How To Resist
Introduction
The internet and the world are long on gloom and doom and extremely short on practical suggestions for how to resist the doom they’re so gloomy about.
I’ve been listening to the audiobook of The Nerd Reich by Gil Duran. It explains how big tech embraced fascism and the “philosophical” roots of a lot of what these guys are trying to do. (I put “philosophical” in quotes because most of it is Peter Thiel read a book in college. But there’s some nazi stuff and of course Ayn Rand thrown in to boot.) It’s a fascinating, depressing read, and it has changed the way I view our current moment.
We have a fascist state in large part because big tech wants us to have a fascist state. Actually they want us to have no state at all. They want a dictatorship of the tech elite with the goal of destroying all nations and having us all be serfs in their little tech enclaves. This is actually some of the less unhinged stuff they believe. They also believe that they are literally creating a vengeful AI God that will punish those who tried to slow its progress and also free the elect from death. I’m not kidding. They believe this.
Big tech has, through the magic of having a lot of money, effectively captured the United States government. But make no mistake—this is a global project. These guys (yep, pretty much all guys) are quite open about their disdain for democracy and their rage at not being summarily put in charge of the entire world because they are so smart and awesome. If you want the details, I encourage you to read Duran’s book or just do some searches about TESCREAL, The Network State, Accelerationism, Rationalists, and The Sovereign Individual.
So I think we in the US need to reframe how we look at our current problem. Yes, it is partly a Republican vs. Democrat problem, but it’s more broadly a Big Tech vs. Humanity problem. They’ve used their wealth to fund fascism, and they won’t stop actively working to subvert and destroy democracy no matter who is in office.
Which makes all of us collaborators. It’s tough to come to terms with this because we haven’t been physically invaded. But the interesting thing about technology is that it allows you to capture a population without firing a shot. So we are actively aiding our enemies by giving them our time, our money, our attention, and our respect.
Well, okay, the respect has pretty much evaporated—most people view Elon Musk as a dangerous clown who doesn’t know he’s an idiot, and if people have heard of Peter Thiel, they probably think of him as the guy who’s gone around the bend making speeches about the Antichrist.
But everything else? We are all in bed with our enemies. And so I’d like to give us all (Because I am extremely far from perfect in this or any other area) some pointers on how to stop collaborating with the people who want to destroy us. It’s not easy because they’ve pandered to our desire for connection and convenience, and so giving some of this stuff up is going to mess with both. But trust an old guy—it’s all doable.
I’m not going to get into anything that requires a lot of tech knowledge because if you’re the kind of person who feels confident putting Graphene OS on your phone or whatever, you already know about this stuff and don’t need me to tell you. I’m pitching this at most of us who look at our phones and computers the way we look at cars: we know how to operate the thing but have no idea what goes on under the hood.
Tips
Roll your own storage. I’ve written before about the joy of having Network Attached Storage in your home, but if that’s intimidating, let me encourage you to buy an external hard drive. You can get a 4 terabyte external hard drive on newegg.com for under 200 bucks. That’s ample storage for all your documents, contacts, photos, and music. It might get tight if you do a lot of video editing or music production, I guess. But—no more Dropbox, no more iCloud, no more giving your data to Big Tech to train AI with.
Buy a planner. I got this one in green with my name printed on the cover for 30 bucks. Think about all the information about your life that your calendar contains. Don’t just give that to the Big Tech ghouls to monetize. Keep it for yourself. “But it’s not searchable!” Actually it is. You can search it by flipping through pages. I read this in the breathless review of the new Siri that ran in the New York Times’ Wirecutter: “Siri AI was able to recall the exact dates I went on trips to Las Vegas this year, identifying that I went twice.” Or you could page through your calendar and look at where you wrote VEGAS in big letters. I bet it wouldn’t be that hard and you might also be reminded of something else cool that you did or experienced along the way!
Get off corporate social media. I know this is a tough one because for some folks, social media is a lifeline because they live in communities that are hostile to their identites and values. If that’s you, or even if you just like social media for fun, please check out this page and video about the fediverse. Tl;dr—you can have social media without being a Big Tech collaborator.
