People Who Need People

 I was, and continue to be, challenged by doing business with corporations and people and corporations who it turns out are people. I have struggled with the assertion made that ordering a new pair of work pants from Amazon is feeding the beast that is killing our country. I do not have a clever answer that tips the guilt out of that interaction. Clicking on a button that makes those simple transactions as easy as clicking on a button is hard to resist when you consider the time and expense of going to a real store and making that same purchase.

And not shoving more money into the overstuffed pockets of Jeff Bezos. 

Then there's the matter of our solar energy. Years ago when my wife and I chose to invest in the future of our planet by installing solar panels on the roof of our house, we picked Solar City to do the job. A local company that did a great job and made us feel like we were on the right side of history. 

Until they were devoured by Tesla. 

Suddenly, our troubleshooting calls were rerouted through a series of chutes and bots and real people were taken out of the loop. We were encouraged to try to find answers on the Tesla website which was much more geared toward selling visitors a new electric car than helping support owners of a product purchased by one of their subsidiaries. Worst of all, from my vantage point, the icon for the monitor of our system on my phone changed to that creepy satanic T that stands for Tesla and all the evil that it embodies. 

It was during this same wedge of time that I decided to join Twitter, seeing as how my blogs were such a hit with ten to twelve readers, why not take the opportunity to join a community where I could pass off my tiny bon mots as tiny modular bits of what you might find here if you looked. But Twitter gave me a group of fellow snarks with whom I could relate. 

Then came the dark times. When that same evil empire choked down that little blue bird in one gulp and turned it into a big black X. I told anybody who would listen that I was going to stick around and watch that house burn down around me. I watched as this purported bastion of free speech became a breeding ground for far-right parasites anxious to further their MAGAt aggenda. 

So last Wednesday, I packed up my metaphorical bags and left. I went to the much more tranquil cyberspread called Bluesky. Bye bye, Elongated Mush. So long ads for Bible Belt Buckles. Auf Wiedersehen Nazis. I don't think this is the kind of change that will make the world a better place, but at least my little corner will be a little less controlled by evil. At least that's what I want to tell myself.