Deleting Facebook

The slow regard for neurosis, thanks to social media

Last night before I fell asleep, I was watching a YouTube video about how there seems to be a growing backlash against “social media” apps; against “smart” phones; against the very things that were once meant to foster inclusivity, connection, collaboration. But somewhere along the route, the “greater good”, the “noble mission”, got replaced with greed, malarkey, and all the hallmarks of capitalism. As Jack Conte pointed out in the video, the customers of Facebook are advertisers, and the product that they demand from Facebook is every last ounce of your attention. So what does Facebook do? It pilfers, peddles, and mainstreams anything that will keep you on their platform, even if it means it destroys your minds and results in social neuroses.

I can’t remember the last time I posted on Facebook, but it must’ve been years ago now. I keep hearing about how Facebook is now full of disgusting AI Slop targeted at the basest desires of its Boomer population, to keep them hooked onto the app. This is just another attempt, but the tide is overwhelming and the next generation is abandoning Facebook and it’s mind destroying antics like there’s no tomorrow. 

It was a noble mission in the beginning — connecting people together, friends, family. It was also new, and we didn’t know what a privacy nightmare it was going to be. I still remember the early days of Facebook when friends and family would get together to “create” photo albums. It was a thing. After any event, a get together, a party, a hangout, there would always be someone saying “I’ll upload the pictures to Facebook.” And honestly, if that model had stayed, it would have worked. Facebook would still be our default. But the more Facebook has evolved, the more they’ve shown how truly evil and inhumane they really are.

A few months ago, I ended up reading the book “Careless People” by Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former Facebook employee and whistleblower. This is what I wrote after reading the book:

This is the story of how Facebook has destroyed countries, economies, politics, social norms. This is a story of how Facebook has lied, obfuscated and perjured itself. But because the chief evangelist of Facebook is richer than God himself, he has gotten away with it. Over and over and over again. This is a story about the disdain that people like Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Joel Kaplan, Elliot Schrage have for ordinary mortals, who do not have the same excess and naked wealth that they do.

If you think you know how Facebook operates — because they present sanitized versions of their corporate hierarchy to the outside world — let me assure you, you don’t. You don’t have a single fucking idea how deep rooted and inherent the malaise is in Facebook. You don’t even have to read the book; just look at the latest updates that they’ve pushed to WhatsApp — their most “privacy” focused product. They’ve shoved their privacy shattering, god-awful AI tool into your most intimate and private conversations, and as soon as you so much as touch it, it will send your “encrypted” chats to their servers, where they will read them, and use them to shove more privacy denying garbage down your throats. They expect you to not care about that; they expect you to think that even your AI interactions (and the subsequent data that they’re collecting — which includes your private, personal chats by the way) are encrypted and safe. But they’re not. None of it is. It’s icky and disgusting and it is why the Zoomers are leaving this dystopian hellscape in droves. 

To be fair, WhatsApp was never, and has never been a privacy first product. They say it’s “end-to-end encrypted” only because they were forced to say it, not because that is what they wanted. Signal had come to eat their lunch after their privacy debacle in 2021, when they said they would share your chats with Meta/Facebook (especially your chats with businesses), before begging and pleading with everyone that they’re not breaking any encryption and privacy.

But the lack of privacy is only one side of the coin. The other side is the soul destroying neuroses that they peddle and mainstream. They allow — deliberately — hate, bullying, perversion on their platforms because that is what creates shock and awe. That is what keeps you hooked. That is what allows them to turn back to their advertisers and say how many minutes and hours and days you spend on their apps because you can’t look away. The system is designed to break you, so that the system can turn you into a mindless lemming who can’t figure out why it’s so stunted and anxious and broken all the time. All the while, there are algorithms programmatically capturing every single data point about you, from your age, your gender, your political beliefs, to the brand of ice cream you like, to your secret dating partners, to your deepest darkest secrets. And you know what they do with that data? They horde it, to sell you slop in the best case, and hand that data over to your governments so that those governments can completely and utterly destroy and ruin your lives (and the lives of your loved ones) in the worst case. 