But also? I’d like to encourage us all (very much including me!) to consider whether the connections we make on social media are coming at the expense of real world connections. Like, are you not actually joining in-person book groups with real humans because Goodreads scratches that itch for you? In the last few years of my mom’s life, she spent a lot of time on Facebook, staying connected with her extended family but also having a lot of pointless fights about politics. I can’t help wondering if she could have gotten a healthier sense of connection by just going to the same coffee shop every morning.
Actually this is a life hack: showing up in the same place at the same time regularly is a great way to connect with actual humans. This happens to me at the park walking my dog, and it used to happen to me in coffee shops and libraries when I was writing full time. Just show up somewhere and eventually you’ll wind up talking to the other people who also show up there.
My advice on getting off corporate social media is to go one service at a time. Start with Facebook and see how it feels to not have that taking up space in your life. Then maybe move on to Instagram. Or Youtube. Or Goodreads. Leave the service you like most for last so that you can look back on your earlier experiences leaving a social media platform to bolster your confidence that you can do it.
“But I like social media!” See fediverse, above, but also: do you? Like, do you really? Or does it give you a quick high followed by a nasty comedown? Do you really think it’s healthy for you to stalk your exes? Do you actually need to know every time someone from your high school has a child or a colonosocopy?
“But I need social media to promote my art/small business!” No you don’t. What you need is a website and a mailing list. I’ll write more about this soon.
- Don’t use AI. I know some people are forced to use it at work. If you’re one of them, I encourage you to figure out some malicious compliance. (Actually given all the stories I’m seeing about CEOs freaking out about their employees burning through expensive AI tokens that they were told to burn through when they were cheap, I think malicious compliance is pretty widespread in this area already.)
But at home? Don’t use the AI that comes baked into your phone, your word processor, your almost everything these days. Download Libre Office, an AI-free office suite that is free and actually works better than what you’re probably using. if you’re making a flyer for your event, don’t use AI. If you’re writing literally anything anywhere that you expect a human to read, don’t use AI. Just don’t. It is bad for the environment in general and especially for the low-income communties forced to host data centers. Sure, your flyer isn’t going to make or break Open AI, but it does make you a collaborator with the anti-human agenda. Also? It makes you look like an asshole. Sorry. People will actively avoid your event if you advertise it with AI. I would sooner go to something whose flyer was hastily scrawled with a Sharpie than one whose flyer was made with AI.
Seriously. It’s bad politically, it’s bad environmentally, and, despite what they want us to believe, it’s far from inevitable. If you are recycling but still using AI? I think you’d be better off setting your single-use plastics and cardboard boxes on fire in the street and quitting AI. Burning the planet down in order to save five minutes is a really shitty thing to do to your children and grandchildren. (or those of your friends and loved ones) Stop it.
BTW, one way to cut AI use is to stop using Google search (which sucks now anyway) and use Duckduckgo. Go to the duckduckgo settings and click on AI features and select “off” “no” and “never” to every setting you find.
Also you can get in touch with people using AI and say, “hey, I’m not coming to your event because of your horrible AI flyer,” or “Not buying your album because of the AI cover,” or whatever.
- Buy dumb whenever possible. Anything “smart”—fridge, nightlight, air conditioner, space heater, whatever—is collecting data on you and those around you and also making you dependent on the internet which makes you dependent on big tech. And boy howdy is this true of cars too. Buy the car with the fewest “smart” features you can find because the cameras on your car make you a free rolling surveillance drone in service of Big Tech, but also they’re fundamentally trying to make you rent the car instead of own it. If you have to pay for subscriptions to make things work, don’t buy. Keep your old car. Fix it up.
Conclusion
The biggest enemies of democracy and freedom in the world right now are American tech companies. Disengage with them as much as possible. Unsubscribe to their services. Don’t use their “free” products. Starve them of your money, your data, and your attention however you can.
I know this is difficult. It’s difficult for me.
But come on. We grew up watching movies like Terminator and The Matrix and Star Wars and believed that we’d be the ones hiding out and striking blows against an evil empire. This comes with a certain level of inconvenience.
The bad news is that the evil empire is here, and it’s in your pocket. The good news is, you can fight it without having to do violence or sleep outdoors. Or spend time in a gross, damp cave or whatever that was that the people in the Matrix lived in.
Get resisting.