How the fuck did we get here?

I try my best to keep things apolitical. You can cheer for whatever elitist cocksucker (and not the good kind) you want, I don’t care. But you know where it crosses the line? When it impacts my life, or the life of someone who doesn’t subscribe to your same beliefs or fandom. And, in true fas(c)hion, the current administration has charged hard into…doing… petty fucking shit to piss you off as a smokescreen to cover what they’re really doing. 

We live in a duopolistic technocratic oligarchy at this point. So, when BOTH the motherfuckers (again, not the good kind) at Apple and Google both start playing “fuck-fuck games” as my first sergeant used to say and change the name of something you’re never going to drive through, you just tend to…shut down. And I’ve seen the reactions hit hard the past 24-48 hours- it seems changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to something… a little more… colonialist… has set off a firestorm of liberal complaints and rage-spending to abandon their current black mirror for… what exactly? You really don’t have a choice here. Pepsi or Coke. GM or Ford. Android or Apple.

What if I told you… you do have a choice without spending a motherfucking dime on a new mobile phone? Because here’s the kicker, Apple fans- if you go buy an Android phone, you’re just going to whine and complain about how inferior the experience is. About the constant fucking ads in EVERYTHING. The little snitches that come pre-bundled you can’t uninstall. The platform lock-in. The cost to re-purchase the apps you CAN find and complaining about the ones you can’t. ABOUT THE GOD DAMN MAPS THAT STILL SAY GULF OF AMERICA ON THEM LIKE IT’S A ROADSIDE BILLBOARD FOR FUCKING BUCEES.

For this… we have to reach back… WAAAAAY BACK… 29 years back to be precise, to a little service called MapQuest.  YES. That MapQuest.

Back in 1996, the first commercial web mapping service to come online could help you find things around an area, plan a road trip, all sorts of shenanigans navigationally-related. Now here’s the wild part- while you were fawning over false promises from the current generation of silicon valley fucktards, MapQuest has just kind of hung out in the background. They still exist. They have, for the most part, survived waiting for you to realize that Google Maps was a fucking mistake and you’ll come back home soon enough. For now, the current owner, System1, haven’t stated whether or not they’ll bend the knee to this bullshit. The downside, however, is that the company IS a marketing company, and therefore the same rules you’ve ignored for twenty fucking years apply- if you aren’t paying for the product, you ARE the product. This is no different than Google or Apple (yeah, I said it) though. You COULD opt to install their bloated motherfucking snitch app on your mobile phone like the good little subservient tech slave you’ve become, or, you could do what we used to do, and print out the god damn turn-by-turn directions. 

Another fun option if you are so god damn stupid you need the obnoxious “turn right turn right turn right” blasting through your car speakers, is to buy a standalone GPS unit. Not only are they still made, but they’re cheap, many of which include free lifetime map updates should you choose to use them. I personally recommend these over your “smart”phone anyway, as they’re not inclined to report back to the mothership you drive by a Dunkin’ Donuts on your way to work everyday, and decide to slip in a detour that conveniently takes you by Krispy Kreme. But what company in their right mind would pay a navigation company to hijack your trip in order to draw you near their location? Hmmmm.

Look, it sucks, terribly, that instead of fixing real problems, we’re literally witnessing 1984 being used as a guide and not a warning, renaming shit like a body of water we have no claim to, or adding a list of “forbidden words” to everything, but this is where we are. Spend 5 minutes complaining about it, put together an action plan, and execute. Otherwise, you’re going to be absolutely fucking MISERABLE for the rest of your life.