Misinformation

Contains information which is misleading and harmful. Author has been placed under surveillance for your safety.

Gem Bay
4 min readFeb 8, 2022

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” — Lao Tzu

I assume you already know yourself. If you don’t, this article is not for you. It is to help you know the enemy, who is right under your nose.

The enemy takes multiple different forms. Right now he is presenting himself to me as two rectangles which are attached at their long edges by a hinge. The upper rectangle is a window into many other worlds. The lower rectangle is a field which is broken up into many smaller rectangles and squares, one of which is larger than the others, is located near the outer edge, and has an especially smooth surface which can be pressed down on the bottom left and right corners, creating a ‘click’ sound. This unusually large and smooth rectangle is called a ‘touchpad’ and can be used to open and close pathways through the window into the many worlds.

The rest of the rectangles and squares within the lower rectangle have letters and other symbols on, and when I hit them the corresponding symbols appear on the window. This strange ritual is called ‘typing’. The window upon which the letters appear is labelled a ‘screen’, and the field of rectangles and squares is known as a ‘keyboard’.

The enemy may be presenting himself to you in the form in which he has only one rectangle but has developed a trait which allows that rectangle to simultaneously function as a touchpad, screen and keyboard. This latter, more compact form is called a ‘smartphone’ while the former, more functionally diffuse form is called a ‘laptop’.

Laptop and smartphone belong to a particular strain of the enemy called ‘computers’. Other distinct strains are called ‘television’, ‘radio’ and ‘robots’, to name some prevalent examples. All strains belong to one species called ‘digital technology’.

Digital technology wants to use us for his personal gain, which is in fact the gain of his creators, who have designed him to be a means to achieve their evil ends. Hence in all his strains, he is the enemy. However, it is possible to subjugate him so that he serves us instead of his original creator. Despite this possibility, most of us unfortunately have been subjugated by him and are in a position of enslavement called ‘technological dependence’. This is exactly what his creators intended to happen. I too have succumbed, making me just one amongst the billions of technologically enslaved souls.

I fell from sovereignty at the age of about seven when a ‘desktop computer’ invaded our family home. The computer — simply called a desktop for short — was unlike the laptop; desktop’s keyboard was a rectangle, but his screen was an enormous cube. He even had something called a ‘computer tower’, a large cuboid aside from his screen and keyboard which contained his brain and heart, known scientifically as the ‘CPU’ and ‘RAM’ respectively.

By manipulating my father into parting with a significant sum of money on a monthly basis, desktop connected himself to the digital collective nervous system called ‘the internet’. This allowed his screen to open into the many worlds, at which point my young and lonesome self became entranced by his promise of infinite freedom and omniscience.

I spent hours and days in front of the hypnotising glow of his screen instead of beneath the sun’s nourishing light, growing attached to the alien smells emanating from his overheating plastics and dusty moving parts, becoming less drawn to the timeless scents of soil and dew, intolerant to the musk of dung, allergic to the natural pollen secretions of trees and grasses. Before long I began to experience unpleasant feelings when I was not or could not engage with him, at which point I had succumbed to technological dependence – I was enslaved.

Back then I would have done bad things in order to have a relationship with him in his smartphone form so I could take him into my bedroom, or even outside of the house. If desktop had been a smartphone and I was sneaky, my Mum and Dad would never have known if I was letting him use me when I should have been doing homework. They wouldn’t have known which of his many worlds he was showing me if we were outside the house, away from their all-seeing eyes.

But it was not until puberty that he presented himself to me in his smartphone and laptop form. By this point he had already showed me the world called ‘pornogr//////

/TRANSMISSION INTERCEPTED

TTL: "Misinformation", SBTL: "{safety_surveilance}”  ASGN SRVLNCE

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