The 2020s- A Recap of Horrors

So, 2026. It's the weirdest time, it's the worst of times. It's a time of misery, a time of complaining. A time of horror, a time of "What on God's green earth is this???"

Really, this whole decade has been crummy. We started off 2020 with a weird virus, a quarantine that disrupted the entire flow of the universe, a random war, and a number of other crazy things. Even now, several years later, it still feels like we're looking at the after-effects of that quarantine. It changed the way society functions, the way people think and behave... On some level, I feel like we've become increasingly divided, increasingly isolated, and just... Sometimes I say we have an anti-social society. Then, of course, we have all the places that closed down because of the disaster that was 2020, many of them smaller businesses.

And it's not just that. We've had a lot of other turmoil. It seems like there's always something horrible to be reported in the news. Sometimes I see things online and just think, "How is this real. This can't possibly be real." All I can say is that I am not proud to be an American. If anything, I'm ashamed. Heck, these days, sometimes I don't want to be a human being at all. What if I was an amoeba, blindly squelching through life, unthinking, unaware of the world around me. Seems a lot simpler.

 

Wee hee hee, I'm a microscopic blob!

Plus all the nonsense with big tech companies. It seems wild to think that long ago, generative AI stuff was just a random little thing, some stupid novelty that spouted nonsense, and you laughed at it for a bit, and then you moved on. Then it became an all-consuming thing that looms over humanity like a big evil machine of destruction. They're building these giant tech centers everywhere, and you learn that it consumes massive amounts of power and water, it causes problems for the whole area, it generates tons of pollution, it eats children for breakfast and then spits out their bones like some monstrous owlbear... Okay, maybe not the last one, but you get the point.
And it seems like a lot of people are relying on it for information, for advice, for doing stuff for them. And even now, half the time it gives wrong answers, spouts nonsense... And it's just detrimental in so many ways. With kids having AI do their homework for them, with tech companies having AI write their coding for them, with everyone using AI for everything, I just wonder: are we losing our ability to think, to create? And it's so prevalent everywhere that you turn. You feel like you have to closely inspect things, question whether an image on social media is real or AI-generated. You do a simple web search, and the first thing that pops up is an AI overview.

 

"Did you know that tortoises can reach speeds of 65 mph, and grow to be twelve stories tall?"

Plus the privacy issues cropping up with the internet. They're making all these rules that are supposed to protect minors from things, but it just seems like a ploy to gather our personal data. Now it's things like "Send us an image of your face, or your ID, so you can prove your age!" It seems like a tremendous breach of privacy, and it's under the guise of 'doing good'. Plus, it would be easy for kids to bypass it by sending a photo of someone else, take a picture of their parent's ID, etc.. 

In this past year, I've deleted so many accounts. And a lot of those were because of AI or privacy concerns. I left a lot of social media sites for various reasons. I left a forum because instead of offering genuine advice on help topics, they just copied and pasted the stupid AI overview. I don't use YouTube any more because they introduced 'child safety' protocols that's just harvesting personal data.

 

"You can trust us! We won't sell your data, nor will a security breach cause everyone's personal info to be stolen!"

And now I'm reading about new changes they're going to implement on Discord. I use it to keep in touch with writing groups, with communities for games I play, and other such things. Now I find myself wondering if I'm going to have to leave all of that. Some of the things they're doing, ironically, seem less safe for minors. I saw a comment along the lines of "Remember when kids were told never to show their face or reveal personal info online?" If anyone's familiar with what happened to NaNoWriMo, can I just say that I can hear the echoes.

Every day, it feels more and more like we're living in a dystopian novel. It seems like the walls are closing in whichever way you turn, and I see why Patrick Star wanted to live under his rock. It's peaceful there, and you don't have to interact with anyone or anything, or see anything happening in the world. Did I mention the whole 'become an amoeba' thing? I cannot stress this enough. I do not like this decade, Sam I Am. I do not like it one bit.

But that's all for this blog post. Good luck out there, and may be odds be ever in your favor. An just remember: Big Brother is watching.