The power of total surveillance is not the monopoly of the high and mighty, and neither is the damage that comes with it.
Good morning! This is your Random Truth (RANT) bulletin with your random food for thought.
Today’s topic: Those with that thing up their thing that makes them do that thing where they re their mouths inappropriately about people ring their mouths inappropriately, all the while pretending they’ve got the right.
You might think that we’re doing the exact same thing right now, ring our trap willy-nilly. Maybe. But hear us out first. We promise to entertain you.
No, I’m not talking about governments spying on people
Today’s topic is righteous indignation, of which there is lots and lots lately: wherever you turn, you hear people talk about other people talk about other people’s public comments, about who tweeted what, who commented where, who bitched about this, that and the other, about the insensitive statement that hurt someone’s feelings, about who offended an individual or a group of individuals with a grossly inappropriate comment. Nothing goes unnoticed, unrecorded, un-judged, or unheard, with an unprecedented amount of public scrutiny placed on everything you and your grandmother said. The game is on, folks. The thought police have finally acquired their weapon of choice: the panoptikon.
No, I’m not talking about governments spying on people. I’m not referring to sinister, clandestine intelligence agencies playing big brother, gathering data and metadata 24/7. I’m talking about something nastier.
I’m talking about Little Snitch.
Little Snitch is a reality. It’s here, in our faces, on our cases, watching everything from the side, acting behind our backs, threatening to report us if we don’t do what it says, if we don’t give in to its temper tantrums and cow down to its demands. It threatens to make our lives miserable by always being there, behind the corner, spying, coveting, pestering. Eager to do us in like Pooh did with Garp, it wants to destroy us in order to make up for the rotten makeup of its soul, for everything it wants but can’t have, drowning us in the envy that chokes it from the second it wakes up to the moment it goes to sleep.
Little Snitch is a reality. It’s here, in our faces, on our cases, watching everything
It wants its nightmares to become ours, so that we may never know a moment’s rest, just like it, always stressed, always festering, spreading the righteous misery. It will kill us if it can, and, just like Pooh again, it shall, at the first opportunity. Take a gun and shoot us, point blank, cold blood etc — take a camera and shoot us in our worst moments, making a public record of what horrific specimens we are, plastering it all over the internet, so that none shall escape the image of a transgression so beautifully caught on camera.
Be careful what you do or say. Everything you say can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion
Welcome to the world of Little Snitch: Big Brother’s shitty little porcupine ally. Be careful what you do or say. Everything you say can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion, where plaintiff, judge and jury are one and the same, happy to try you, sentence you and toss you in the pile of mass-processed suspects that feeds their daily appetite for lashing out at whatever doesn’t suit their needs.
Judgmental? Please! We’ve moved way beyond that. The term is Total Snitching. Kind of like Total War, but with pointed fingers and hissy fits. And high-pitched screams. And pacification. And the ability to pass everything as the function of civilization.
Ever wonder why Rome came crumbling down? Look low, in the corners and shadows, behind the desks and thrones, in the back seats of carriages and inside the marrows of those who broke their bones on the cliffs of history. You’ll find evidence of little snitches getting riled up with everything that didn’t please them, with everything that annoyed and frustrated them, making their incessant complaints to their all-ears society, their advanced society, their sensitized and informed society, their under- performing society, which, living up to its bloated name, proceeded by deeming all claims legitimate. It deemed all claims legitimate, affording every grievance with a platform by which the all-sensitive agoras — and the senates altercating over them — considered the merits of each tempest raised, little by little losing sight of the bigger picture, eroding their good judgment, committing cultural suicide.
Reaching? Maybe. But can you afford to take the chance? Can you afford to find out in due course if we’re indeed reaching?
Time for a change
Everything has an expiration date, a point after which it ceases to function. Democracy is no exception. Freedom is no exception. You think we’re mad, but you’ll thank us for it, in retrospect, when the trash has been hauled out and the system is geared to return to an open society model again.
Until then, scream bloody murder while committing it, and hiss and bitch and snitch at will, helping the transition along. What? You think we’re wrong — that this here thing we live in is a democracy? That Little Snitch allows for an open society to exist? That ship has sailed, my friend! What we have here is the paranoid world of grievance striking willy-nilly to satisfy its perverted sense of fairness. Democracy has long been dead. It was slain in the name of I can, therefore I will, and screw common sense.
Neurosis, on the other hand, is on the rise. Tense Little Snitch rules alongside stout Big Brother, having the time of their lives. Cacophony is all the rage, all the time.
So when we say, Time for a change, we mean time to face the music. Time to engage in a little spring cleaning to get the system back on track, up to scratch, and ready to reboot, to boot.
Ready?
From the RANT headquarters,
Good morning!
PS – Here is a video to elaborate what kind of behavior we’re dealing with so that we can envision the kind of reboot we need to engage in. Behold a man caught between two little snitches and a big, big brother.