Looking at recent e-mails, I’ve noticed a higher number of junk messages and spam—all of them essentially e-garbage. Because I would have to open questionable links in order to unsubscribe, I feel stuck in e-Purgatory, writhing inside the grips of people who want to foul this e-nest.
This bird-brained matter seems to characterize most other e-tools. E-mail’s original intent was quickly obliterated by angry people wanting to vent. Twitter users are destroying their e-brains and their e-relationships with rants, threats and conspiracies. Social media platforms have reached their lowest levels by resorting to mindless entertainment, incessant marketing and blatant self-promotion. Artificial intelligence, our newest e-toy, is enveloping all other forms of intelligence. Our privacy may be delusional, with free-will right behind.
Polluted e-platforms isn’t what we had in mind. Still, it seems that whatever we invent in the e-world gets contaminated by the worst impulses in our human spirit. The original premises—personal lifestyle improvement—invariably seem to go awry.
It’s not right only to grouse about the seemingly inevitable tendency of fellow humans to corrupt our tools. Why? I may also be adding bits and pieces of e-detritus—these blogs?—to society’s online nesting places. Perhaps the most important questions I should consider: Can I clean up the messes others are making? Or should I just leave these e-comforts behind completely?
That second possibility makes the most sense. Perhaps the only real e-powers that I have are to avoid what’s unsanitary, tainted, infected or rancid. Instead, seeking news from unadulterated sources, communicating only via trustworthy means, remaining wary about the next bright-and-shiny e-bauble. Not feeding foulers’ fetid formulas with my attention.
It’s hard to leave any e-nests, but these familiar perches are probably not good places in which to live for very much longer. They’re fouled….
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