So tell me again, what exactly is the point of having social media apps owned by these narcissistic, perverted, elites who live in a bubble so far removed from reality, that they will never know, nor care, the damage that they have unleashed upon society in their quest for unimaginable wealth and power? What is the point when the meaning of “social” in social media has been corrupted? So I did what so many before me have done, and so many after me will continue to do: I deleted Facebook. In protest. And I know it is more symbolic than functional, because it won’t make a lick of difference in the end; because I’ll still be tracked and an algorithm will continue to build my profile, adding things that even I don’t notice about myself. But one day, when hopefully enough people have done the same, that’s when it will start making a difference. And that is the future we should all hope for.

Why I logged off Twitter for good: A personal reckoning with its descent into hate

Shout into the void, get zero likes, and still somehow feel attacked. But maybe zero likes is better than drowning in hate.

I haven’t posted on Twitter for a couple of years now; the majority of people that I knew on that platform have either abandoned it, or jumped ship. Including myself. I’m here, posting this here, instead of over there. And I’ve finally figured out why — Twitter seems like a dystopian hellscape. It’s a collection of the worst people, anonymous by design, shouting into their infernal echo chambers. It’s racist, xenophobic, and despairing. There’s too much hate being platformed on it in the name of free speech. It was always going to end up like this, but there was always this hope that maybe — just maybe — Twitter will survive the X-ification that Elon Musk unleashed upon it. How naive, we all were.

Every time I open it nowadays, it’s the same version of talking points over and over again — Muslims are terrorists, Islam is a cancer, brown folks are replacing European descendants. There are giant mega threads dedicated to utterly insane and xenophobic discourse about how “immigrants” have made areas “no-go”. It sounds unhinged and insane, but the collective echo chamber effect reinforces these beliefs over and over again, until they become part of your infernal and rabid psyche. And honestly, it’s a chicken and egg situation. Like Mehdi Hasan says, there was always a racism problem in the West, but it was hidden because it's common courtesy to not be a fucking race baiter. Well guess what? In the neofascist age that we’re living through, it’s become quite fashionable (and lucrative) to be an open racist and bigot. And it’s not just anon accounts fanning these flames, it’s congressmen too.

Of course this whole discourse is a pivot to distract away from their shortcomings, and how pathetic they really are. Charlie Kirk, Ted Cruz, Randy Fine to name but a few, are now so severely spewing Islamophobia, that it’s become their whole personality. They’re doing it because they don’t want people talking about their moral failings and shortcomings. They keep getting reamed in, but they double down. Because as I said earlier, it is now advantageous to be racist and xenophobic. The world is making that pivot, and these bigots want to get in on the ground floor.

The world is scary, but logging onto Twitter makes it feel 50 times worse, because all you’re subjected to repeatedly is how much you’re hated because you’re not a European descendant with the correct “genes”. The skin of your color is the defining characteristic of whether you’re worthy of any consideration, or if your value is relegated to the “subhuman” category. The whole setup is so broken. Instead of being hopeful and optimistic, we’re entering a doom spiral where everything feels hopeless and pessimistic. I don’t know how and where this cycle will end. In the meantime, log off Twitter. The xenophobia won’t magically go away, but at least you won’t have to worry about living with an existential crisis everyday.

Returning to blogging?

Is blogging dead?

Part I

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. There are so many reasons for why I haven’t. I’m thinking of where to begin — and to be honest, I’ve thought about penning this post for a while now — but I have no idea where to start. Do I start with why I gave up blogging? And if so, do I talk about why blogging seems like a helpless and lost cause? Do I talk about my personal changes? Struggles? Things that caused me to (sort of) abandon this blog? It’s all rather overwhelming.

I guess I’ll start at a while ago. It’s been several years — and when I say several, I mean several — since I left the land of the pure. For a while after I had left, I still felt connected to that land. I still used to talk about it. In that time, Pakistan has gone to war with India twice, Imran Khan rose from the ashes to become the king, only to then be deposed. Pakistan suffered. Then recovered. And it’s still stuck in that loop of trying to get out of its existential crisis. Gradually however, I’ve begun to lose touch with the realities of life in Pakistan. I am still intimately connected to it, through friends and family. But I don’t live there anymore. I don’t know what trials and tribulations people go through every day. Every now and then something horrific breaks through the plumes and I’m sucked back into the harsh specifics of human existence in Pakistan, but more often than not, it’s just a background blur now.

