Out with the New, in with the Old!

Ryn here with my first official rant! (Other than the introductory post.)

I've always been a fan of the older and clunkier tech. Love me a good ol' mp3 player, Discman or Walkman! Hell, even vinyls! The tactile nature of them has always appealed to my Autistic and ADHD mind. Everything feels so streamlined now - Buy this, Use this app for this, blah, blah, blah. Where did truly owning your digital media go?! Not to mention how piracy is basically the only way for people to gain access to lost and/or older media. Many games that only exist digitally are lost to time, same with all other types of media - Books, Movies, and even blogs! Websites go defunct, companies go bankrupt, and corporations make shit decisions! Take last year's Spotify Wrapped, they fired the guy who'd been heading the production of Wrapped, and scrambled with some A.I. Bullshit! I mean, what even is "Sweater Weather Permanent Wave Indie" (My actual title for "My January" by the way,)? They categorized it by mentioning Arctic Monkeys, Mac DeMarco and TV Girl, but please. This feels so stupid, I miss the actual genres and analytics. I mean, Spotify hasn't lessened their Data collection, and yet, we're getting less and less of it??? Don't even get me STARTED on the A.I. Podcast listening summary!

Speaking of A.I. - I hate the shit! It's being shoved down our throats constantly, without a moment of reprive! I always thought that an A.I. world would be an interesting one, but I stayed on the side of hopeful, rather than cynical. And yet... I was incorrect. Not to be a doomer, but A.I. is really shaping up to be what all those 2010 stupid dystopian novels thought it would be. Let's just hope that we aren't going into "I have no mouth and I must scream" territory. The worst part is how ingrained it's becoming in society and in CREATIVE FIELDS! No, I don't want to generate what mine and the Grinch's baby looks like! I could just commission an artist, or figure it out myself. A.I. fosters incompetency in all fields and all people. Many use generative A.I. for writing assignments, get into positions they're not qualified for, and make it worse all round. Others refuse to learn, instead opting to be spoon-fed some stupid A.I. bullshit for everything. And the worst of it all? Those who are perpetuating it! Companies endorse A.I. in the workforce and with consumers KNOWING that A.I. is ruining the environment and still NOT CARING! The servers and technology needed to run A.I. models (Of all types, image generation, text generation, computing, etc…) pollute just about everything they can get their greedy little mits on! Consumerism has always been bad, but now? It's worse than ever. A.I. is a money maker for the man, and he does not give one shit about you beyond your number and cash. 

I would consider myself a creative, someone who works with creative mediums. I paint, sketch, write and just spend my time imaging, but A.I. is a danger to that. Artificially generated "Art" is more common now than ever. It's free or dirt cheap, as quick as can be, and sourced from unaware, unwilling or desperate artists. The "A.I. Art-style" has ruined art within communities, because now anything close to the polished or odd look is labelled as "fake" even if it isn't. Where do you think A.I. got their training data banks from? REAL ARTISTS! That's who. Companies have always never cared much for art or expression, especially in this modern world, but it's just getting worse. Sure, they've "cared" but not truly, it was always a façade for better business or a more loyal customer base. People care, but once you get so big as they are, things slip through the cracks more often than not. However, even fake support is more useful to communities and the people than none at all. Even if you couldn't give a shit about LGBTQIA+, POC, Neurodivergent, or other marginalized employees and communities, the image that you care is beneficial to both parties. More money in your pocket, and more generalized support helps the cause and the people within. Pretending to care can do more than openly not giving a shit. And yet, unfortunately, companies are doing the latter in recent years and the current societal climate. They don't care and they never have, and yet, this is even worse. 

