Disclaimer: This may read bleak, but I’m not in a bleak state of mind. I will post a comment with my thought process behind it.

The Anti-Science Infantilization of the Modern Tech World

You get up and read the news. Halfway across the world are things happening you have no control over and if you put yourself out there and protest it, you get told to stop speaking when a politician is speaking.

You go on a job website and submit an application, but you may not ever receive a rejection and if you do, you will likely receive no information on why your application was rejected and some other person’s wasn’t. Was it something you did? Was it nothing you did? You don’t know.

You go on a dating app and try to match with people. If you’re a man, you probably send out a lot of likes or messages that never get a response. Does your profile suck? Are you sending poor messages? You don’t know. Maybe they’re never getting seen in the first place. If you’re a woman, you probably receive more likes and messages than you know what to do with and a lot of them are mean and objectifying. You did nothing to provoke this other than existing as a woman and no matter what you do on there, it keeps happening.

You go to the grocery store to get food to live on, but some product you used has been discontinued again. You have no idea why and have to figure out a replacement. Furthermore, some product whose prices you relied on as stable have gone drastically up. Meanwhile, you’re being told the economy is doing well. No one ever consults you on any of these things or tells you why it’s really happening. They just say it’s inevitable and your lot in life. In fact, they may say it’s for your own good.

You go to use your favorite product and it got a major update. A bunch of features you were relying on have changed. They say it’s a better product this way and you should get used to it.

You hear on the news that it’ll be time to vote again soon. This is the one time, around every four years, that they say your decisions and your opinions matter. And they’re telling you that this time, like the last times, it’s the most important decision, possibly ever. Where with everything else, you were told to deal with being helpless to the fate of opaque systems you’re not allowed to understand or weigh in on, you’re now being told it all comes down to you. You drum up some sense of duty in you and you go do it. It’s done. You did your part. The results come out and things go back to being as they were before.

You get up and read the news. Halfway across the world are things happening you have no control over and if you put yourself out there and protest it, you get told to stop speaking when a politician is speaking.

You are discouraged from using scientific process and thought to navigate the world. Everywhere you turn, the mechanisms you’re up against are hidden from you. Instead, you are told to use willpower, told to use attitude, told to think differently, and eventually the universe will come together for you. Meanwhile, the machine of exploitation turns on scientifically designed wheels. The overseers of colonization, the overseers of the global capitalist empire, use science to exploit and place layers of indirection upon the process so you can’t see it.

You look in the mirror. You can only see yourself anymore. They’ll give you a mirror so you can focus more on yourself. You see a failure looking back, a helpless abject figure. They tell you to blame yourself. You try to work on yourself to love yourself more and build yourself up, but you keep hitting invisible walls. No matter what you try to do differently, you’re flying blind. And that too, they say, is your fault. It always comes back to you and can never be them.

They can take away every limb, deprive every sense you have, and still they will tell you it’s your fault. A failure of willpower and attitude.