Spotify: Unsubscribed.
Netflix: Unsubscribed.
Disney+: Unsubscribed.
Mubi: Unsubscribed.
Tinder, Bumble, Feeld: Eliminated.
Only subscription-based services offered by cloud-feudal-lords I remain tethered to now are Microsoft, Adobe, and Amazon Prime, the latter which will go next once I make the full transition back to full ownership of a media library, and relocate to a place that doesn’t necessitate the purchase of most things from an online "marketplace". A transition I am presently working on making within the next few weeks.
Adobe and Microsoft (although Microsoft a little less so) may be tough to completely detach from given the nature of my practice, but I imagine advancements in AI will make that much easier in years to come, given that AI is becoming increasingly good at writing entire code for you. Granted, the kind of code necessitated to create software as complex as say, Photoshop, is nowhere within AI’s reach right now, but it’s getting better very fast and is bound to get there sooner or later. While AI is presently responsible for much evil, we can at least look forward to the day when it inevitably puts the majority of tech-bros out of work (and it most certainly will), thus ending the next crop of Zucks and Musks hellbent on world-domination before they can even try.
Some may find it surprising to see me sing the praises of AI’s potential given what I wrote in
RF 213: The [Inherent] Evil of Techno Optimism, but recall what I wrote in
RF 2013: AI Everything. I’m a city boy, always have been, so you won’t see me going completely off-grid anytime soon. But there are enough knobs and dials at our disposal to allow for a fair degree of control regarding how much we want to completely rely on the complex systems owned and controlled by billionaires in order to merely exist as city-dwelling humans in the 21
st century. And right now I’d like to tune those knobs and dials to a setting that doesn’t see the majority of my income trickle up into the pockets of despicable billionaires I have no desire to further enrich. I’d like as much as possible to see most of my expenditures go directly to people putting in the labor towards the things I use, and that entails paying direct to artists, musicians, artisans, authors, farmers, butchers, cooks, carpenters, glassblowers, metalworkers, papermakers, small shop owners and what have you. It means evading mega-corporations as much as possible and making the majority of payments in cash (if I can) to avoid having “micro-fees” shaved off and confiscated by third-party financial institutions. It means being somewhere where all that is still possible.
It means leaving America, which is exactly what I’ll be doing. For the most part anyway. Knobs and dials and all that.
Ganzeer
Houston, TX
05.02.25
P.S. Image at the top is from
THE SOLAR GRID #2, produced in 2016. To those keeping tabs, I'm presently hard-at-work on the final chapter.