And when I started feeling this way, I also started feeling like my words about Pakistan were going to start sounding hypocritical. I mean, I left. I found a way out. I found a way out specifically to get away from that reality, from that existence. So who then, gave me the right to pontificate about that reality to people who are living through it everyday? I felt guilty talking about it; I felt like a hypocrite. After all, when I was going through it all, I never wanted to hear from “overseas Pakistanis” with their holier than thou attitudes about what we, the people living in Pakistan, should or shouldn’t do; how we should behave, think or talk. 

And then, there’s the ever growing and ongoing threat of consequences for words. Mere words. Which has led people to start self censoring. We police our thoughts, and we censor our words because we don’t want our words to be perceived in ways that could be harmful to our lives. The security state that once existed inside Pakistan, where the proverbial secret state disappears those who it considers dissenters, has now spread to the rest of the world too. The wrong thought and word — arbitrarily defined by the cabal of elites who rule our world — can land you in a world of pain and hurt and trouble. But the bigger shock isn’t that there are consequences for your originality, it is that there is also now, no recourse. You cannot appeal to the conscience of good men and women, women of justice and law, to rescue you. To save you. Those men and women are also subject to the same tyrannies. And try as I might, I don’t believe I’m a revolutionary. There is too much at stake — and I understand what’s at “stake” is all relative. But the harsh truth remains: being outspoken, original, fearless, has consequences that I cannot bear. In a different world, with different circumstances, perhaps I would. But so far, in this world? I’ve not found that courage.

Part II

So, we’ve established that I stopped blogging because: I was talking about Pakistan, and then I left, which made me feel like a hypocrite for continuing to talk about Pakistan; and the things that I was saying fell on the wrong side of the viewpoints of the elitist cabals, and I didn’t have the courage to keep going.

But there’s also the rise of artificial intelligence and machines that has rendered much of our words and writing irrelevant. Blogging as a profession, as a hobby is dead. AI slop rules the internet waves now. Originality is dying. Couple that with our attention deficit disorders thanks to short form content being blasted at us through social media, and you really end up with a double whammy. No one wants to sit and read. Which makes no one want to write. Because if no one reads, what’s the point of writing? The rise of short form slop has fried our neural circuits, and lead to the death of criticality. Maybe that was the goal all along; maybe the goal was to get the masses into a state of collective psychosis. If so, the goal has been properly achieved. 

Blogging became popular because it was a way for us to say our piece into the ether of the internet. When traditional and mainstream media was the only form of information, blogging was our way of fact checking them, and making sure everybody (who cared) could hear our voices too. But then slowly, this whole concept was eroded thanks to the rise of social media. Blogging was penalized because social media wanted those voices to shout into the wind on their platforms. So that’s where everybody went. And because of the very nature of social media (where sensationalism rules), it ended up being a gold rush for the grifters. Which left bloggers even further in the dust. Nobody wanted to read a 500-600 word article which might have some nuance, when they could get their fix from someone else in 280 characters. And then there came the age of the siloed platforms. New social media companies emulated the Facebook and Twitter model, and created new platforms that are walled off and siloed themselves. The era of an “open” internet, where you write something and publish it for everyone to see, has been replaced by “distribution platforms” (e.g., Substack), where you write and publish only for the users of that specific platform. The big challenge with that now is that unless you have, or had, a large social media following — that you can now transpose onto the new platform — you’re at the bottom of the barrel, and no one’s really reading your words anyway. Once upon a time, the internet was searched and indexed by web crawlers like Google. Now these platforms don’t let the words being spoken on them from being found by simple search engines. If you want to know what your favorite journalist, blogger, photographer, newscaster, peer, friend is saying, you have to sign up for that platform. You can’t simply type a web address into your browser and catch up. Those days, are long gone. 

Part III

So why then, would I return to blogging? I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. I guess it’s not so much about returning to blogging, as it is an itch to say the things that I want to say. I know I talked about how there are consequences to your words and thoughts now (side note: if you haven’t read George Orwell’s 1984 yet, I recommend that you read it ASAP), but I also figured that I’m an unknown person throwing my words into a dark void. My website — this blog — is not highly ranked in the search results. No one will likely ever find it. No one will ever read these words. Maybe it’s a passion? Maybe writing here will make me think that I’m playing just a small, tiny part in the grand scheme of things? Despite the risks associated with saying our truths, it still is important to say those truths. Maybe I feel like I want to take those risks anyway? Not because I don’t worry about those consequences, but because those consequences may be worth bearing, if push does come to shove. 

