greetings, fellow boiled frogs
I read Ed Zitron's latest over lunch, and I've been thinking about this paragraph ever since:
Similarly, there’s comparatively little coverage of the destruction of Google Search or the horrifying state of Facebook and Instagram. While outlets have had dalliances with the collapse of Search — Charlie Warzel at The Atlantic was earlier than most, myself included — these are usually one-and-done features, a momentary “hmm!” in the slop of breaking news and hot takes, if these stories even happen at all. You might argue that one cannot simply write these stories again and again, to which I say “skill issue.” The destruction of products core to the fabric of society is important and should be in the news constantly, in the same way that news outlets happily report on and discuss crime in modern metropolitan areas.
(Emphasis added.)
What I'm wondering is this: Does the gradual decline of the computer experience into near-unusability not come up anymore because it is not distinctively different from the general decline of real life in a similar direction?
I teach in the same school district that, in the previous century, I once attended. Back then, it was one of the best school districts in one of the best-performing states for education in the US. The tax base was strongly, securely middle- to upper-middle class, secured by a GM plant that ran 24/7.
I haven't lived here for most of the intervening 25+ years, but I've returned regularly to see family. During that time, I've watched the place decline. and decline. and decline.
First, GM left. Then No Child Left Behind kneecapped the schools. This state hit recession at least six years before the rest of the US did in 2008, prompting everyone who could leave town to do so. The national/global recession made an existing situation worse. Continual draining and cuts to infrastructure funding, public health, public schools, public libraries, public places, and pretty much everything else with the word "public" in the title has taken its toll.
Today, over 80 percent of the district's students are on free or reduced lunch. I assume every student has a 504 or an IEP unless told otherwise. That's not "made up diagnoses" or "coddling kids," as some would have you believe; that's everyone around here who can afford to leave doing so, leaving behind the kids whom no private school or "schools of choice" district will take.
I have no doubts that I am exactly where I am supposed to be, day job-wise. But I also have no doubts that this district, community, state, and nation are significantly worse off than they were 25 years ago.
And I think the reason it took me so long to see the unforgivable shit they've done to the computer is that it mirrored the unforgivable shit that's been done to the place I grew up. That's been done to every place I have lived since 1999. That's been done to every square inch of the United States of America that does not belong to some billionaire.
This doesn't mean I think pushing back against the unforgivable is pointless. In fact, I think it's now more important than ever. It also doesn't let the media off the hook; if anything, the total decline of the nation in all its forms should be headline news every single day, and media outlets can beat the "how do we keep writing about it?" problem by writing about all of it.
The decline of Literally Everything offers actual years, maybe decades, of material. If you can't write about that daily, you can't write about anything daily and should stop trying to write at all.
It never had to be this way.