Hello, Smartmask? Hello, New Normal?

The creepy edition.

Apr 19

This story comes with a disclaimer. Out of all things I have published, this one is the creep fest. Some of the sources included here are unpleasant to interact with. That said, dishonest and creepy things have been attempted for a while. Any time a broken person with ideas rooted in misguided creativity and brokenness attempts to rule and manage other people, it’s creepy. And there is nothing cool about creepiness. Nothing interesting, nothing fascinating. Creepiness is not attractive. But sometimes it is good to be aware simply for self-protection and to understand the context of what you see around you.

The broken folks fixated on controlling their surroundings are trying to go into the sacred and mess things up. In a way, they are trying to do what their predecessors have been trying to do for centuries but with dangerously powerful technology. And I believe it is our existential duty to stay strong, calm and even-headed, and to remember love at all times. We can prevail.

Here is what I recommend. Before diving into the creepy, please watch this beautiful talk by Sobonfu Some. It will help you stay grounded when you deal with the other stuff. Staying grounded is the most important thing because when we are grounded and together, no creep can get us. Not the Gateses, not the Rockefellers, and not the Schwabs. We are not an accident in this world, and we have the ability to use the wisdom of our hearts to deal with creeps. And I am very grateful to Sobonfu for her beautiful spirit, I have learned a lot from her work.

Now, to the rest of it.

One day when I was a kid, I went to a local movie theater, and the only film that was playing was a Soviet documentary called “The Target is Your Brain.” To be honest, as a kid, I found it boring, and up until yesterday when it accidentally came up in a conversation with a friend, I didn’t think about it. Out of curiosity, I found it online and checked it out—and wow, looking back at it today, this 1985 Soviet documentary is quite something. In short, it is a Soviet condemnation of the use of psychological manipulation in the American media and of American scientific experiments in mind control. Now, without any doubt, the Soviet media did plenty of psychological manipulation, and Soviet scientists were as eager to nail down crowd control as their American counterparts. However, this film has great educational value. (It’s in Russian but it lets you do the automatic English captions.)

The reason the old Soviet film came up in the conversation was a very creepy and entirely non-conspiratorial military presentation that I heard about the other day. In fact, “creepy” doesn’t start describing it. It is so creepy that you will likely want to take a shower after you watch it. And I am not exaggerating. And while I have no way of knowing to which extent this gentleman is blowing smoke and “selling,” all sorts of unseemly technology development has been happening forever, and when there is a hammer... And we are not usually told anything until many years later, it’s time to count the casualties. And sometimes not even then!

I had to get those two videos out of the way to start talking about smart face wearables.

See, when this whole insanity just started last year, I had a facetious conspiracy theory that the whole push for masks had to do with, among other things, Big Tech’s push for mass adoption of smart face wearables. A cynical product adoption curve with fascist overtones! Why did I think that? Because it’s known that the Googles of the world want the data to perfect their dream AI (and biometric data is the hottest shit), while the governments obviously want control—so from the textbook fascist perspective, meaning a tight collaboration between big corporations and the state to control the citizens, this is a win-win. Besides, computer-to-brain interfaces are the new frontier—and what better way to make people get used to the inconvenience of wearing stuff on their heads than a patriotic mandate justified by health concerns?

Besides, Big Tech has a record of creating and actively promoting—through lobbying, bullying, and bribing journalists and academics—of culture-changing narratives whose sole goal is to make people dependent on devices and move all activities online, thus making it easier for tech founders to train their AI (while also getting rich from advertising and data dealing).

In that light—and given all the weird pendulum-swinging around masks as well as the wobbly character of science behind the mask mandates—I felt like my conspiracy theory was at the very least not illogical. But at the same time, though logical, it felt too insidious still, and I was only half-joking about it.

But now that the “Mask Innovation Challenge” has been officially announced, I think that we are, in fact, being groomed by the aspiring overlords to accept the inconvenience of wearing crap on our faces—at least until they figure out how to interact with our brains remotely (or so the bastards hope).

So, about those smartmasks.

Tessa Lena a.k.a. Tessa Fights Robots ❤️ @TessaMakesLove

I'm going to leave a seemingly controversial tweet here and see how it unfolds. I posit that certain measures, which are forced upon us with lots of anger and frothing at the mouth, have nothing to do with health but rather with Big Tech's upcoming major push for face wearables.

Tessa Lena a.k.a. Tessa Fights Robots ❤️ @TessaMakesLove

Here we go. Seems like smart masks are about to make an entrance, after shyly hiding behind the curtain for a year. Hello, "Mask Innovation Challenge."

Biden administration launches $500,000 contest to improve face masksThe government is looking for solutions to common complaints like fogged glasses and irritated skin.cbsnews.com

Tessa Lena a.k.a. Tessa Fights Robots ❤️ @TessaMakesLove

More conspiracy theories coming true. A year ago this used to be a dark joke: "Everything around is so absurd that next thing you know, they'll tell us to wear masks to prevent the flu, and the pandemic mode will last forever..." Remember?

Should Masking Last Beyond The Pandemic? Flu And Colds Are Down, Spurring A DebateHospitalizations are down 62% for childhood respiratory illnesses, a study shows. Masking and physical distancing are keeping a variety of viruses in check, but will these behaviors last?npr.org

World Economic Forum @wef

The mask of the future. Submit your solution to the world's most pressing challenges, on UpLink: buff.ly/3uf4Z31 @WEFUpLink

Photo by breathtech.io (linked in the image)

All this is too odd to be an ordinary “market response to a health crisis.”

I want to end with a sci-fi tale about Interplanetary Holy Tech that I wrote in 2019. Last year, when I published it, I only had to change a couple of lines to make it match the news cycle.

Deprecating Free Will: A Future We Don't Have to Accept

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Creepy links and references: