It’s Saturday morning, and you find me sitting in the middle of the huge Wetherspoons in town - escaping the house for a cooked breakfast and a “bottomless” coffee. After a couple of weeks burning the candle at both ends, I’m “treating myself” (that episode of Parks and Recreation will never leave my brain - I very much doubt I’ll buy a Batman suit for myself though).
In true “throw myself under the bus” fashion, I offered the breakfast trip to the rest of the family. Those that were already up - sitting in the lounge in their pyjamas - declined. I was kind of thankful - the worst case scenario this morning would have involved buying breakfast for six of us, and probably not leaving the house for another hour.
Eating alone isn’t without it’s problems though
I’m perched on one of their smaller tables with the laptop, coffee at my side - nursing the bottomless coffee because there’s no easy way of getting another without either leaving my laptop for somebody to steal, or upping sticks and taking everything with me to the coffee machines. Of course if I take everything with me, somebody else will take the table I’m sitting at - that I’ve ordered food to arrive at.
You end up doing things in a certain order to make them manageable - ordering coffee and food, knowing the cup will arrive first - then hoping for no queue at the coffee machines before taking everything with you and returning as quickly as possible - hoping you’re not going to have to tell somebody that you’ve ordered food to arrive at the table they’re now sitting at.
The same thing happens on trains and planes. If you need to use the bathroom, you’re going to have to leave your stuff behind. If that includes a computer, you find yourself in the ridiculous situation of perhaps having to put everything away, then get it out again - or fall on the mercy of hopefully trustworthy nearby strangers to keep an eye on it for you.
I’ve watched countless laptops and bags for strangers while on trains and planes - I always seem to be the trustworthy looking stranger. I guess I should be flattered really.
Isn’t it interesting how we choose who we trust though. I wonder what the unconscious cues are?
I’m guessing “next stop” will be the newsagent - to peruse the magazines. I’m toying with signing up for “Apple One” because it includes “News+” - which will pay for itself almost immediately - it includes countless magazines and newspapers - all with NO advertising. I’m a bit old-school in terms of news - if at a loose end you’ll invariably find me reading the news, and trying to get different perspectives on stories. I tend to rail against obviously biased reporting.
It seems (to me at least) that some people like to surround themselves with concordant feedback. Given that I grew up alongside the “social internet”, I’ve always been wary of it.
Algorithmic timelines purposely target that which we have stopped to read or interact with. The long game is a pursuit of our interests and prejudices in order to indirectly sell them to insidious marketers (“who do you want your advertisements to surface to? Right wing faschists? Yes, we can do that for you, even if they don’t realise they are…”). I’ve written about the end result before - the unaware presume the majority agree with their horribly distorted and uninformed views and opinions - they can’t be wrong, because “everybody” seems to agree with them. The machinery of the internet self-sorts people by prejudice.
Anyway.
Time is marching on. Time to go for a wander, and climb off my high horse. Maybe a quick scroll through the social internet first though, hey - to re-enforce a few of my own prejudices.