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I quit Facebook. And when I quit, I stay quit.

Not to protest anything. Not to make any sort of statement. I’m just sick of the platform.

It doesn’t work for me.

I want to get some value out of my time on the internet. That means, I want to get more out of it than I put in. Or, at least, break even on the deal. Or get something.

I haven’t been able to get anything from Facebook for quite some time.

Not that I’ve put much into Facebook. I’ve tried feeding my other stuff in there (my blog, my twitter, my tumblr) but, let’s face it, aside from being annoying, that’s just a life support system. It’s time to pull the plug.

I’m not even going to say that Facebook sucks. Quite a few people get something out of it. They maintain contact with loved ones, old friends and organize events.

But if you can’t find me on the internet without Facebook, I’m not sure I want you to. Like, if you need Zuckerberg to suggest that we be friends, I’m not sure we should be. My loved ones and friends possess my email, my phone number, twitter handle and address. To everyone else, I’m available.

I don’t need to be constantly knocking at your door.

As far as organizing events, Facebook has always seemed overrated. If I want to invite you to anything, I’ll drop you an email, tell you here or on twitter. You can do the same by me. We can all save ourselves the stress of lying about our intentions on an event page.

Anything else I’ve ever tried to set up through Facebook has either turned into an overcomplicated shitshow or never happened at all. Or both. It takes effort and there’s no return.

I’ve never met a new person there. All I have is a fossil record of people I have met.

Who needs that?

If one thing pushed me over the edge with Facebook, it was this recent article in the New York Times: The Death of the Cyberflâneur that coincided with me trying to change some of my internet habits.

It starts with:

THE other day, while I was rummaging through a stack of oldish articles on the future of the Internet, an obscure little essay from 1998 — published, of all places, on a Web site called Ceramics Today — caught my eye. Celebrating the rise of the “cyberflâneur,” it painted a bright digital future, brimming with playfulness, intrigue and serendipity, that awaited this mysterious online type. This vision of tomorrow seemed all but inevitable at a time when “what the city and the street were to the Flâneur, the Internet and the Superhighway have become to the Cyberflâneur.”

Now, the strange thing is, I know that old theory. I might have even read the article. That sort of talk was contemporary with the start of this blog. That sort of practise is the source of The Grumpy Owl.

This is a notebook meant to bookmark the places I would never return to on my strolls.

And Facebook is, at its heart, anti-strolling.

You can certainly follow and you can stalk. You can lurk. But stroll?

No.

To do that, you need to get off the ranch.

Facebook has always been a suburb. It thrived after MySpace suffered from white flight. People (specifically, white people)  wanted the neatly trimmed lawns and soothing, quiet experience of Facebook after the noisy, boorish neighbours, hookers and unkempt lawns of MySpace.

Its always middle class aesthetic has since undergone another change. It’s now the Internet’s bureaucracy. It’s everywhere and ever-growing. Everything must pass through it.

Facebook keeps making changes to maintain the appearance of relevance. Most of the time, I was only engaging it to prevent it from intruding on other spaces. Changing my privacy settings, trying to figure out where they moved everything and so forth. And for what?

To see today’s meme?

Fuck it.

Facebook is not just the opposite of how I like to experience the Internet, it’s poisonous to how I like to experience the internet. The time I spend checking Facebook for something –anything– of interest, is time not spent strolling through the arcades. It’s time not discovering new places, people and things. It makes the internet boring. It makes it into shoddy tv.

Maybe you get something out of Facebook. Like, I said, some people do. But it might be time to ask yourself a few questions:

Have you discovered any of your favourite parts of the Internet through Facebook? If so, how long ago was it?

Has it improved more relationships than it’s damaged?

Is it the only place people can find you? And do you want to be found by them?

Have you ever found anyone worth finding? How long ago was that?

Has anyone ever introduced you to anyone else through it? Have you ever introduced anyone to anyone else through it?

Do you create any original content for Facebook or do you just feed other stuff into it?

Is it a parasite?

