You know, the current gov’ment spy level is unsettling as it is.
It’s bad enough when you log into YouTube or Facebook and are suddenly greeted with a sidebar or interjected ads about that thing you were just Googling yesterday. It’s like the evil “delete browser history” workaround – which we all think we’re so smart when we do, until your matriarch wife hops on your laptop for some research of her own and ends up with the kinda questions a search engine can’t help her answer (“Bruce, honey, why are ads for plastic surgeons who specialize in top surgery, bottom surgery, and hormone replacement therapy popping up between posts of our grandchildren?”) Somehow, we’ve all just kind of acclimated to this disgusting phenomena (that’s the spying – not the transgenders), stopping questioning it, gone on about our lives, and said, “Oh, it’s nothing, really. Just the price of having a machine where I can plug in questions like ‘how many toenail clippings are in a pound’ and get an immediate answer – which is both amazing and disheartening.”
Yes. That’s all quite bad enough
What you want to know what’s worse though? When these things happen in a way that translates from offline life to the realm of technology. And you try to chock it up to “synchronicity” (that’s the thing some people call serendipity – where seemingly separate natural happenstances – occur tandem or parallel to one another in a coincidental or pattern like manner). For example, maybe you pick up the phone to call somebody and they’re already on the other line because they were about to call you. (Or, really, a more accurate and modern version would be text messaging – I wonder how many potential lovers have sent texts to each other the same time and then their texts cancel each other out so they never talk to each other again? Because they each think the other hates them?) When that happens in day to day reality, it is kind of “spooky” or “cool” or whatever you wanna call it – in that there’s no real explanation for it. Especially if it happens frequently. But when it happens within the realm of life offline – to Internet (and Google has no part in it), it’s slightly fucking terrifying.
That might seem vague. So I’ll give you a recent example:
Recently, I’ve been trying to get back into playing piano. So, I decided to try practicing an old song I taught myself by ear back when I was a kid – a Tori Amos song called “Winter”. Mind you, I haven’t listened to this song or any of Tori songs on YouTube for maybe a year. So I’m playing the song – recording it for myself – so that I can judge my tempo and what sounds good and work on it. And then for a few days, I forget about it totally. Then, yesterday, I log on to YouTube and the first thing I see… is a suggested video for her live 1991 performance of the same song,
.___.
I mean I always figured that some robot somewhere could pick up keywords from my emails or my notes or text messages. But matching up the notes and tunes of the songs I play? To the closest sounding thing on Youtube? Is the NSA profiling me for potentially traitorous melodies? Probably. And I’d be upset about it. But for now my ego is busy purring at the prospect that I was so talented at my reprise of this song…
…that whoever was assigned to monitor me and match up my private piano seshes to YouTube recognized it right away. Which reminds me: if you’re reading this now, I’m a bit concerned that I’m not yet seeing Adriana Lima or Gwen Stefani under the “people you may know based off the fact that you look amazing in your past ten selfies that you haven’t uploaded” section. I mean, I’m sure it’s just a glitch in your system or something. Just thought I’d point that out to ya. ’cause I’m just trying to help.
Ya know, as my patriotic duty.