Thrilled to Announce

I go to LinkedIn sometimes. Usually it’s because I get an email saying something needs my attention there, which never amounts to anything because I’m not looking for a job.

But I do think it’s funny when people use LinkedIn as a blog. So, in order to piss in the wind or maybe rankle a few people who notice, I post Apocrypha articles there from time to time. I don’t know why. Mostly because the whole exercise amuses me.

My LinkedIn feed is filled with tech people from a former life when I worked in federal policy. I see these folks—either people I’m directly connected to or those I’m one degree of Kevin Bacon removed from—bouncing from evil oligarch company to evil oligarch company.

“I’m thrilled to announce that I’m now the head of the Torment Nexus division at Spoogle. I can’t wait to work with our frontier development team to give Pete Hegseth robot dogs that won’t refuse an order to kill American citizens. Looking forward to finding more ways to undermine human productivity and steal everyone’s intellectual property once and for all. I’m excited to build a digital panopticon to surveil every citizen and trap them in techno-state serfdom.”

Obviously, they don’t say it this way. Instead, there’s this weirdly bloodless vocabulary of “innovation,” as if all technological development were inherently beneficial and the only meaningful question were how quickly it can be deployed. “Maybe someday, we’ll cure cancer. In the meantime, our moonshot nanotech lab just had an exciting breakthrough with gray goo!” Whatever human consequences might follow are always somebody else’s problem, preferably to be addressed after the stock options vest.

And then underneath whatever post is the customary strokefest from paranoid colleagues or would-be hires: “They’re so lucky to have you!” “Huge win for the Torment Nexus team!” “Can’t think of anyone better suited to usher in this exciting new chapter!”

It’s amazing to me that so many overpaid guys—yeah, mostly white guys—think that this is a life. That somehow they’re contributing anything of worth to society besides further dependence on tools of capitalist extraction, cognitive erosion and possible human extinction. But have fun playing wizard, I guess. Hope your smart home has a bunker.

Turn the shit off. Plant a garden. Work in your community. Fix your hearts or die, as David Lynch said.

I’m not able to do anything about it, so go ahead, tech bros. Torch the planet. Build the killbots. Enslave humanity. You won’t get anything out of it. The power will eventually go out. You are finite. But, little buddy, your karmas are real, and they will be expressed.

So good luck exhausting them wherever you end up after you’ve pissed away your humanity in exchange for money and status, always trying to skirt the rules and restrictions that make a society possible. Good luck uploading your consciousness or becoming an immortal cyborg or being one of the favored meatbags of the digital demon you worship. I’m sure it’ll go just as planned.

Can’t wait to post this on LinkedIn.