Do you even want to be there or do you feel more like a hostage? Like you need to be there?

Facebook says it connects people. You feel connected?

There’s no right or wrong answer to those questions. They’re just meant to start your investigation of the service’s value. I get none. I get negative value.

I like social media. I enjoy the bar-room chatter of twitter and the teenage, psychedelic underbelly of Tumblr. Facebook just bores me stupid.

I’d rather read people than read about them. Facebook, at its best, is just a file a person builds about themselves. It’s an intelligence report from a dubious source.

And I’m done with it.

It feels good.

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Megaupload has been taken down and its founder arrested on charges of piracy. You can read the indictment here.

Just so we’re clear, Blackwater, a mercenary group that has committed war crimes is a private contractor. Megaupload, a website that allows people to store information online and others to download it, are criminals. Blackwater, though funded by tax dollars and friendly with politicians, is a civilian group and an important part of a war effort. Megaupload, on the other hand is a “MEGA CONSPIRACY.” Blackwater,  staffed with war criminals from around the world, are the good guys. Megaupload are pirates.

Reminds me of the fourth century BC, when a pirate was brought before Alexander the Great, who demanded to know “what he meant by keeping possession of the sea.” The pirate said: “What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor.”

Then, as now, that’s the logic the state operates on.

Whatever your feelings on copyright, I’m sure you can understand why this takedown is sickening. The Department of Justice is concerned with the free distribution of movies. It is not concerned with massive media organizations like Fox telling blatant lies to frogmarch the people into war. It is concerned with bringing Megaupload to justice, not with bringing war criminals who advocate torture to justice. It is worried about the profits of Hollywood. It does not give a shit about detained or murdered Arabs.

Not a single member of Goldman Sachs has been charged with anything. They were bailed out. Dick Cheney remains free to walk the earth. In golden shoes, if he so chooses.

And we’re supposed to look at all that and think this government has our best interests at heart?

We’re supposed to look at all the lies we’ve been told and think they’re protecting creators?

I’m a creator. I’m a published novelist. I have an interest in this. But I cannot, for a single god-damn moment believe that the US government is at all interested in protecting me. If they were interested in protecting the peaceful expression of ideas and the people who create and spread them, we’d see a few less scenes like this:

They’re interested in protecting one thing and one thing only: Profit. Their profit.

If you want to talk criminal conspiracies, we should start with Goldman Sachs. Move on to the insider trading in Congress. Prosecute the war criminals who launched an illegal invasion based on lies, engaged in warrentless wiretaps, detained, tortured and burnt their way to a tidy profit margin at the expense of the tax payer.

Let’s start with the people who allowed this to happen:

And did this:

And before we decide that these are the people who should be given any control whatsoever over the things we can read, see, download or share, we should ask ourselves if they wanted us to see any of those images, considering their first move after the torture in Abu Gharib was to ban cameras, or if they would let us see this one:

I do not think they would.

Nothing in their history says they deserve this sort of power or can sensibly wield it.

And while I’m sympathetic to the indie film maker who has lost money due to downloading, I am not so sympathetic that I think any state should be given the power to determine what we share online. I do not think creators should be able to pass any law to protect themselves at other people’s expense.

If they had that sort of power around twenty five years ago, hip-hop, which was considered theft and its artists pirates, would not exist today. It would not be one of the most popular and profitable artforms in the history of humankind – one that many people derive a living from. And make no mistake, some people lost money. Some people never got paid. They should have been.

That shit happens.

And that sort of thing isn’t right. But it’s worse to allow reactionaries and their bully boys in the Department of Justice to pass laws that trample us all. Just to drive up profit on their latest remake of a television show. A remake by an industry that was, itself, founded on violating copyrights.

Call me crazy but, over the last Planet of the Apes movie, I would take this any day.

