (definitely including myself in this) and I wonder what did that accomplished? Did we convince a single person to come over to our side? Because the last election tells me no, we didn't.
Then I think about how, in the last fifteen years or so, the Internet has been privatized by four corporations in a trench coat. How most of our communication tools, commerce, and internet infrastructure are controlled by techno-libertarian billionaires who have all but destroyed our democracy. These people have turned every market into a monopoly with businesses that run on slave-labor, and strive to suck every last penny from our pockets.
Ultimately, what I think we got wrong last time, is we failed to identify all of our enemies. The average American has no idea just how much of a threat Big Tech has become (I think we're starting to see it now, though).
So my goal, my microscopic contribution to the (small r) resistance, is to help identify our oligarch enemies in the tech world (there are many), explain their strategies in plain language, and provide calls to action when I can.
If that sounds good to you, please throw me a follow. If you have recommendations for accounts I can follow, hit me up. I want to be a part of this community here on Tumblr.
Love ya,
Jason.
This is me. Call me Jason. Because that's what my mother named me. Call me zaddy because I'm hot and old and need constant external validation from the faceless masses.
That was lame who approved this?
