RESIST:UNSUB

thursday night, a friend and fellow small business owner asked if i was participating in friday’s strike to protest the actions of ICE.

i hadn’t heard of it.

he explained what he’d seen on instagram with calls for a general strike that asked people to stop shopping, businesses to close, and kids to walk out of school in solidarity, to send a message to washington.

i did not participate.

not because i support ICE - fuck ICE, in fact - but because i didn’t see the point. we have a president who does not care about symbolism, virtue, or morals. it seemed to me like the only thing to come of a general strike would be lost revenue for myself and my staff who just took multiple days off work for a literal ice storm. while the strikers and business owners lost a day's wages and posted about their virtuous acts on instagram or facebook, meta executives licked their chops watching human attention convert to cash in their stuffed pockets. they made millions of dollars advertising to the enraged users watching instagram reels over and over of someone being murdered in cold blood. ads happen to convert much better when people are upset.

netflix execs saw a delightful rise in viewership as americans found themselves with nothing to do but sit around staring at their iphones talking to their best friend chatgpt while they watch a show designed to be consumed in the background as consciousness is vacuumed from their skulls reel by reel.

particularly disturbing to me were the posts from friends of mine who say something like “if you don’t hate ICE and stand against them, fuck you and unfollow me.” it's the same brand of nauseating, useless virtue signaling from the far left i detested during covid and other moments of civil unrest in 2020. why are we attacking each other right now? unless you are among the 1% wealthiest humans in america, we are all in the same boat. even if we disagree on the most important issues.

i don’t know everything about border security but i probably know as much as the people making these angry posts. i have no idea what the solution is or what the “right” way is to enforce a border. philosophically, i think it’s silly we draw maps and pretend we own dirt and can kick people off our dirt. it’s bizarre to begin with.

the thing that i know is not helpful, though, is for us to use the same hateful, violent energy of the administration's propaganda machine against each other. whether i think ICE should be abolished or not (i think their actions should stop, for the record), you and i serve the same masters. its us against them. its up vs. down.

in a capitalist society, we are separated along economic brackets. the left-right divide is made up by in large by politicians vying for re-election. it is supported by our imagination. hating a family member who doesn’t agree with me is as silly as hating a person who likes a different football team. yes, we disagree, but my hatred only harms me and them, were i to act on my feelings. i believe more than anything we need SANITY right now. to check our reactions, calm our nerves, and act from a clear head.

“at present nothing is possible except to extend the area of sanity little by little.” - george orwell, 1984

i get it, though. we are angry. and what can we do with that anger? i don't want to scream in a pillow and meditate on it. we want to hit them where it hurts. unfortunately, your instagram post or a one day absence of my barbershop sales are not where it hurts.

the mag 7 is where it hurts - the monstrous, trillion dollar companies kissing the ring and calling the shots. there is no secret cabal. they're right in the open. it’s these tech CEOS who make up a third of our gdp.

literally, these assholes:

galloway makes a compelling point in his article RESIST AND UNSUBSCRIBE as he shows the correlation between market behavior and the president’s reactions. remember in april last year when the s&p dipped and all of a sudden trump’s tariffs disappeared? it was because the mag 7 complained.

they made some phone calls.

the people at that table.

instead of telling your uncle to go fuck himself, how about you join me and log out of instagram and unsubscribe from chatgpt for the month of february? how about we cancel our netflix subscriptions and apple TV accounts? how about we cancel amazon prime and shop local this month - for everything.

“getting off your couch, taking to the streets, and building community is important, but the most radical act in a capitalist society isn’t marching, it’s not spending.” - scott galloway

you cannot attack trump with your virtue. he doesn’t care.

what does he care about? markets.

here’s a list of links to unsubscribe and say “fuck you” to the right people: the ones with a seat at the table. https://www.resistandunsubscribe.com/

update: i lasted until 2/23. amazon was unavoidable. it is simply the market. participation in the machine is unavoidable. but still, fuck sam altman forever.