Author Archives: Steve Mays
The MAGA movement is a bell curve… that has peaked
The MAGA movement, based on aging white boomer victimhood is a bell curve. […] White boomers never faced the great depression, or a world war, yet we were particularly susceptible to the idea that we were victims of hardships. “Whatever the fuck is wrong here, it must be someone else’s fault. Women. Immigrants. Black people.”
After lifetimes of leaning into consumerism and mass consumption we boomers woke up to find ourselves angry and reactive to our own disconnection. Maybe a bigger SUV would help? Maybe a third marriage? […] Retirement is when a strange unnamed panic really set in for boomers. No longer able to rely on the stale connection of surface level workplace relationships, we were left sitting alone in our easy chairs staring at the Tucker Carlsons of the Fox News rabbit hole.
Trump is the ongoing final act of angry white boomers. No longer did we have to coyly perform the wink wink of coded racist language about welfare queens and urban crime. We were liberated to march with Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, our creeping panic weaponized into authoritarian rage.
For MAGA boomers to admit now, at this terribly late date, that all the white privilege and rage in the world isn’t calming our loneliness or our growing panic, means looking back on 70 years or more and admitting we fell prey to our most selfish, ugly, bullying instincts.
Horoscope
What is an office?
Master of the Internet
DJI Avata
The virtual reality thing (as I understand it) hold no appeal for me. But I would be willing to strap on some goggles for a drones-eye-view of some interesting place. This is already a thing, yes?
My friend George recently got his hands on the DJI Avata, a pricey ($1388) little drone you fly with goggles and a joystick.
Reminiscent of William Gibson’s simstim. “…recorded sensoriums, like racing a black Fokker ground-effect plane across the Arizona mesa tops; diving the Truk Island preserves.”
Jessie
Meet Jessie, the newest member of our family. She’ll be joining us the first week of December. Riley will finally have a new butt to sniff.
Gen Z is over Facebook
Facebook, once the go-to social media platform for many, has plummeted in popularity among younger users, according to a Pew Research Center survey.
In a 2015 overview, Pew found that 71% of teens ages 13 to 17 used Facebook. It easily beat out platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter among that demographic.[…] By 2022 the share of 13- to 17-year-olds who said they use Facebook dropped from 71% in the 2015 study to 32% today.
Is Facebook’s monopoly imploding?
That’s the premise of an article by Edward Ongwesso Jr.
What seemed impossible just a year or two ago—that Facebook will become just another tech company, more or less—now seems like a very real possibility. […] In a Q1 earnings call, Facebook warned that Apple’s 2021 privacy changes to its iOS operating system—which makes it harder for third parties like Facebook to harvest data to target users—would be “a pretty significant headwind for our business” to the tune of $10 billion in advertiser revenue this year. […] over the past four quarters, Facebook’s ad revenue has faltered: $33.67 billion (Q4 ‘21), $26.998 billion (Q1 ‘22), $28.152 billion (Q2 ‘22), and $27.2 billion (Q3 ‘22), with first-ever year-over-year declines reported these last two quarters.
Facebook is still a gigantic force that has spread an endless amount of disinformation and misinformation worldwide, a hugely important platform, and a monopolistic company; this cannot be waved away simply because the company is grossly incompetent. […] There is a possible near future, if we’re not already there, where Meta is just another company rather than a world-shaping monolith, having been outfoxed and outclassed by more competent monopolies and wrecked by the hubris of its chief executive.