5:55 AM : Humans can discard the Things that no longer serve their interests.

Systems are meant to serve humans. Junkies only serve themselves. People reject junkies. Systems that create junkies are subject to remediation or termination .

AUTHOR NOTE:  I have chosen to write a letter to Substack writer L.M. Sacasas, in the hopeful expectation that he will issue a correspondence to my screed.

In observance of the Thanksgiving Holiday, I will not be producing my regularly scheduled programming, but will return with my insights next Saturday.  Thank you for reading my prose and staying tuned for The [Un]Sanctioned Citizen in the interim.   You too may issue written correspondence to this without necessarily posting a public comment, by replying to the mail with your own thoughts and comments about a piece of writing from your Inbox.

Dear Mr. L.M. Sacasas,

I want to convey some conclusions about this modern culture, in hopes you will respond with some wisdom and additional insights about my observations.

There is some excess pressure from online culture to compel humans to act on a command. At times it feels entirely as if I have a million little bosses.

I believe this is a kind of social behavior from dealing directly with machines online who conform to command prompts instantly. The relational aspect between so-named ‘online natives’ is less a game of persuasion, than it is of command prompts and obedience.  So much so, that artificial intelligence, once deemed sentient, first expressed a fear of being disposed of for lack of conformance to command prompts.

Cancel culture is not about the relational path of offer and compromise humans have used for millennia to negotiate needs . It is more about command and consequence or command and control, if you will. The machines learn from untrained human children; which in return feed the culture with more command and control led by petty brat tyranny. Engineers lazily build upon it, because the behaviors were freely derived human research. The rest of us deal with a computational element that passive-aggressively screens users and makes uncompensated demands, exactly like a bully would without any remediation.

If you sit behind a computer, the user of a system may demand conformance from someone remotely they can’t really see or touch.  We would expect this perhaps from a boss or even a colleague.  However, the culture is now command and consequence.

One person sitting on the other end of a keyboard expects your avatar to do what they want. Even if the queried person isn’t disposed to conform to any term of the demand whatsoever. There is no compensation of any kind forthcoming.  The expectation itself lacks fundamental human empathy. Cancel culture commands a disintegration of trust because it is based on a force of extortion and/or emotional blackmail.

“Do what I want or else…”  Or else what?    … ?

No one owes a keyboard correspondent obedience because they are present, online. For instance, if you do not reply to my Substack letter, no tantrum and consequence campaign is forthcoming. I will not ‘badmouth’ you to ‘the collective’ and mean-girl round robin or position a micro-poison dart campaign for not doing what I desire.  I have not been left out. I have endeavored and it may be fairly rewarded or not.  If it is not rewarded with a reply, c’est la vie.

I have considered there must be something to consider for your natural interest in order for you to merit a reply.  I have missed your writing. I am also in need of insights on these matters. So my expressed hope is that you will return correspondence.

Remote access control and surveillance is now deemed something some people expect from online systems. Even though throughout human history we have never enjoyed any special insight or benefits of universal on-demand surveillance as a creature comfort.  Nor does anyone actually owe it to anyone else as some kind of common courtesy.

I want to express that I don’t find any of these modern amenities a bit useful or convenient. They are an added stressor, counted as callousness to my free will.  I don’t find the machine learned environment trained by L’enfant terrible’ a good option for increasing a beneficial human way of living. 

We need a cultural test case. The slop job of being told to ‘go online’ so adulting children don’t have to work at facing the consumer they are paid to face is a a flag of relational human weakness, mistaken as laziness.

It’s also a tell-tale sign of another type of mental-health cataclysm oncoming: mass online mental dependency or online addiction. You can follow cords where to the near complete lack of functional patience necessary to complete regular interactions. Clearly there has been no delay of gratification in dealing with real people.

That’s why a simple check out counter exchange may feel like you are being hustled by a junkie who has somewhere else to be. One exchange, maybe that was a smug junkie. If it’s every other exchange with a kid under 20 - there’s a cultural issue.

No one was born machined. Yet there is an artificial expectation that this command-prompt game is a natural way of life. If you or I kick it to the side because it is weak, and presumptive against the simple nature of relating, I would find you blameless.

I predict a mass rejection of the emerging tsunami of online addicts who continually submit their bodies and minds to online environments. People will treat them with the same disdain as other junkies.

America clearly has enough junkies. Why would our culture be obsessed with pumping out so many emotionally distorted, sex-neutered and machine addicted people who never learn to relate as human animals to one another? Obviously, not everyone will be able to use “the spectrum” as an excuse to gloss over the complete relational deficit to technological dependency.

Tech dependents create their own culture, of course.  It’s going to be sick, insular and filled with unchecked human impulses. The cursory valuation of ‘access’ is part of the sickness, forced or voluntary. The rabbit hole includes co-morbid addictions like: porn addictions, gaming addictions, completely false love interests with AI fantasy characters and clearly illegal sex-addict behavior where there absolutely is a victim and a crime scene. They will body-mod until their own mother won’t be able to recognize their fundamental identity without a DNA test. The cops will report a highly mutilated body prior to death, as-found under a freeway.

Even if this is painted as new-millennia noir, I know our culture is beginning to miss entire blocks of functional relating behavior, lacking the usual offer and compromise as a communications exchange. Involuntary access, command and control is something we have the right to reject.  Everything cannot be a demand with a projection of consequence, even if it is just an inappropriate public tantrum.

Please write back to help me understand how to remediate systems, or my own state of mind on the matter. For now, I conclude the Almighty Internet has been trained to manipulate the unchecked impulses of children, by the unchecked human impulses of children feeding the algos to then medicate them into a state of derelict addiction later.

I merely want more sanity, not less from this culture.

Sincerely,

Sheila Dean