Does technology ever make you feel paranoid?
I’m not really prone to feelings of paranoia, however, I do know that my cell phone and my computer are always “listening” to me and tracking most of my moves. And even though I do suspect my life would probably bore the poor NSA or Google person assigned to my “case,” it does kind of bug me to know that someone is always up in my business.
One day not too long ago, I was having a benign chit-chat with some random lady at a wedding who was telling me about these really cool new yoga pants she was wearing. Now mind you, she wasn’t even a friend of mine — I don’t even know her name! And, the only reason I was speaking to her was that I was working her best friend’s wedding in my side hustle job. But low and behold, the first time I went on social media after that wedding was over, right there…on my Instagram feed…was an advertisement for the very same brand of yoga pants!
Erg.
I guess the yoga-pants company doesn’t have access to my bank account— thank goodness — because if they did, they would’ve known right away that $200 yoga pants are not a priority purchase in my world — no matter how fantastic these yoga pants make your flabby ass look — and, they would surely suspect that I’m not interested in this product at this time, and that their ad placement on my Instagram feed was a huge waste of their product placement budget.
Allow me to help you out, yoga pants people!
I’m 100% not interested in your product.
So I’m going on the record here and asking you to please go away.
(Because, even if no one else is reading this “for the record,” I know you have been!)
And don’t get me started on this new thing Google is doing on my email!! I guess they felt the need to “help” me qualify the emotional state of my own writing by inserting little emoji’s in the lower right corner of my composition browser to give me some “insight” into the tone of my emails!
What???!!!
As if I need or want that kind of insight??!
Do you know me at all, Google email voyeur??
Clearly, the answer is NO!
(So by all means, add this post to your case file notes about me.)
So now, when I’m typing an email, there are all of these little emoji’s showing up in the corner of my email, and they change up every time I add a new sentence or some kind of noteworthy punctuation. And for me, at least, getting this emoji status report about the tone of my writing is super annoying. And so far, that dumb-ass technology has never been accurate because, as you may already know, I’m a very nuanced communicator!!
I really don’t want my email browser to be judging the quality of my words — I already judge myself enough as it is, and when you’re putting content out in the world, you do it with permission for others to judge you — BUT NOT YOUR COMPUTER! (FYI: That was me being harsh 😡)
Technology, the Internet, and social media create such a weird dance for me.
I would never be able to do what I do as a writer if it weren’t for my computer and the fact that it’s possible to post my thoughts so easily on a regular basis. And the fact that I could create and produce a podcast on my own using a free little app, and then push that content out to Spotify with the click of a button is pretty fantastic.
So I know I’m a huge jerk for complaining because technology gives more than it probably takes in my life. And if you’ve read my blog since the beginning — especially The Imposition Tour content — then you already know that I’m not very secretive about my life or my glaring flaws. I don’t leave a whole lot to be discovered about myself, and I willingly put myself “out there” pretty much every day. I even post stuff on social media — personal stuff — and, I do it with the hopes that someone out there will notice me and want to keep reading…
However, it still really bothers me that my technology is siphoning all of these bits about me, and, I’m completely bothered by the emoji-judgments my email browser is shouting at me from the corner of my screen. But I know there are so many funny little trade-offs in this life, and as a person who seldom can afford the “premium, ad-free, helpful Terms & Conditions type of digital media these days, I guess I really do need to just shut up if I’m going to continue to consume this kind of content.
I can’t expect total privacy in my life when I’m a modern citizen who has placed herself firmly on the grid! And…I guess at the end of the day, two things have always been true, and they will both continue to be true in this life:
