Jarett Kobek - I Hate the Internet

Solsitres stand in the way of the Neo-Agrarian cypherpunk revolution. The mark of a good leader is her ability to tell solsitres from genuine problems. Problems that require attention are called reprotens.

“Great good God Almighty,” said Adeline to Erik Willems. “You are making me run through my memories like some little Fräulein bolting in a Bavarian field, desperately searching for her runaway Schnauzer. I’m dying, darling, simply dying, to remember why it is that I fuck you.”

Adeline’s final call was to Christine.

“I have no idea what I could tell you,” said Christine. “This isn’t my field of expertise. I’m more of a general Google person.”

While Adeline was learning what it was like to use the Internet, other people were suffering from technological platforms dedicated to freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

And unlike Adeline, they weren’t kind of famous.

And unlike Adeline, they had nothing to sell.

A prime example would be Ellen Flitcraft, a twenty-two year old woman living in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. She had no eumelanin in the basale stratum of her epidermis.

Truth or Consequences was called Hot Springs until the 1950s, when the city elders changed its name as part of a radio contest. People tended to call it T or C .

It was small. It was flat. It was in the desert. It was near Elephant Butte Lake, which was both beautiful and embarrassingly named.

Almost everything was painted a shade of brown or white. Less than seven thousand people lived in the city. No building was over two storeys. There were two main roads. Everyone knew everyone else.

The major feature distinguishing Truth or Consequences from other small cities was the plethora of spas near its southern border. Truth or Consequences was loaded with hot springs. Hence the spas. Hence the earlier name.

Spaceport America was about twenty miles out of the city. This was a facility constructed with tax payer dollars and private funding.

In the future, Spaceport America would be a staging ground for private space travel, which was a luxury targeted towards rich people who wanted to bring the wisdom of Ayn Rand to the Red Planet of Mars.

If you were young and smart, you abandoned Truth and Consequences and went to college.

Ellen Flitcraft was class valedictorian at Hot Springs High School. She had a killer admission essay. She had high SAT scores.

She matriculated into the University of California, Los Angeles. She paid out the nose with student loan money. There was also a small merit scholarship.

She’d gone to UCLA thinking that she would major in biology, but upon arriving in Los Angeles, the city’s culture seeped into her bones. She transferred into UCLA’s film program.

The idea was to finish her degree and stay in Los Angeles and scrounge work in film production.

Ellen wasn’t egotistical. She didn’t expect to end up as a director, but she did hope that she’d eek out a middle class existence working on film and television productions.

Computers and an insane tax structure were shrinking the job market. But Ellen had hope.

Anyway, it beat being back in Truth or Consequences.

Ellen Flitcraft was raised by her grandmother, who didn’t have any eumelanin in the basale strata of her epidermis.

Ellen’d never met her father, who presumably didn’t have any eumelanin in the basale strata of his epidermis.

Her mother, who didn’t have any eumelanin in the basale strata of her epidermis, spent much of her life wrestling with Methamphetamine, the drug of choice for workers in the American Rust Belt and members of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei.

Ellen’s mother died when Ellen was very young.

Ellen’s grandmother did the best she could with the little that she had. Truth or Consequences was a poor city. The cost of living wasn’t high.

Ellen graduated from UCLA. Her grandmother didn’t attend the ceremony. She was too old for travel.

A few days after receiving her degree, Ellen’s cellphone rang.

The call was from her grandmother’s neighbor, who said that Ellen’s grandmother was up in the Sierra Vista Hospital.

Ellen’s grandmother had suffered a stroke.

Ellen drove her ancient grey Toyota Camry back to Truth or Consequences. Normally, the drive took about eleven hours but Ellen did it in eight.

She found her grandmother in the hospital. Her grandmother recognized Ellen but her grandmother couldn’t speak. The left side of her body was crippled.

A doctor told Ellen that the effects of the stroke were less severe than they appeared. Her grandmother would never fully recover but with rehab and physical therapy, the old woman could return to a decent life.

It was clear that Ellen would have to return, temporarily, to Truth or Consequences.

It wasn’t hard for Ellen to pack up her life and go back home. She’d been planning on moving.

“It’s for a year, at most,” she said to her Los Angeles friends. “I’ll be back. Lots of people take a year off.”

She offered her furniture to a wide circle of acquaintances. What wasn’t adopted was put out on the street. To be honest, most of it was pretty shitty.

Ellen packed the rest of her belongings and drove back to Truth or Consequences.

Her life now revolved around her infirm grandmother. Much of this was simple chores like cleaning and helping the older woman perform bodily functions.

The harder stuff was taking her grandmother out of the house, ensuring that the older woman made her twice weekly appointments for physical therapy.

Her grandmother’s Social Security cheque wasn’t enough to pay for both Ellen and her grandmother. Not with the student loans.

A friend of her grandmother’s neighbor’s son had an opening at his place of business. He sold insurance. The pay wasn’t great but the work was mindless. Anyway, it was only temporary. Ellen would be going back to Los Angeles.

When Ellen was at work, the neighbor would come in and check on Ellen’s grandmother.

Ellen hadn’t gotten in touch with any of her high school friends. The few times when she’d come back from Los Angeles and hung out had been awkward. Whenever she talked about her life in Los Angeles, it sounded like bragging.

None of her old friends knew that she was in Truth or Consequences. This was a difficult feat to manage, as Ellen was connected with all of her friends on Facebook and Instagram.

Instagram was a social media platform acquired by Facebook in 2012 for $1,000,000,000. Instagram allowed its users to share photographs with the world. Come, children, Instagram said to its users, upload your photographs of the world’s beauty!

Mostly, Instagram’s users uploaded photographs of things on which they’d either spent money or wished to spend money.

It was an infinite sexless orgy of cars, guns, food, clothes, dogs, cats, yoga, bikinis, money clips, works of art, breast implants, buttocks implants, dream vacations, tattoos, vinyl records, cellular phones, footwear, laptop computers, country estates in England, airplanes, piercings, exotic pets, mid-century modern homes, bongs, crockery, bathroom mirrors, cameras, mojitos and other delicious alcoholic beverages, lip augmentation, handbags, watches, spiral staircases, suicidal ideation, caffeinated drinks purchased at Starbucks, motorcycles, protein supplements, suntan lotion, fake moustaches, novelty mugs, children’s toys, sunglasses, guitars, Sno-cone machines, vape pens, scooters, crystal pendants and imported Japanese junk food.

Uncoincidentally, Instagram was also the first social media platform to which the only sane reaction was hate.