Why write about cleaning?

You might've noticed something a bit odd about this site, dear reader. There are no ads, for one. Instead of advertisers paying for this platform, I send €10/month to ghost.io, which means I retain ownership of the data, instead of it being hoovered up by Meta, Google or X.

There are no affiliate links or paid tiers. I'm not selling a $19 PDF on how to start your own cleaning business. I could add a $3.99/month subscription tier for Unclean Thoughts+, but the truth is I'm old, and I remember when the internet was free.

Cleaning is my job, but I like writing. Companies make money off the content we create for free on social media, so taking my data off those platforms and not monetising this site is kind of thumbing my nose at the whole Big Tech data-munching ecosystem.

Data is heavy. The cloud is a real place. There is a physical mass to the internet and every app you use. All your selfies, every caption, all the rock hyrax reels you watch, every DM you slide into - it lives somewhere in the real world, just on another computer, in a data center somewhere you can't see. And Big Tech pushing AI onto every app means the physical and environmental footprint of those data centers is growing every single day.

Thinking about your data being heavy helps you imagine it being valuable, too. I can't believe it's been seven years since "Senator, we run ads", but it still feels like the general public doesn't understand just how valuable their data is. Have a look at the top 10 companies on the S&P500 and tell me if you can pick what most of them have in common.

Collecting, analysing, selling and transforming data makes up the bulk of the stock market. A huge chunk of your super fund is built off the back of big data, which probably doesn't sound as ominous if you, like me, couldn't even buy a secondhand Toyota Corolla with the sum total of your super.

Your data on Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, Youtube and X is making someone, somewhere, squillions of dollars. Your data is making extremely dumb people extremely powerful. Even darker, your data is being used to manipulate and overthrow governments.

In her memoir Careless People, ex-Meta bigwig Sarah Wynn-Williams details exactly how the Trump campaign used advertising data to win the 2016 election.

Over the course of the ten-hour flight to Lima, Elliot patiently explains to Mark all the ways that Facebook basically handed the election to Donald Trump. It's pretty fucking convincing and pretty fucking concerning [...] Elliot walks Mark through all the ways Facebook and Parscale's combined team microtargeted users and tweaked ads for maximum engagement, using the data tools we designed for commercial advertisers.

This goes on for full two pages, and I encourage you to buy and read the book - it's completely batshit and will make you feel terrible.

Ten years ago a political campaign could manipulate the data from advertisers to win an election. What about now, with the ragged social media hellscape left behind by the pandemic and AI?

So why write about cleaning?

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions. - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

I fully thought Mark Twain said that, oops. The entire mind of the world has been stretched by social media, almost entirely for worse. We can't go back. But can we go forward?

Aside from the plummeting value of using your brain to put words together, writing here makes me feel I'm carving out a digital space that belongs to me. This goes back to the question I asked in my first post: what could we imagine, what could we do, if there was nothing in the space social media currently takes up in our lives?

It's stubborn and contrarian, and makes very little difference in the long run. But you have to work the muscle of resistance even in small ways.

That's the call to action, I guess. Take this as your reminder to write something. Draw something. Sing something. Tell a story to your dog. Publish it, monetise it, keep it secret, whatever. As long as it's your voice and you own it. Keep working that muscle 'coz I'm pretty sure it's the only thing we've really truly got.

Here's some other old-fashioned human creations I've been enjoying lately:

Nina Simone _ Ain’t Got No...I’ve Got Life

و نحن نحب الحياة ... إذا ما إستطعنا إليها سبيلاhttp://www.facebook.com/nouhibou.alhayeta

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Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World - Wikipedia

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.Contributors to Wikimedia projects

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Aspect Ratios with Sinners Director Ryan Coogler

Watch Ryan Coogler, the director of Black Panther and Creed, break down the range of ways to view Sinners on the big screen. Experience Sinners only in theat…

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Have you read, seen, or heard something lately that was made with love and care? Please let me know about it! Especially if the maker was YOU. 🙏