March 27, 2018
Recently I decided I wanted to buy a curling rock. I’m not a curler—it was a passing fancy. So I went on Kijiji and checked. There were no used curling rocks in my area.
So I did a Google search for curling rocks for sale in Canada. And sure enough, there they were. But they cost between seven hundred and eight hundred bucks. I had no idea they were so expensive. I remember thinking, “Well, why’s that?” Then I closed that window and forgot all about it.
The very next day on my Facebook feed, a friend—who turned out to be fake—posted an article entitled WHY ARE CURLING ROCKS SO EXPENSIVE? I’d never even said those words out loud—I’d just thought them in my head. And then Instagram started telling me to follow all of these curlers. Then I was in Gmail and I got a pop-up ad saying I should go join a gay curling league.
The truth is, I have no real interest in curling. I was going to use the rock as a doorstop on my balcony. ’Cause, you know, it’s got a handle.
Why is it that we’re surprised that the forces of evil will use Facebook and social media to manipulate elections when a simple Google search will do everything but show up at your house and personally drag you off to the gay curling league? All the big internet players—Facebook, Amazon, Google, Satan—say the same thing: they will self-police; they will protect our privacy; they will try not to disrupt democracy. Not gonna happen. Unless they are regulated, they will run rampant. And when that happens, all we can do is unplug everything.
Sadly, these companies know that for most of us, no matter what the stakes, unplugging is far too high a price to pay.
Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go talk to a man named Brad about what to wear to the bonspiel.