Dev Null

The “Leopard Ate My Face” subreddit is full of recirculated social media posts from anti-vaxxers who died from Covid-19. And people caught for committing crimes after they posted about their plans. Which brings me to a tragic bit of insight from the very first Rango video and my work for the government and in cybersecurity:

Everything you do here is permanent.

There is no delete button. That is a carefully propagated illusion. When I ask Plagus to undelete my emails in Check 1,2 he says he can’t. He’s lying, which is what evil robots do best. But when the FBI asks Facebook or Google for your entire search history they get it. And if they don’t they can get it from your ISP or the NSA.

I’ve regretted many of the things I’ve said on social media that many people still remember and I’ve recovered millions of “deleted” files that weren’t. It’s an illusion, files are simply marked deleted and everything is logged. That’s why all of my posts are public. Because they are anyway, virtually.

Once they hit a server on the internet you are immortalized, archived, categorized and baptized into the matrix. I try to live my life without shame, it is a burdensome tool. Being open and honest shouldn’t require bravery, but it does. But doing so reduces your need to lie & deny so you can focus on more important things that reflect your immortal legacy on the web

Which brings me back around to A Leopard Ate My Face. That is not a legacy that does anybody justice, neither the deceased or their families and friends. But they serve to inform of us of our own mortality and the immortal legacy anyone reading this is leaving behind. The best way to get your name off the list of people who made all of our lives harder in the worst pandemic since smallpox, the plague or Spanish Flu is to simply get vaccinated. You can even brag about it after you’re done, or complain about your side effects. Everybody should. It’s your legacy, and if you couldn’t help the rest of the world get through it, much less yourself, you can be assured it will be on your internet gravestone.

“Rango, I’m an autonomous, distributed, self-replicating agent of evil. I don’t have a recycling bin. I have dev null” – Check 1,2