Mastodawn

New article: today we talk about the psychological impacts of functioning in a thoroughly enshittified economy where everything seems to be routed through tech:

https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/digital_acedia

Digital Acedia | deadSimpleTech

There's a malaise in the air, in the tech industry and on LinkedIn (well, there's always a malaise on LinkedIn, but this is a new variety). People of all stripes are constantly restless, constantly busy but unable to dedicate themselves to any real, substantive work. We watch the hours on the clock pass by, thinking that they're going too slowly, scrolling social media or news and waiting for the terrible software that we're using to, inch-by-inch, do the job that it's meant to be doing. When we go home and try and tackle all of the chores that life imposes on us (of which there are an increasing number), we have to fight the same distractions and challenges. We're constantly interrupted by buzzes from our phones or pings from email or instant messages. We find it increasingly hard to care about whatever the work is that we're actually doing, and before too long it starts feeling like we're all losing our minds. Though it's impossible to pin down, there's some pervasive feeling that all of the bright, shiny little technological artifacts that we carry with us might have something to do with it.

deadSimpleTech

@pluralistic, one hopes you'll forgive me for the ping, but this might be of interest to you?

The Orange Theme 2d ago

@iris_meredith This couldn't have come at a better time for me. *reads*

Cavyherd 2d ago

Not going to try to read it. The color contrast is so bad it's very hard to read.

✧✦Catherine✦✧2d ago

@iris_meredith I generally like your writing but it's so unreadable on a phone due to the huge text and huge margins:

@whitequark *nods*

I have a bit of a blind spot about phones, I'll admit: will rework it today.

@whitequark Alright: I've had a crack at making some improvements to the CSS: lemme know if that's an improvement or if that's difficult to read.

✧✦Catherine✦✧1d ago

@iris_meredith this is dramatically better, thank you!

@whitequark No problem!

✧✦Catherine✦✧1d ago

@iris_meredith this does resonate with me... i say after reading the entire thing. i wasn't going to say this after reading the first half, but you mentioned hypervigilance and it clicked

see, i've ended up living in a constant state of hypervigilance in ways entirely unrelated to the digital bureaucracy; a mixture of war, intimate partner violence, and immigration was more than enough. (i was reading your article as a restless way to avoid studying for the awful immigration exam i have to pass, in fact.) so even though the observations you make of the digital life ring true, to me they just feel... normal. yes, of course the interactions that i do not intentionally design to not be adversarial are going to be like that; this is just how life is

this sucks, obviously. i've done my part in building technology that isn't fucking miserable to interact with, and reportedly succeed, but it is a tiny dent in a big problem; and others giving up isn't helping me have less weight on my shoulders. but also no amount of stuff i can build is likely to ever really make someone comfortable about them and their immigration situation. about learning a new and complex topic, sure, maybe. but not the life and death things.

@whitequark What a mood. I'm lucky enough to have not been directly affected by war or immigration (I've been fucked over by both of those things at one level of remove, but obviously one level of remove is still a lot in those cases), but the abusive situations hit very close to home. I think that's actually how I got started with the article: I registered that some software I was dealing with triggered my "deal with abuser" instincts.

@whitequark And I hope the immigration exam goes well: I'm sure you're more than capable of acing it, but they are some of the more awful things on the face of this planet.

✧✦Catherine✦✧1d ago

@iris_meredith thanks ^^ i did fail it once which is how i'm now cramming 1400 questions in two or three days

re: software triggering "this is abuse" instincts: yep i very much experience this. every time Signal gives me "Yes" and "Not now" option i want to respond with violence. but i think i'm somewhat more optimistic in general: my digital habits mostly work for me and not against me, and even the restless scrolling of youtube shorts while in a chronic pain episode is something i've managed to turn into a way of learning things i find genuinely enriching

this is definitely not universal though, and it is both a skill that has to be learned, and an active practice that i'm lucky enough to be able to do. it's very easy for me to see how this wouldn't be the case for most

@whitequark Yeah, that absolutely makes sense. The way a friend of mine phrased it was:

"Iris, you have good computer skills, your home PC is a Linux, and you don't use the most popular browsers. You know how social media algorithms work and you actually know what a cookie is.

You are almost certainly not experiencing the worst, most broken, most noxiously ad-riddled, propaganda-infested digital wasteland experience"

"Musty Bits" McGee 16h ago

@iris_meredith god it's like he read it and took offense lol https://www.seangoedecke.com/working-on-products-people-hate/

Working on products people hate

@arichtman *blinks*

My word... I do not know that I could write something like this and publish it without cringing a bit