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From the press release:

Occupy Toronto will be working alongside Occupy Hamilton, Occupy London, Occupy St. Catherine’s, Occupy Niagara and Occupy Buffalo, in regards to an action taking place at Niagara Falls’ Rainbow Bridge on January 1st  2012 at NOON for an International General Assembly (GA) in alliance with the UN’s International Day for Peace.

We are standing in solidarity with Occupiers across North America to protest the National Defence Authority Act (NDAA), and the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP). We, along with many members of the press, feel these policies are a detriment to the Constitutions of both Canada and the United States. Our leaders are quickly ushering these draconic policies into legislation with little to no public debate. The Occupy movement stands firmly against North American lawmakers who continuously impose laws that restrict the freedoms of Canadians and Americans. All the while our governments allow numerous Corporate criminals on both Wall Street and Bay Street to continue to manipulate and control the outcome of our two countries.

Members of the public and press are invited to participate in and witness the Occupy movement’s first International General Assembly. Speakers will be reflecting on the dangers of these current issues, the NDAA and SPP. Delegates from all Canadian occupied cities will also cross the Rainbow Bridge on foot and share letters of solidarity with American delegates.

Continue reading »]]> Is a world without billboards possible or good? Just ask the residents of Brazil’s largest city, São Paulo. Five years after banning this ‘visual pollution’ 70% of residents find the ban beneficial.

 Imagine a city of 11 million inhabitants stripped of all its advertising. It’s nearly impossible when the clutter and color of our current urban landscapes seem inextricably entwined with the golden arches of McDonald’s or the deep reds of Coca-Cola.

Yet for the residents of São Paulo, Brazil, this doesn’t require imagination: city dwellers simply have to walk down the street and look around to see a city devoid of advertisements.

You can read more here.

Continue reading »]]> This is an interesting conversation on AJE about the growing militarization of the police. Of interest to people in Toronto because the G20 is part of the conversation.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has granted $34 billion over the last 10 years to state and local police departments to combat terrorist threats and drug trafficking. But critics say the advanced military-level training and weapons for police aren’t being used against Al Qaeda. Instead they are being utilised for crowd control in protests.

No one should be surprised. Societies usually emerge from wars more heavily militarized than they were going in. The techniques learned and used in anti-insurgency efforts abroad are usually deployed at home. Some people even see these wars as staging grounds. Whether or not they’re intended as such, they very often act as such.

War is more domestic policy than foreign policy.

Things will be getting worse.

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You should probably grab yourself a good, stiff drink and read this article.

A bill co-sponsored by Democratic Sen. Carl Levin and GOP Sen. John McCain (S. 1867) — included in the pending defense authorization bill — is predictably on its way to passage. It is triggering substantial alarm in many circles, including from the ACLU – and rightly so. But there are also many misconceptions about it that have been circulating that should be clarified, including a possible White House veto. Here are the bill’s three most important provisions:

(1) mandates that all accused Terrorists be indefinitely imprisoned by the military rather than in the civilian court system; it also unquestionably permits (but does not mandate) that even U.S. citizens on U.S. soil accused of Terrorism be held by the military rather than charged in the civilian court system (Sec. 1032);

(2) renews the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) with more expansive language: to allow force (and military detention) against not only those who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks and countries which harbored them, but also anyone who “substantially supports” Al Qaeda, the Taliban or “associated forces” (Sec. 1031); and,

(3) imposes new restrictions on the U.S. Government’s ability to transfer detainees out of Guantanamo (Secs. 1033-35).

There are several very revealing aspects to all of this. First, the 9/11 attack happened more than a decade ago; Osama bin Laden is dead; the U.S. Government claims it has killed virtually all of Al Qaeda’s leadership and the group is “operationally ineffective” in the Afghan-Pakistan region; and many commentators insisted that these developments would mean that the War on Terror would finally begin to recede. And yet here we have the Congress, on a fully bipartisan basis, acting not only to re-affirm the war but to expand it even further: by formally declaring that the entire world (including the U.S.) is a battlefield and the war will essentially go on forever.

The rest of it can be found here.

Facism: It’s on.

No further negotiation with the state is possible.