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DISCLAIMER: THIS IS A RANT
Consumerism. All of us are consumers, so none of us are in the place to lecture people on their lifestyle choices, no matter what we do in life—suffering was probably involved or we have negatively impacted the planet in some way, we are just not consciously aware.
Smart Phones
To manufacture the smart phone/devices we all have, it requires 12,670L just to produce the single product. Now look at how normalised smart devices are, how common they are. Think of all the water it would have taken to produce the phones you have in your back pockets next time you are in a group of people. That is just water consumption during the production process, not the CO2 emissions.
Data Centres
Internet is one of THE LARGEST sources of water consumption. Did you know that in most data centres, 40% of the facility is dedicated to cooling systems? A standard large sized data centre consumes the same amount of energy that 50,000 homes consume in a single day. In order to cool that much, it requires around 19 MILLION LITRES of water DAILY.
And did you know that not all data centres are ‘active’ data centres, there are data centres that sit there idly, waiting for the main data centre to fail so it can fulfil its job as the backup. There are data centres consuming that much power while not in active use, just waiting for a potential fail to keep companies like Amazon and Netflix running smoothly.
Meta
Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat. Meta. In 2023, Meta’s data centres consumed ~14,975,435 MWh of electricity. Do you know how much water alone meta consumed in 2023 to cool its data centres? 3881 Megalitres. That is 3.88 BILLION LITRES. And the demand for social media is growing. (Your whole feed is curated using AI!)
I say this because I am peeved. I am peeved when I am told off that my choice to wash the dishes in the sink is worse than putting my dishes in the dishwasher. I don’t like to be lectured about which facilities I use are bad for the environment.
The bus or the car you take to work uses petrol, that petrol was likely taken from a middle eastern country that has not known peace due to it’s oil facilities, and they are constantly under siege from foreign countries.
The cobalt used in your smart device’s lithium-ion batteries was probably mined using child labour.
Same goes for the cocoa in your chocolate. The coffee beans in your morning beverage.
I am not a saint, I partake in EVERYTHING I just listed. But for the love of God, I will not take someone judging me or others for a minor scale pleasure, because when you look at the big picture—we are all at collective fault. We are consumers, and unless we are all ready to lay down our swords, it is just going to keep growing. Technology it developing faster than the eye can see, and we cannot keep up.
In this perfect world, I am not perfect. But I will keep trying my best. I eat a vegan diet because I want to minimise my carbon footprint, I don’t have active meta accounts, I grow my own veggies and water them with potable water—but I still buy from large supermarkets because I do not have time to be self-sufficient, I forage, I walk if I can or I carpool when I have the opportunity to. But that is still not perfect, as I type this I am consuming the exact thing I just complained about. There is no perfect in this imperfect world as long as there is a demand. And, oh boy, is there a demand. Just do your best, do what you believe will have an impact and keeps your conscience clean at night. You got this. It all accumulates, I guess.
Just, before ANYONE criticises someone’s actions or choices unless it’s immediately causing harm to another, just reflect. I have left out so much detail, and I am not going into it because frankly, it’s too much and I don’t want to.
(I have links to the cites I used for the figures if you want to do your own research)
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started writing this a few hours ago when i first saw this ask, then decided against posting but i've since changed my mind. there really is no justification for it outside of entitlement. even from a selfish lens, there's no long term benefit to its usage. it harms the world and culture in more ways than one.
a.) the water and energy usage that isn't a secret at this point. "no ethical consumption under capitalism" yadda yadda and yeah corporations are extremely culpable in the state of the environment but there really is no need for chatgpt and the planet is already too delicate at the moment.
b.) the exploitation of workers in the global south. this program is not just a computer figuring it all out, there are in fact humans behind it. it reminds me of the acceptance of fast fashion and how people have the tendency to divorce the idea of the garment worker from the garment they wear when all clothing is handmade in some way, shape or form. you need hands to man a sewing machine, you need human eyes to moderate content. also, content moderation can be a thankless job with psychological repercussions.
c.) the erosion of social skills, humanity and media literacy...this one is very personal. like, you have a cushy email job but can't write an email? you need a computer and a worker in kenya to get paid a dollar an hour to figure out a daily routine for you? i've seen the program churn out blatantly incorrect information. fine tuning a prompt or chat or whatever to give you the exact (possibly incorrect) answer you need isn't really that much less work than sharpening your research skills by cracking open a dictionary or using boolean search keys in google. again, the main issue with this kind of stuff is the entitlement to convenience, with no thought towards the repercussions within and outside of us. we are losing major recipes (critical thinking and media literacy) here, people!
i probably did an iffy job are coherently articulating my thoughts here but i am in fact, human. and that’s the beauty of it all.
