I am fed up with this bullshit. Why? Because this is what digital reality looks like, and it looks nothing like I imagined my life to be like.
Online reviews of hotels, restaurants, and all places we want to go to. Google is following closely with each step we take, asking questions about how was the parking situation at the restaurant we went to yesterday. The digital reality is made up of people selling almost everything on Fiverr, from articles, diploma projects and Tinder profile texts.
I am a click away from the new SEO book, which will teach me how to improve my blog and rank on the first page of Google. Instagram is flooding us with kids influencers, selling something through each picture they post, having pics better looking than magazine ads, or some online posters. Each 6th Instagram post I see in my feed has sponsored written on it. (literally)
The first thing I do whenever I change my laptop is to install three different ad blockers. That is if I want to keep the little sanity I have left when browsing the internet. Before each Youtube video, there is a commercial which has been locally targetted, as it is in my mother tongue. Videos longer than 20 minutes have commercial breaks. (which you have to watch, whether you like it or not)
The Facebook ads are targeted to show me over and over again, whatever I googled searched. Over and over again. The news website shows me the exact same ads. And sometimes they even show the things I didn’t search for. Things I only talked about. With the people around me. While my phone was on standby, somewhere nearby. That. Is. Creepy.
I get emails from websites I didn’t even subscribe to, and text messages about the most recent sales the cosmetic stores have. The free apps that I use on my phone show me an ad every 20 seconds that I use them, without being able to skip it for the first 5 seconds.
Each bag that I use or just happen to have in my house has a brand’s name on it, and each product I use has a huge and unnecessary amount of packaging.
To research anything I have to get through half a dozen spammy websites and more tens of minutes which I will never get back.
What bothers me about this digital world we live in?
The lack of direction, perception and meaning. I cannot see a meaning in many products and services available today to us. Like those way-too-many blogs telling others how to build their blog. So much copy-paste. It hurts my eyes.
The vast majority of the internet is made out of copycats: copies of existing content/ideas, in a slightly different shade of editing. I admit there are some cool content creators out there, and it takes time to get there. But I truly dislike all outputs which lack substance, or purpose.
Stop wasting my time, stupid Coca-cola ads. I will never buy your weird, possibly harmful drink, and that’s that. My vision is flooded every day I go around the city with gigantic posters of your logo, which cover entire buildings. Just the thought that hundreds of people have to live in the shadow of Coca-cola colours makes me sad. They literally do. (In Eastern Europe we still have building-sized ads on flat buildings).
The aggressiveness bothers me. Yes, please proceed and create good, quality ads. Bring value to my life. If you want me as your customer, don’t treat me as your product for you to use my time.
Where does this digital reality come from?
The lack of education, the increase in competition of the companies and bad assessment of the social situation. I don’t believe people need more products to fill their life physically and mentally. This is how we purchase our lives every day.
Just because we are trained to have this compulsive behaviour of buying, doesn’t mean that’s good, or that it cannot change. But it could change through education, which nobody is interested in since the few companies that rule the world are happy just like this — having the masses ignorant and thirsty for more clutter to buy.
I have enough clutter already going on, with my own issues. As no parents were perfect, and no childhood was crisis-free, I am sorting that out and figuring out how to live a conscious and meaningful life. Stay away from me with your fail-proof marketing and bad environment/social/human ethics.
What are the results of this digital madness?
I get tired before finding something useful or that I can relate to.
Each time I set foot outside the house, this immense fog called marketing targets me, and there is no escape. No matter how strong your will is, they will always win. They have all the info about you they need to break you down, piece by piece, and then make you their slave. We have willingly given up our souls.
Taking it back is not an option. Too late now, bye-bye.
But trying to set a limit, a line which we on purpose shall not cross may be achievable. Saying “No” to a bullshit movie (as most are) should be a self-imposed limit. Or resisting to buy that new junk toy called squashy, of which sole purpose is to clutter your life, under the false presumption of a stress reliever. (I have the popcorn one.)
Stop buying crap you don’t need because they won’t stop selling it to you.
