On Disconnecting, pt. 1/?
Nov. 12th, 2024 03:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cubsinfiveI just can’t get better while being bombarded with noise trying to get me to argue too. The hostile information ecosystem is run on engagement, so I am going to do my part to starve the beast. I will find no peace getting annoyed with every person who works themselves into a frenzied rant over a twitter screenshot they specifically looked for. I have enough local, in-person grudges as is.
Anyway.
When we used to help people with computers or tablets at the bookstore or the library, we’d catch glimpses of their internet habits. For a while it was old dudes with dozens of tabs of porn, and it was a clear majority of them, like 75%. They’d just hand the phone/tablet to you because the young person knows how it works and then when the video of Marge and Homer Simpson fucking pops up they’d just shrug. I knew I would prefer the library over the bookstore for myriad reasons, but the bookstore never really let us say “your device runs slow because you’re bad at using it. Either learn how or give it away.” The library at least let us ban people for looking at porn or nazi content on public computers. It ended up being a fun game to watch the repeat offenders show up the day after their year-long ban expired and immediately look at porn on the public computer again. Creatures of habit!
So many people were and still are unequipped to even operate their devices, let alone parse the information barrage they would soon become subject to. How much disinformation succeeds simply because people don’t understand how their phone works?
When you help people with computers, you pick up on what they’re reading, it just trickles in. You see their open tabs, or their scrolling in your peripheral vision. I bit my tongue a lot, but I’d have days where I couldn’t and the patrons would catch my expression shift at some of the all-caps conspiracy nonsense or poorly photoshopped thirst traps. Shame! Almost feels quaint now. Sometimes they’d immediately defend it. “It’s the news, why would they lie?”
Why would the internet lie?
I hadn’t yet internalized at this point how shaped we are by the information we have access to and what reaches us. It’s this thing that snobs do where we take credit for the finding and liking of something as though it was a skill issue and not, as it turns out, mostly luck and circumstance and what you grew up around. We believe what we are primed to believe and we don’t always have a choice, and that’s what makes such a hostile, noisy information environment so disorienting.
We had one library patron turn power of attorney for herself and her ailing ex-husband to a scammer that preyed upon her via e-mail. We begged her to reconsider, to realize that she was making a mistake she would never recover from. We kept trying to find a way to communicate that she’s just lonely and doesn’t need to do this because someone gave her attention, that she could visit us every day and we'd be happy to have her. We pleaded with admin to let us refuse her service. Their notion was she’d find somewhere else to fax the documents and it’s our duty to help.
Lonely people being exploited isn’t anything new, but it never stops being heartbreaking.
During the summer of 2020 the public library opened up to the world far too early. We had been stewing at home, most of us in our own bubble of information noise and our admin took to heart all the old people complaining that their lives had been disrupted. They did have a point, most people were lonely as hell! Having a point didn’t make the decision wise, though. Remember, wisdom and intelligence are different stats for a reason.
It took maybe 2 weeks for a conspiracy theorist to walk in and begin a coughing rant that we were all making too big of a deal of a cold. He was upset that for 3 months he hadn’t been allowed to come in and browse books on CD, and then he got upset that we wouldn’t allow him to keep books on CD for 6 months while he drove around the country. He was convinced we were letting other people use our services and that he himself had been targeted. That theme comes up a lot.
About five days later, I had COVID. I’ve been calling it “raw” COVID because vaccines wouldn’t appear for another 7 or 8 months. It was a miserable five full weeks. It ripped a chunk out of me and I physically haven’t been the same since. Thank you, internet misinformation!
I later came to find out the ranting patron died. He never did return those audiobooks.
A lot of my favorite patrons died. A few of my less than favorite patrons did too. They wouldn’t listen to us when we explained how masks worked and how to wear them. I hadn’t been called a f*g as much since high school. Some people are so insecure that being asked to do *anything* is an insult to their autonomy. So many people had such wrong information, and each example was different. Some would argue that masks just make us breathe carbon dioxide. Some didn’t believe COVID itself existed. Some said “Jesus won’t let me get sick.” Some didn’t like that when they coughed into the mask, they got spit on themselves. That’s what it’s supposed to do.
We even had a couple people that didn’t know there was a pandemic. They never questioned why places were closed, never questioned why there were restrictions. Missed the whole concept entirely. What innocent bliss!
We used to tell ourselves that the reasonable people were out of sight, staying safe from harm, and if they went out they took precautions, right? I wanted to palm everyone that kept their masks over their noses with a crisp $20 bill. I still do, thank you, proper maskers.
It ended up not mattering much in the end. 1.1 million people eventually died to COVID. School returned to in person, and when the charter school kids would get out of class and come to the library to wait for their ride home, enforcing mask usage was a fool’s errand even without misinformation. Kids just don’t care, and the lies their parents believed just reinforced it. “My dad said it’s a hoax” was *really* common. Enforcement became impossible due to sheer volume. Shame didn’t work anymore, nor did anyone even care that the librarians, the ones best equipped to help with the truth, were incredulous.
So our patrons that followed the rules (and understand that most rules are written in blood), masked up when asked, and kept their distance when asked, just stood and watched as everyone else got away with being selfish because the three professional adults in the building had no support to stem the tide.
That theme comes up a lot too.
