Frens in distant places

Life has become weird to say the least. Not just for me, for everyone. I feel like we’re living in an era of bizarre cognitive dissonance, some leaders giving grave warnings of world conflict, some with messages of strength and hope for the future, and some right here at home holding a can of gasoline and a match getting ready to burn it all down.

I think one of the reasons recovering from caregiving and getting back on track has been extra difficult is the outside circumstances. Whatever chaos has been going on internally within me, I used to be able to check in with the world outside for some reassurance that I was still grounded, that the world was moving along as expected. No more.

It has come to my attention that I have a new surveillance fren. Every day almost, I get a digital visitor from a Chinese IP address. I never used to until I posted on the Bluesky app. I made an account for Tea Horse Studio there because I’m always looking for places to get my work seen. Algorithms are not the friend of creative people, they are the friend of trends and trends must be useful to the people running the platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tiktok, etc. What they deem useful is not what you and I deem useful. I used to get more engagement on Facebook and then it became a NotFun experience, so I dropped it. I used to get engagement on Twitter and Instagram but that also dropped off precipitously because I don’t behave and post “content” in a way that fits their algorithm. New platforms take a bit to get off the ground and sometimes you can get yourself out there organically in the beginning moments. Granted Bluesky has been around a bit but there was an influx of new accounts like mine because Twitter became Nazi-central. I went so far as to put my website link up when I shared my work but after a bit I had to take that down. See: previous post “New Rule.”

Since joining Bluesky, I now have a regular IP visitor. It’s not always the same IP number but the numbers almost always come from Beijing. In looking up the location of the IP addresses, they’re not deemed fraudulent, known for run-of-the-mill scams, that kind of thing, but they are assigned to a company that manages IPs for several companies, the biggest one being Amazon and a whole host of Chinese companies and entities. Now what on earth is Amazon and China doing checking up on me via a third party proxy?

Smart devices are simply surveillance devices. I think it’s really sad that we’re in an era of authoritarian countries and nation states along with ultra wealthy people who are so emotionally immature, so insecure, so paranoid, so greedy and so devoid of ideas of their own that they expend any amount of energy on individual websites to [ping] on a daily basis. China has a several thousands-year history and deep culture. Have they devolved and fallen so far that the current leadership is petty enough to keep tabs on my shop page? Don’t they have better things to do? How sad and pathetic.

People talk about the demise of our democracy with the advent of the incoming clown show administration, with good reason but my word, China’s foundations and principles (and those of these broligarchs) are balancing on a rickety foundation when surveillance of every single god damned puny human on planet earth becomes your priority. Get a grip, Xi and Jeff Bezos.

Human authenticity cannot be replicated by computers by the very nature of it. No super quantum computers will ever manage to digitally manifest the frens and workers these emotionally insecure “leaders” desire. At this point, I don’t even know if years of therapy or meditative practice will help them either. But if I had to offer a word of advice to anyone reading out there, even if it’s a human at the other end of the Amazon/Beijing IP address, there is no replacement for real human connection. Because Pi, Phi, and irrational numbers. Learn to connect with real humans, real humans in your own local community. This blog post is just a tool to prompt that, not a substitution. It’s a prompt to think, to ponder, to contemplate. What you make of this is merely a manifestation of your mind. How you choose to connect is up to you. Make it genuine, make it come from a place of kindness and compassion, but make it real.