Nothing To Marvel At

Cleaning out some old boxes and found a story/essay I'd written in elementary school. I was maybe nine years old at the time. The story's arc is pretty simple: space aliens are invading and only specific knowledge of American military hardware can be counted on to save the world (read: America) from whatever thing(s) the invading aliens did different.

The point of this horrific narrative was I thought it would impress my forebears, in this case not only my immediate father but his paternal power figure as well, aka my Grandfather.

So I did my best to imagine - at 7 to nine years of age - what story would appeal to both generations of parentage, the final desired outcome being the opening of the elder family's proverbial purse-strings and elevating me (and by proxy my family) from rural poverty to....well, whatever was better than that.

Which was pretty much everything.

But I digress. My larger point is this:

To me, this is what the Marvel franchise films feel like; someone tried to write a story that was meant to impress their elder family for whatever selfish reasons and what ended up on screen was a perfectly predictable outcome of that.

What does Facebook do with your nude photos?

Quick: before you let your brain trick you into the safety of "probably nothing" please take into consideration these facts:

• software that identifies nude photos has been functioning "in the wild" for over a decade, i.e., it's not new,
• software that takes said photos and automatically archives them is hilariously easy to deploy,
• why wouldn't a team of misogynists dude-bros create their own unique wank-bank of constantly-updating porn courtesy of blissfully unaware women?
• The US political system has a long history of using intimate/private communications to unseat unfavorable actors

Now I'm not saying this is happening - that's silly - I'm saying the probability of this being the case is high enough to warrant a "this is probably happening." I'll leave the implications up to you.

Facebook is a New Thing, insofar as it doesn't really have an analog in history, which means what we learn from it's eventual demise will be new, too.

I don't know what Facebook really is, and neither do you. I have this gnawing sensation that it ultimately serves - somehow - a tiny percentage of powerful people in a way that undermines the rest of our ability to enjoy a functioning society. I'm not sure even deleting Facebook is enough to get away from this thing.