Oct 1, 2024
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Meta-irony is the fantastical pallet in which I choose to paint my world.
I find myself following confusing paths to strange allusions.
Sentences that switch back on themselves and examine the writer for meaning,
And truly burn them during a burial at sea to sink beneath waves of witticisms and filler words
Like, it’s, okay, um, well, god; physical eye rolls careen over bodies of the learned
And silence is resented.
Seek visual silence and youre staring into space
I seek the stimulation of little scrolling stories and their sixty second arcs
The recaps of art I will only ever see from this side of the fence
Obscured by toggles and buttons. UX and UI blurring my experience and sharpening my understanding
Trapped in a cage of something else’s design, in someone else’s device
What I hold is not my own. It is not of me, it has grown attached to me.
A leech I love so dearly we share skin. A parasite I make space for.
My mind has holes where morals should be. Blasted out by years of prank videos
Of multi-channel networks, family vlogging channels, relationship advice gurus, discord moderators
I am the seed sown by excitement for lazer collections, gmod idiot box, and home made stop motion lego Star Wars parody music videos
Perverted in bad faith at the hands of a digital monster let loose by its creator
To put the potential for profitability through exploitation in the hands of the proletariat too occupied by dreams of influence to see how they are being led to the altar by the collar.
Asked to sacrifice time or spirit or soul to be left hollowed out by the house before it inevitably wins
The will is no match for the cold, mechanical force of algorithms whose nature is dictated by watch times
One sided engagement over engaged interaction
I watched too much YouTube as a kid and now I know everything
Dec 29, 2024
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Apologies if this is strongly worded, but I'm pretty passionate about this. In addition to the functions public-facing AI tools have, we have to consider what the goal of AI is for corporations. This is an old cliché, but it's a useful one: follow the money. When we see some of the biggest tech companies in the world going all-in on this stuff, alarm bells should be going off. We're seeing a complete buy in by Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and even Meta suddenly pivoted to AI and seems to be quietly abandoning their beloved Metaverse. For decades, the goal of all these companies has always been infinite growth, taking a bigger share of the market, and making a bigger profit. When these are the main motivators, the workforce that carries out the labor supporting an industry is what inevitably suffers. People are told to do more with less, and cuts are made where C-suite executives see fit at the detriment of everyone down the hierarchy. Where AI is unique to other tangible products is that it is an efficiency beast in so many different ways. I have personally seen it affect my job as part of a larger cost-cutting measure. Microsoft's latest IT solutions are designed to automate as much as possible in favor of having actual people carry out typically client-facing tasks. Copy writers/editors inevitably won't be hired if people could instead type a prompt into ChatGPT to spit out a product description. Already, there are so many publications and Substacks that use AI image generators to create attention-grabbing header and link images - before this, an artist could have been paid to create something that might afford them food for the week. All this is to say that we will see a widening discrepancy between the ultra-wealthy and the working class, and the socio-economic structure we're in actively encourages consolidation of power. There are other moral implications with it that I could go on about, but they're kind of subjective. In relation to art, dedicating oneself to a craft often lends itself to fostering a community for support in one's journey, and if we collectively lean on AI more instead of other people, we risk isolating ourselves further in an environment that is already designed to do that. In my opinion, we shouldn't try to co-exist with something that is made to make our physical and emotional work obsolete.
Mar 24, 2024
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Feb 19, 2025
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tried reading dante alighieri’s inferno. key emphasis on tried. i got bored and realised a story written in poem form is not my typa beat.
i tried because it seemed like what all the indie hipsters who are well versed would read, and that i would look cool and niche—but it just cost me $25.
i prefer crazy detailed paragraphs rather than a line by line story.
anyways
Feb 17, 2025
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saying “i’m sick” when you’re sick is boring.
instead, here are some more funky fresh and cool ways to disclose that your immune system has been highjacked (it’s time to revive these sayings from the dead!):
“i am indisposed”
“i am taken ill”
“i am feeling out of sorts”
“i am suffering from a bilious attack”
“i have been seized by an ague”
“i am afflicted with a malaise”
“i have taken to my bed”
“the vapours have overcome me”
“i have a touch of the influenza”
“the rheumatism plagues me”
“i am laid low with a fever”
“i am afflicted with a troublesome ailment”
you’re welcome
Feb 18, 2025