Love/Hate

I reactivated my Instagram account last night and posted some of the photos I’ve taken for this website. I have a love/hate relationship with social media, and I was drunk enough last night to think it a good idea to return to one. That terrible beer with a skull on it? It’s grown on me. It’s still terrible but the 9% alcohol content helps. I had planned to return to both Instagram and Facebook once school started because many of my co-workers use Messenger for their communication with each other, but I think I’ll skip Facebook for now. Instagram is simpler, but it’s still owned by Facebook.

Is it just me or is it mind-numbingly difficult to be a moral human being in the times we live in? I disagree completely with how Facebook has dealt with viral misinformation and that it helped the Russians interfere with the 2016 presidential election, but Facebook owns Instagram, a service I really enjoy, so it’s tough to not be caught in its grasp. I hate Google for many of the same reasons and then some. I don’t like how they track everyone on the web for the sole purpose of collecting as much data as they can about us so they can then sell it off to advertisers and other companies. But I love YouTube and I love all the talented creators posting videos on it. It’s a great resource yet I feel morally conflicted to use it. And now there’s Apple and their monopoly of their app store. Epic is taking them on in attempt to loosen their grip over iOS and iPadOS, which is great, but Epic also isn’t infallible.

It’s hard to have a stance in anything. I’m for green energy but at what cost? Instead of burning coal and ruining the environment, we dig for resources by exploiting human labor. I’m vegan for many reasons, one of which is that I think whatever force powers my life is the same force that powers a cows life or a chicken’s life or a small insects life. But the modern economy depends on fossil fuels and on other stuff that hurts the environment anyway. It’s tough choosing a side when all the options have consequences I’m against. All that is to say that I’m out of beer, and I want more.