Freedom of expression has always been encouraged, with all of us, but never honestly. "You can be anything!" until you don't fit in the box. As such, many subcultures built on a welcoming and freeing nature have popped up along history. The Punk subculture and it's off-shoots especially. However, company's continue to commodify these instances of community and turn them into profit! DIY isn't good for profit margins, so it's actively discouraged in a silent but effective way. One of these is dirt cheap and crazily accessible online stores like TEMU, Wish, and Shein. The employees are working under frankly disgusting conditions, and yet, they don't care, because they know YOU won't care. It's too cheap and convenient to just give up, too useful. You can get things normally worth supposedly hundreds of dollars for tens or a hundred at most. Constant deals, coupons, sales, and fun game-like layouts just make it even worse. I used TEMU for a couple of days once, and I'll admit, it was fun. There was a silly and cute deal going on, with an in-app game. A dog you fed, flowers you watered, and more dirt-cheap deals. It was a paradise, and I got obsessed. Luckily, I was adamant about not spending anything on the site, so I just played at it till I almost got enough for me to accept using it. I realized on about day three that my brain was too focused on it and I dropped it immediately. I still found myself tapping on the app from time to time, until I ultimately deleted it. This has happened before, for example; In 2021 I got particularly obsessed with Wish. Cheap deals, and most of my interests had shit on there. I only bought something once, and that was a large pack of stickers with my favourite characters on it. But it slowly phased out and I didn't care any more, soon enough. Another time, far more recently mind you, I got the AliExpress App. It was fun, but now it's just annoying. I deleted the app some time ago, and they still wouldn't stop sending me emails. Always telling me a product is only there or on sale for a limited time. That's another thing, time-limits. They force people to make poorly judged and rushed decisions, and they also can give anxiety or a rush of joy when you complete something within the time limit. Yet another example of harmful gamification. 

 Consumer ownership of the things they buy. Even now, "buying" practically a hidden subscription service. Sure, it's a one-time payment, but that doesn't mean that you ACTUALLY own it. Movies for example. As far as I'm aware, Amazon and YouTube don't allow you to keep the files of the films you buy, rather, they simply host the files on their website for consumption. But, you don't keep them, rather, these are on permanent loan until the Heat Death of the Universe, or their bankruptcy; whatever one happens first. Not to mention an even more appalling thing, even after you buy it and the company is still active, they can just take it away! No refund, no shit at all. This happened recently with Amazon's Kindle, a book was taken off the store. This normally wouldn't cause issue, as you'd surely keep your digital copy, right? WRONG! They took it away completely. Amazon has that capability, due to the nature of their products and services. They own all rights, they're just being nice enough to give you a pittance for a pound. 

I believe in the preservation of all media, no matter how strange, obscure of morally grey. A constant archive of history is only capable of existing so long as we foster such an archive. A true transparency. "Everything stays on the internet forever" no the fuck it doesn't. Sure it 'exists' forever, but not online, dickhead. It can be re-uploaded, but some copyright slinging slasher of a lawyer will just come after the hosting site or the uploader. This is horrible. Infringement laws stop the preservation of media through legal means. Piracy is one of the few things standing against it. 

I believe I'm getting into a bit of a tangent, so I'll go back to what I originally wanted to post about.
 
I've been burning CD's as of late! It's a very fun processed, combing through my playlists and songs, and making a perfect CD. I've also spent time on the cases, choosing fitting and fun designs for my covers, and even adding some stickers and the like sometimes. I've also been spending time finding CD-ROM and DVD-ROM discs from all sorts of OpShops(Australian Slang for Charity Shops) and the like. They're very enjoyable. Not to mention, very useful for archival purposes. Many of the discs I procure come in damaged cases, some mouldy or broken. I don't like that, as any one of those discs might have a chance of being the only remaining physical record humanity even existed in some far-off future. It sounds silly, but I enjoy them a lot. Not to mention, my favourite part, YOU OWN EVERYTHING! No extra downloads or purchases beyond the disc itself. It's positively lovely. Owning all the songs or games or episodes without having to deal with some corporate middle-man in the form of a subscription purchase or a digital file that you aren't even allowed to keep. It's all there, and the disc did it all for you! CD-ROMs have always felt magical to me, having all that of a game on just one disc? Sign me up! And sign up I did. They're very fun to use as well, unfortunately, however; as operating systems upgrade beyond the CD-ROMs reach, they're harder and harder to use or run. That won't stop me though! 

My current set-up is: An MP3 player, an old Kindle that I only upload my own files onto, A record player I keep in my room, a bootleg Gameboy, a pair of purple corded earphones, a pair of noise-cancelling Bluetooth headphones, my laptop (I'm typing this on there right now, fun fact!), and (eugh!) my smart phone. In future years I intend to get a dumbphone, should my opinion not change. Don't get me wrong, my phone is great, it's just sucking up all my time. 

I want to own everything that I use, and soon enough, I will. I'm going to buy a Discman soon enough, jailbreak my Kindle (So Amazon can't fuck me over), and lots of other things!

Anyways, I think I'm ranting on a bit too much, so I'll cut this off here. 

Thank you for your time. Have a lovely morning, day, evening or night!