Miscallenous Rants
Palantir
Reading music: Narcissu 1 Soundtrack - The Emerald Sea
Don't get me wrong, I don't care about all this political fuss surrounding this, however I'm tangentially interested in mass surveillance and the developments surrounding it, and I found it really fascinating how the discussion in Germany in regards this issue is "Should we use this powerful and American software or make our own" and not "Should we surveill every citizen in some grand program with a database containing every possible information about every possible person". It's as if everybody just doesn't care about this absolutely insane project happening and the only thing you are allowed to discuss is whether it's okay that the Yankees are involved, and not that you might not want this in first place. Fucking grim.
PS: I'm aware that even without Palantir there probably exists some software operated by the BND or some shit that does exactly the same, but I find it remarkable how everybody just accepts the pretense that we should live in a grand panaopticon and the only thing you should care about is how to do it.
Tinkering on 4/g/
Reading music: Richard Stallman - Free Software Song
Do the people who use the word "tinkering" and adjacent words like "tinkerware" or "tinkertranny" as an insult, predominately on 4/g/, even have an interest in computers or are they only here to bitch about politics and free (as in freedom) software not catering to them? Like do these people have, god forbid, """fun""" (ever heard of that?) when tinkering with computers, or are they so up their own ass that they just post about how they are serious, employed, white, heterosexual men that like using Windows 11 and VSCode on their computers to do serious, employed people work? Do those people have personal projects, where they might have to tinker themselves with computers? Holy shit, what is wrong this board? I don't believe those are real people. If those people are real, they must be the most miserable people alive.
Disillusioned with anonymity and imageboards
Reading music: CLANNAD Soundtrack 2025 - Spring Breeze (Piano)
When I first got introduced to the anonymous part of the Internet and imageboards, I was absorbed by them, and spent day and night on them. I had a deep interest in their history and culture, to some degree I still do today, but the part of me that thought they were conceptually a great thing became less and less over time. I don't have anything better to offer, but I have a few impressions to share.
One thing about anonymity is this notion of "Anonymity is good, because you can say what you truly think without consequences" and I never quite got that point, and recently I'm feeling a lot like this is not an argument at all, if you can call it even that. I think if you truly act upon this princple, you will end up having a dissonance between what you truly think and what you admit publicly to thinking. To me this situation where people will only admit what they think under the disguise of anonymity is wrong. Maybe I'm naive and don't understand that hiding yourself behind anonymity is a necessary evil, nevertheless this notion keeps bugging me, and feels wrong.
The other thing about imageboards is that shilling, ads, and spam are much easier and there is barely anything that can be done about it. In that sense it is a flawed concept and there is no way of mitigating this, unlike a with a forum or other kind of website would.
In spite of all this problems, I still feel like imageboards are the websites that ressonate the most with me, by their concept, the people who inhabit them, and the culture of them. Obviously all the problems are well-known and everybody has heard about them already, but I felt like writing them down regardless.
Sedated
Reading music: Touhou 1 Highly Responsive to Prayers OST - Iris
Sometimes I wonder what my life would be if I still cared. I've seen this post on 4/g/ and had to think of my past self, who had the same mindset as this Anon. You know, actually caring about having control over technology and not technology having control over you. I suppose it's in principle still a worthwhile endavor, but I have to admit that I don't care about this stuff anymore. Am I demoralized or brainwashed? I mean, I'm not immune to propaganda, nobody is, as such I feel like I might be fallen into a mental trap, an unhelpful way of thinking, however, you can only change what you think, not what you feel. Maybe the spirit has left me and I'm fully sedated, that's it.