PRIVACY or KINDNESS IS KING

 

PRIVACY or KINDNESS IS KING

            Everybody has their favorite “scare the middle-graders” stories. The one I remember best went something like everybody gets an A/V implant when they graduate, recording, broadcasting, backing up to the local servers 24/7. Doesn’t matter if you’re pretty, ugly, fat, or contagious, some pervert somewhere has a subscription package to your shower feed, or kitchen cooking experiments if that’s their thing. Some kid is writing their current events paper watching your vacation to Spain during El Colacho and hoping some dude accidentally trips and faceplants on a baby. Ain’t no stories or fantasies anymore because cold hard reality is infinitely more strange. There is some truth to stories like that, but only some.

I myself go through ups and downs. It’ll be motivating for a while. You do something interesting or never been done, and bam you’re an instant celebrity for the week. Then again, you’re just as much a celebrity for stepping on a rake or accidentally falling into the duck pond. Everybody has their turn to look cool or fool, so it’s not like you ever feel too embarrassed or get picked on for more than an afternoon.

The lows, though, are agony. Not everybody gets them, but when I do I just lie in bed crying until I have to eat or go to the bathroom. Even in the worst of it, though, I know there’s somebody out there using it for primary research, it will turn out to be helpful for someone else, and it’ll be itemized on my next monthly statement. If you’re not back up and muddling through in a week or so they’ll send out doctors to evaluate you for Milson’s Disease. Not a bad thing at all, whatever kind of help you need, an actual professional will show up to get you going again.

I know they mention Milson’s Disease somewhere in your classes, it’s one of those classic stories from the early experimental days when  Broadcast Economy was completely optional. Adrian Milson was one of the early pioneers, but I guess he subconsciously developed an addiction to the idea of reverting to a state of being completely unobserved. They had a word for it back then: “privacy.” Honestly, I could never wrap my head around the concept; nobody knowing or liking or even caring what you’re up to. I’m no philosopher, but it just sounds so lonely.

Anyway, the way Mr. Sanderson explained it back when I was in school, it was like life was some kind of competitive sport or something, and in that respect I can’t say I’d wanna go back. Can you imagine how horrible that must have been, having to compete for everything, even just basic attention?

The religious zealots, there aren’t many but they are out there, will of course tell you he was secretly a pedophile or something even worse, but I dunno. I have to imagine my lows are just some remnant of that same subconscious primal fear of change and the unknown. Like I said, very few people have lows the way I do, but I certainly won’t complain about the money I make from researchers interested in fringe cases like mine. Realistically, there isn’t a choice; you either go out and live your life for money, or you stay in and live your life for money. Either way they send you the monthly breakdown and tell you the latest trends and viewer demands so you can at least estimate the return on whatever strikes your fancy.

Scary stories aside, nobody’s out there making you do anything repulsive, they’re just telling you how much it’s worth. You can make just as much money spray-painting a funny message on a freshly painted brick wall as you can being a stripper, and nobody’s out there judging you either way. It’s hokey, but there’s a whole fan community out there who adores you exactly the way you are, and they tune in just because you’re you. Don’t sign up for stuff you don’t want people to recognize you for doing, but even there there’s no shame in quitting and going in a different direction. Somebody else will happily do whatever somewhere. It’s the Controller’s job to sort out the streams and direct them where the demand is. You just do whatever you were planning to do anyway and pick up a couple extra side quests if you want more spending cash.

Yes, it’s a little intimidating right out of high school. A lot of people shower with the lights off or sign specific non-broadcast waivers at first. Obviously, you don’t get paid for it, but everything’s recorded regardless for the simple fact that it’s worth something to someone. Payments aren’t retroactive, but you can nullify those waivers anytime you want. I know a few people who timed it just right to hit peak popularity by releasing their back catalog while a particular market was super hot, but nobody ever needs to actually do that. This is all 8^th Grade Broadcast Economics, the bottom line is you lose a lot of money for no good reason and if you can’t get over a lot of it you’ll be back for reeducation or possible removal.

Hypothetically, even if you just sat on the street and pretended to be poor, you’d just end up making more money because everyone would watch it a hundred times just to see you obstinately suffer for no good reason. Even if you went total Milson and signed up for one of those amnesia farms, that stuff is super fascinating for cognitive scientists because they hypnotize you into not realizing you’re still being broadcast and use the money to take care of you in relative isolation. It’s not like you can just break the law whenever you want; soon as it gets uploaded and categorized the police will be knocking on your door because real life arrests are like special event viewing, and if you’re terrible enough they’ll just wipe your memory and keep you in a farm until you die of natural causes. They have to or they’d be recorded torturing you without express written permission, and you can’t do any of that hardcore stuff without the appropriate training and licenses. Plus, your revenue can’t be transferred, so it’s not like there’s any real incentive to volunteer to be beaten to death or jump out of a plane without a parachute. You could literally live alone in an underground bunker in the woods and you’d still have enough money to go get professional help whenever you changed your mind; Survivalism is never not popular. Literally everything can record an audio and/or visual signal that some specialist can reconstruct. My point is, yes you can get real creeped out if your mind starts to wander, but stalking and harassment are Class A felonies. 85% of all crime is thwarted before the potential victim even realizes they are in danger, 99% before it actually happens.

I know you kids are about to graduate, so you’re all in your mid 20s with a few practice runs under your belts. Some of you have had to say goodbye to dear friends who aren’t ready to step out into the weird, wild world, but they’ll still be here when you want to come visit, just like I’ve been visiting some of my childhood friends around the academy today. It can be sad when they don’t really remember you, but I can still remember Mr. Sanderson’s lecture on how very few of our childhood friends remain close friends in later life, even under the best circumstances. People naturally want different things in life.

A couple final thoughts before I go. I remember how surreal it was to hold the actual indexed hard copy of my entire childhood in my hands after walking across that stage. It may be years before you pluck up the courage to watch any of your own, but when you do you’ll be in for a wonderful surprise. Sure it’s full of love and laughter and more than a couple cringe-worthy hairstyles, but it’s also full of the objective truthfulness all those writers of all those crazy books your Historical Literature teachers made you read every year were so desperately craving.

Last, but not least, I’ll end with a bit of truth your teachers could never directly tell you in the classroom. We’re all adults here, statistically speaking by the time you’re 30 you’ll have already seen all your friends and their moms and granddads and neighbors naked whether you intended to or not, and they’ll have seen every compromising position you’ve even found yourself in. Kindness is King once the Controller flips off the Child Safety Filter. Yep, whether you’re a registered Dominatrix with an Amputation Endorsement, or a 60 year-old coin collector with a genuine love for K-Pop like your principal, Dr. Dustman, out there in the real world, Kindness is King.

Parents, Teachers, Titans of Industry, I give you the graduating class of 2174. I’d tell you they’re going to go on to some spectacular success, but I don’t really need to. You’ll get to see every bit of it with your own eyes.