There will be changes. This piece is reflective of those changes. I won’t only talk about Pakistan anymore. I’ll talk about everything. Myself. My life. There will be politics, but it won’t be relegated just to Pakistan. Europe and North America are in a grip of an unfurling crisis. It’s important to talk about them too. Maybe I’ll talk about how the moon looks so beautiful in the night sky. After all, the essence of blogging has always been to say the things that you want to say, because no one other than you can say them. So we’ll see how it goes.

In the end, this post isn’t really for you, dear reader. It’s really for me. But if you’ve found this, I’m glad you’re here. I hope I continue to write, and I hope you will return for more.

The hate is entrenched

Imran Khan (Image: Dawn.com)

I remember having a conversation with a friend a while back. It was about the filth that Imran Khan has mainstreamed. The uncouth language, the harebrained takes, the perversion, the duplicity. This friend of mine came back with the mother of all Teflon-esque responses; he said that it didn’t matter how Imran Khan talks, or how he behaves, or the degrading language he mainstreams, because that language is used in Punjab anyway. It was in that moment that I realized that the damage has already been done. Rational thought and argument has all but vanished from our citizenry. It is only vileness and hate that remains.

Twitter is a prime example of this exact phenomenon. Go to any tweet that offers some criticality of Imran Khan. You will not find decent discourse under it. What you will find instead is vileness, name calling, grudges and hate. Just today for example, Talat Hussain posted the letter that Imran Khan has penned to Arif Alvi asking that an inquiry be initiated against General Bajwa. Instead of taking the content of the tweet and the letter on its merit, the loafers of the cult of Imran came crawling out of the woodwork to attack Talat Hussain. They did not debate the merits or the contents of the letter. No. They just spewed their hate. 

Amongst this garbage, someone put up a response saying Talat Hussain is a journalist who’s been exposing Bajwa, Saqib Nisar and Niazi, and that he wished all pro Pakistan politicians would gather together under one banner. A perfectly innocent suggestion. But even that was not spared. He was attacked based on his looks and asked: why do you have a woman’s ponytail on your head?

Imran-Bajwa war offers a public window onto dirty games they were playing fr thr petty interests. Bajwa’s stupid bravado is biting him back.He was a small man in a big position. Imran’s own deeds r no less self incriminating. Both deserved each other. Pakistan deserved neither. pic.twitter.com/eh1Ka0o21w

— Syed Talat Hussain (@TalatHussain12) February 16, 2023

Often I am told by the cultists that Nawaz Sharif and his lackeys use degrading and defamatory language against Imran Khan too. I agree. There are certainly those in the corridors of the high castles that use derogatory language. But they don’t do it the way Imran Khan does it, or has done. For example, in Nawaz Sharif’s hard hitting recorded video about the 2018 election rigging, you will notice that he keeps using the term General Bajwa “sahib”, and he refers to him using the respectful title of “آپ”. Yet again there are those who counter this by saying so what? So what does it matter if Imran Khan uses derogatory language? So what if he uses boys locker room talk? So what if he uses sexist, misogynist tropes? At least he isn’t “corrupt”.

Facts don’t matter to the cult of Imran, so it is useless to state that Imran Khan is corrupt, and not just financially at that; he’s also morally and ethically corrupt. The extent of the corruption that prevailed under him and by him includes: laundering of hundreds of millions by his cronies including Farah Gogi, Usman Buzdar, Malik Riaz, Jehangir Tareen, Bushra Bibi; legalizing the corrupt and forceful seizure of land for housing societies; looking the other way when journalists were picked up, shot, beaten, disappeared. Pretending to make riyasat-e-Medina all the while legalizing the illegal Hyatt Towers in Islamabad, where he was presented with two flats. His corruption has had such far reaching consequences that they have corrupted the minds of the brainwashed generation. He has fed them fodder and eroded their critical thinking skills. The damage has been devastating, and the hate he has filled in those crevices is now entrenched. Remember when Naeem ul Haq slapped Daniyal Aziz on TV and Imran Khan’s response was “why didn’t you punch him instead?” There is hatred where there was disagreement. He has divided a nation that cannot afford such division and hate. 

Imran Khan is not the promised messiah. He certainly presented himself as one, and he along with the super king Bajwa was able to brainwash a lot of the people desperately looking for a savior into believing that he is one. But he is not. Leaders — corrupt or not — are supposed to lead. And when a leader is a text book narcissist, a hypocrite, a master of deceit, a grade A sexist and misogynist, a pervert, morally and ethically corrupt, he legitimizes this perversion in his followers.

Imran Khan is a 70 year old boomer. You can’t teach him to mend his ways. He is part of that classic privileged, elitist bad boy club who got away with everything. He’ll get away with this too. But the damage he has unleashed is permanent. It will take a new generation (and one that needs to be taught love, empathy and kindness, all of which we cannot because it has been systematically drilled out of us) to right this broken and hollow ship. Until then, the troll army of the grand charlatan will keep spreading their lies, filth and deceit around.

The death of Pervez Musharraf

Pervez Musharraf

This is not a eulogy. I grew up in the era of Musharraf. I was a teenager, living in a privileged bubble watching as the country flush with American dollars boomed; metaphorically and literally. Pakistan had recently discovered the concept of marking up land values, and the terrorists had discovered that you can brainwash young men and women to blow themselves up. And such was my existence. The closest I’ve come to this boom was when my family migrated from a trusty old Suzuki Khyber, to the status symbol of the newly minted middle class, the Corolla GLi; and when the parade lane suicide bombing took away the lives of friends and people I had known; and that one time when I luckily missed being caught in the middle of a suicide bombing by 15 minutes (the attack on the then Surgeon General of Pakistan, Lt Gen Mushtaq Ahmed Baig).

I remember Musharraf’s fists of power in the air as he was informed of the carnage that unfolded in Karachi. And I remember when he said Pakistan has now embarked on an era of enlightened moderation. Privilege has this uncanny habit of making you blind to the pain, misery and suffering that surrounds you. Because it doesn’t affect you and bother you. It affects and bothers others. And who cares about others when you’re privileged?

It was only later that I recognized what a poisonous and treasonous snake the man who had said “Pakistan first!” actually was. Because if he had actually put Pakistan first, he wouldn’t have tried to play with its destiny like a man flipping a house for quick money does. Selling people for dollars to satiate the American appetite of goriness; filling the country and its institutions with holier than thou army officers who had no business or knowledge running those institutions; repurposing the law of the land and landing jiujitsu chops on it to make himself the tall and high lord of the country. I believe he thought he was doing the right thing. I believe he thought he knew what Pakistan needed, and I believe he thought he knew how to do it. Back then there were only 140 million of us, and the sad reality is that one man, no matter how perfect (let alone a treasonous snake), cannot, will not and has not ever been able to fix the mess. If it takes a village to raise a child, you can bet it was going to take a lot more people than one Pervez Musharraf to raise Pakistan.

But perhaps the most iconic and stunning blunder of his era — and the example that perfectly encapsulates that he believed himself to be the Napoleon Bonaparte of our times — was before he booted Nawaz Sharif from office. It was the wild, incomprehensible idea to turn the Line of Control into an active war zone. There was no need for that. Absolutely none. But Musharraf’s stupidity was such that he decided to take Kargil by himself; without informing his Prime Minister, without informing his own corps commanders, or the services chiefs of the branches of our military. We saw this film play out before, in 1965. When another tiny IQ man fancying himself as the liberator of Kashmir didn’t inform the Air Force of his folly to invade Kashmir. Anyway, the Indian response to Musharraf’s wet dream was swift, dramatic, and intense. It got so bad, that the same chief who had decided he would take Kargil and kill India’s aspirations of ever accessing Kashmir again, had to publicly deny that the soldiers who’s dead bodies were freezing in the mountains of Kargil were his. The shamelessness of it all should’ve made Musharraf rethink his rhetoric, but a narcissist never questions his antics. He only finds blame. It was the Indian Army that buried the men Musharraf had sent in to take Kashmir from them.

Musharraf was a larger than life personality. But he was a dictator who thought he knew better, just like the narcissists before him, and the narcissists after him. Just like all his predecessors and his successors, he too sought to place blame on anyone but himself. But history is not kind to those who are immoral and unprincipled. Because ultimately, the populist rhetoric wears off and the only thing left is you, your morality, your humanity, and your principles. And when the whole basis of your legacy is based on subversion, abrogation and treason, you cannot hope to be remembered fondly.

Farewell Musharraf.