Passivity is the essence of the digital world
This is the era of high-pressure tactics, of fresh new ways to persuade, entice, frighten and pester people into your way of thinking.
Consider AI’s fake prose and imaginary photographs, Twit bots, robocalls, dick pics, retail and cultural boycotts, and the now-ubiquitous open letter. It isn’t that these things exist, it’s that they come in bulk these days, a heaving mass of targeted lobbying.
I was excited to read that Loblaws shoppers on a subreddit are advocating a May boycott of the grocery chain that appears to work fulltime repelling customers with “unreasonably high prices,” as the very Canadian phrase goes.
Its ingenuity lies in its passivity, the highest-pressure tactic of all. It is the essence of the digital world. Your task is to not go there, not in person or online. If enough shoppers agree, perhaps Galen Weston Jr. will recivilize his branded food garages.
As the online world screams at us to say yes, we can just say no. South Africa gave up apartheid partly because long ago enough people stopped buying its wine (easier to quit than its gold apparently).
As with Israeli goods, Canadian customers can politely decline. If you’re a lavish retail leading indicator, boycotting can work. It’s lazy but morally soothing, like cheering on demonstrators, so energetic, so eager to persuade passersby. There’s something limp about merely saying no to Loblaws brand chocolate chip cookies, even the delicious chewy version.
Hate mail remains a popular tactic. Block it. Apparently, people used to respond to verbal/written assaults by crumpling up a letter and tossing it in a wastebasket or slamming down a phone. I see it on Netflix oldies. Life must have been so dainty then.
It wasn’t. It was the same but slower. For instance, I was astounded when a male student was recently arrested for secretly filming females showering in a women’s residence washroom at the University of Toronto’s New College.
That was exactly where I used to escape decades ago when I was a student avoiding the universally shunned unisex washrooms at my University College residence down the street. Since January, New College women have been hunting down safer washrooms across campus, as I did then.
Just say no to voyeurs. Except that they now hide tiny digital cameras in public toilets or assault females by cyberflashing their bits (their own, I hope). They do try so hard, always have.
As for photos in the AI era that is crushing human communication with its huge tanklike treads, I have no words for the damage that has been done to the world of visuals. Is this my family or a collage? Who are these people?
And then there’s the open letter phenomenon. Never have I seen so many open letters. I include a subspecies, the workplace open letter, after which everyone ends up with hurt feelings on some level.
Don’t sign a public statement unless you totally agree. There are inevitably a few people who panic later and back out, saying they hadn’t read it in detail, though open-letter types are the kind who live for the detail.
If you sponsor an open letter, list the famous signatories first.
I have a moral shorthand beyond open letters. It’s called Name Brand Persuasion. I agree with everything Naomi Klein says, unless she’s wrong, which she hasn’t yet been. Same goes for historian Adam Tooze on Chartbook and the very fine futurist Cory Doctorow.
As for everyone else, make your case, alone or en masse. I can hear the vast noise of it already.