“Choose
life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking
big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and
electrical tin can openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and
dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a
starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching
luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of
fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a
Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing
spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth.
Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a
miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish,
fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your
future. Choose life … But why would I want to do a thing like that? I
chose not to choose life: I chose something else. And the reasons? There
are no reasons…
…The truth is that I’m a bad person. But, that’s
gonna change – I’m going to change. This is the last of that sort of
thing. Now I’m cleaning up and I’m moving on, going straight and
choosing life. I’m looking forward to it already. I’m gonna be just like
you. The job, the family, the fucking big television. The washing
machine, the car, the compact disc and electric tin opener, good health,
low cholesterol, dental insurance, mortgage, starter home, leisure
wear, luggage, three piece suite, DIY, game shows, junk food, children,
walks in the park, nine to five, good at golf, washing the car, choice
of sweaters, family Christmas, indexed pension, tax exemption, clearing
gutters, getting by, looking ahead, the day you die.”—Trainspotting
“In
social media’s early heyday—the time of Occupy and the Arab Spring—big
tech was heralded in the mainstream as a democratizing force, but it’s
become clear that these commercial platforms aren’t serving the public
good. In fact, these platforms consolidate the worst extremes of
neoliberal ideology. While users are turned into products, the ruling
class becomes increasingly powerful and unaccountable to the people.
Digital
infrastructure offers no true space for dissent when it is privately
owned. Online activism only serves to direct atomized attention to
advertisers. This process mirrors the shift of public wealth to private
hands, whereby what were once shared resources (e.g. libraries) become
data-optimized, privatized operations. Work and life are merged entirely
and solidarity disappears behind corporate smokescreens. Underneath the
technophilic rhetoric of progress lies a race for information,
financial, and labor control that ensures growth is the domain of only
the rich and the few.”
