Robertson on Tech
Robertson knows everything's enshittified. He's been online since
Before eternal September. He watched War Games, used BBSes
On an old DOS box back in the day, called AOL users n00bs,
Watched the dot-com bubble float & burst, lost thousands on Pets.com.
He was there when GeoCities closed up shop, watched Tom from
MySpace sell & duck away. Robertson's seen flame wars you wouldn't believe.
Robertson watches Netflix. Robertson watches Apple TV.
Tired of streaming price increases he sails the seven seas,
Fires up VLC. He decides to setup a NAS, installs Linux Mint,
A Pi-Hole, a VPN. Robertson jailbreaks his Kindle & installs
KOReader, runs a Calibre server, audiobookshelf, a Nextcloud
Instance. Robertson doesn't know what the fuck he is doing.
Robertson searches Reddit. He googles old forum posts.
He watches ChatGPT & Google Gemini hallucinate in real time.
Robertson reads StackOverflow, cuts & pastes terminal commands,
Tries to figure out Docker, gives up, deletes his home partition.
Robertson subscribes to blogs via RSS. He watches YouTube tutorials
& reviews. He rage quits Linus Tech Tips, gets banned from Hacker News.
Robertson blocks ads. Robertson declines cookies. Robertson
Changes his browser strings, tries to confuse the machines
Tracking his every move. Robertson doesn't log in; he uses
Firefox, Privacy Badger, opens private windows. It doesn't work.
Robertson knows. He's one click away from a vist from the
FBI, the NSA, a drone strike on his apartment complex; so it goes.
Robertson's confused. He's in over his head. But fuck Microsoft,
He thinks, LibreOffice is the way to go. He embraces FOSS,
At least he thinks he does. Robertson can't figure out how to
Root his phone, is pissed Lineage & Graphene only work on flagships,
Not budget burners or low-end brands. He's cheap on phones
But rocks a Framework. You have to have some self respect, he says.
Robertson drives a beater Honda. No screens, just buttons, not
Even a radio or AC. He'd have bought a manual if he could.
Robertson prefers his windows hand-cranked but oh well; at least
No one can track his every move besides Flock & the cops
With license plate readers, maybe Ring doorbell meshnets, too.
But that takes time to piece together; Robertson still reads the news.