Once we all realise that, maybe working in that crappy office job which delivers other crap to other people, won’t seem so indispensable. And we decide to do something more meaningful to us. We’ll all end up dead anyway. Just saying.
No wonder some go crazy and are under the impression they can do whatever they want in life. (aka Donald Trump) But if I look at him from this perspective, I think I admire him. He just decided to have things his way. He got it. Now he is on his way of meeting the dictator of North Korea. I mean, he is like the cool dad most Americans never had.
The bottom line of the digital life, ads, marketing, an overly-aggressive-and-intrusive world
Information gets buried, and we don’t even have time to notice it because of the huge crap that lies on top of it. Without bad, we won’t be able to recognize the good. But enough already.
As I check early the weather online, I was so kindly reminded that I need to buy a sofa, and it was brought to my attention the existence of another sports bets website. (That is because I work for a crypto football manager game, and the algorithm guessed that’s what I browse all day long.)
Google, I hope you read this. And that one day, you will encourage real-life content, useful answers to the many questions people have. Because people like me need to know what to do to have healthier relationships and less stress in their lives. No, we don’t need to be chased by my past week Amazon searches.
PS. I wonder what happens when someone else browses the internet from my laptop. Does that screw with my psychical profile?
[…] they try to sell you stuff. But not just any stuff. Something you like or look for. Because now, they have something they didn’t have before: your personal details. Everything you ever put out there, in the online, it’s there forever, and they will use it […]
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I get your frustration 🙂 love the way you’ve written this, seems better thought through and more genuine than your other posts. keep it up! it’s true, we’re constantly led into all sorts of traps that we can not escape, because we lack the knowledge and did not put in the introspection, to find out what we really want.
after putting in 12 years of building my career and launching a couple of businesses in tech, being super fond of the field and what it can achieve, i must say i am utterly disappointed. all i see is misuse and abuse, mainly due to greed, as you point out.
how am i supposed to work on something i see as creating, rather than solving problems? in my limited experience, those are actually the ones that are most fruitful.
the bad news is there is little we can do about it. look what happened to blockchain technology. a libertarian’s wet dream, a promise of a meritocratic society, turned into lamborghini memes, speculators and fraudsters. misuse and abuse of a hype.
every sociologist worth his salt will tell you there has been no successful ideology; despite the author’s or group of author’s intention, it ended up going sideways. the answer seems to be self-enlightenment and education, and a lot of patience. you can’t battle everybody and expect to win.
i will most likely fail in my pursuit of generating a lot of value in today’s market. while i started with a lot of enthusiasm, i now fail to see the point in it. being unwilling to squeeze my employees dry, and unwilling to implement schemes and plots that drain and do harm to customers won’t help, either.
the good news is, on a global and historical scale, everything is getting better. less poverty, less scarcity. less people dying from disease. Ancient Rome had Marcus Aurelius and gladiators, at the same time. At the time of the French revolution, we were still burning witches. Marcus Aurelius and Jean Jacques Rousseau works’ survived. The gladiators and witch burnings did not. Slowly, things are getting better.
Edison was 60 when his factory and lab burned. He had thousands of prototypes in there, and all his life’s savings invested in it. All he did was call for his wife and children to see the fire, because it was burning in vivid colors from the chemicals in the factory. He went out and quadrupled his income that year, saying the burning of the factories relieved him of the cluter in his life.
Or the conquered king(can’t remember the name) who stepped out of his burning castle. He was asked by the conqueror, mockingly, how he is doing. Calmly, he answered: “All i have, i carry with me”.
While i feel your pain and frustration, we can look at the very good things that are happening around us, and rest assured those are the ones we will keep as a society. The bad washes away, fades with time. And by being sincere and true to ourselves, accept calmly the things around us, we can be successful, at least by our measure. “The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.” Nikola Tesla
Wow. Thank you for taking the to read my post and to write your own opinions on this matter. (full of marketing, which is drowning in ads)
I believe knowledge an education will bring a brighter future, as you also pointed out. May these ideas get viral and spread more than the marketing campaigns that try to manipulate the masses.
We are over that, we lived it already. Time to move on.