Author: billywalshe

There’s little doubt about it — except in this article’s fake linkbait title — algorithm jamming is the present stage of the world’s most popularly viewed “art.”

An inhumanly vast body of algorithmically generated nonsense exists and exposes you to advertisers, an entertainment industry completely devoid of any entertainment but the shred that exists in the charged moments right before you click the linkbait and find substanceless infuriating gibberish.

Young women have deployed closeup shots of their décolletage to algorithm jam the video game part of YouTube, a haunt of hormonal teenage boys. This provided an impressive income for several young women, but earned them few fans. Outcry from the boys was so overwhelming, YouTube officials “improved” the algorithm, effectively ending these women’s new careers.

Algorithm jammers sometimes take a sick pleasure in building labyrinths of desired objects debased into infuriating meaninglessness, an act born of and giving birth to hate. The genuine container deceptively labeled with a desired object conjured by the algorithm jammer is filled with this hate and mass distributed.

There are thousands of “tributes” to jokes like this video. The audio track drops a crucial hint, “Money for nothing / Chicks for free”

Imitation food reviews of imitation food play through a never ending carnival of “novelty” products as intransitive as Burger King’s burger with fries inside the burger. Enormous images of food and faces eating food fill the frame. A string of automobiles powered by fat men eating burgers, riding in the wake of each fast food advertising campaign bobs by carelessly and is caught in the crest of an algorithm. Dare he take the wheel, and preach about the great future promised by Anonymous? Dare he fill his gut with words of bloody revolution, punk rock, and anarchy? Will he be wise enough to continue to label it Review of McDonald’s new Triple Big Mac?

INTERNET —  As Russian forces storm into Ukraine, strained voices in both the Kremlin and the Pentagon are clamoring for a quick and easy nuclear solution.

Dr. Angstrom H. Troubador, expert in ecological geopolitics, told reporters, “They’ve got their fingers on the nuclear trigger, and it’s only a matter of time. If you thought today’s climate change was bad, just wait until you see the cataclysmic nuclear winter that will instantly reverse global warming and freeze the oceans solid. This is it for the world. Radiation, minds decay.”

Dr. Troubador grew agitated when berated by reporters, shouting, “You will see Iran, North Korea, and China invade Australia, India, and perhaps parts of Africa. What parts of the world aren’t nuked into oblivion will be bloody battlefields where automated drones will gun down anything that moves.”

INTERNET — Edward Snowden’s huge cache of NSA documents seems to be doing a lot to publicize the NSA’s incredible cyberwar capabilities, spread fear and distress among would-be revolutionaries, and cast a light of truth so bright on the government that it risks eclipsing the trespasses and evils of rapidly developing internet monopolies who make the vast majority of their profits by the kind of everyday spying mischaracterized as the business of the NSA.

Thanks to Snowden, we know there must be victims of “parallel investigations.” They have been illegally imprisoned after “legal” NSA surveillance sparked their prosecution, but because it was so “legal,” this evidence was hidden from courts with the nationwide cooperation of local police. No thanks to Snowden, victims of these illegal prosecutions have no access to the necessary documents through which they could right this injustice.

If it were only a matter of an ideological or tactical stance where Snowden believed time and energy were better spent attacking the institutions rather than defending the individuals, that would be understandable. But there are other, possibly connected and troubling things to consider.

Snowden made his first and most important alliance with Glenn Greenwald, a columnist who once used Snowden’s leaks to make a soft claim that news forums on reddit with rules against opinion columns blocked his opinion as part of JTRIG forum moderator infiltration. Greenwald’s tactics failed and the reddit moderators correctly chose not to cave to Greenwald and the army of menacing trolls he is infamous for inspiring.

Greenwald was quickly co-opted, or bought out, by eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar. The for-profit advocacy publication, The Intercept, also hired Jeremy Scahill. Scahill spoke of Omidyar’s influence as ever-present, characterizing the billionaire as the loudest voice in the room. Greenwald, however, rejected the idea that his reporting could in any way be affected by his new, shiny office that totally isn’t on the eBay campus.

Edward Snowden spoke at SXSW and even used a mobile telepresence robot to participate in a TED talk. He is a pop culture icon, savior of the day. Up there on his telepresent high horse, maybe Snowden has forgotten the task of justice. There is no doubt that he has done his fair share of proselytizing for the case of freedom, but will the NSA’s victims ever be given the documents they need to receive their freedom? And if not, how much longer can an audience put up with this kind of a ‘freedom’ circus? Shark jumping can only take freedom so far.