We’re almost in 2025. The year of the “project”. They won. Here in Brazil, the interests of the food industry mixed with a weird enthusiasm for Chinese deals are not even making headlines, but it’s a matter of paying attention. We saw the Minister for Human Rights get fired after accusations of sexual harassment. I’m not sure if that was a smoke curtain, because he’s an intellectual. If it was, then Brazil proves that gossip is stronger than the real. The ex-president, however, calls every evidence against him and his supporters false. It matters to debate fabricated perspectives, but we should be careful not to fall into the trap of weakening our already fragile organizational structure. And outside, things follow a certain current, with climate, ESGs, AI (for better or for worse) and the allurements in entertainment, an industry which can’t exactly claim it’s trying to reinvent itself. It’s just getting worse. But that’s a strong statement, and the world wants to know about the robotaxi.

Remember when we were debating healthcare? Well, I certainly do: I’ve been in psychossocial treatment for 10 years, and it’s been a nightmare. Forget independent thinking. Forget control of your own body. Forget walking with a purpose: you should pay attention to every detail on the way. If you ask me why I don’t put Spotify on, it’s because I’m actually afraid of not paying attention to the street. You don’t know how it is here. And you don’t know how traumatized I am. But to be more to the point, I don’t have premium or enough data. Which is a funny thing to say, for me. I could go on a rant about “my data”. Recently, Bloomberg informs, Tim Berners Lee proposed that users had a personal storage of their entire data to keep in a safe place, away from corporations and their shameless speculation. I saw myself uploading song ideas to Bandcamp, Spotify and SoundCloud, and not keeping the originals. When I realized, my work was property of these companies, and I didn’t have access anymore. Art. Treated like that. But it’s worse when you think about communications.

I’ve met with many different people. I’m not gonna say I’m happy. That’s the basis of my life: the people I’ve met, and whether or not I can still talk to them, even if it’s online. In person, it’s a lot of logistics. And they think I’m just not in the mood, cause I probably prefer jerking off all day to the beautiful models of Chaturbate, or watching a scene on Pornhub. The former, I still enjoy, sometimes. It eases my mind. The fact that I can just type the address and naked women will be live on my screen is very comforting. I don’t need to know what they think about life. But you know what, some of them are pretty fucking cool. It’s just that the lifestyle is a little unattainable, but I actually tried. The latter? PH has been an embarrassment in every way. I’ve seen people in festivals cheer by soundchecking drummers who played their famous groove, but I’m not sure if these people have grasped the level of intrusivity of Mindgeek’s practices. They know your face, your address, your banking information, who you talk to and what your body looks like, which could easily pass as a standard company who provides you healthcare, but they know what you do with your body and violate your privacy while you agree to say they’re best friends. The fuck they are. They’re orchestrating the monopolization of the internet’s entertainment, without needing to report to society, with a transparency staff. Just from cybersecurity, porn bots are among the most seen and they’d have to do something about that, but if it’s not affiliated to them, it’s not their business. Convenient. Spread the culture, fuck the consequences, who gives a shit about the users?

Owning your data is important because it’s not clear why nobody questions submission requests for information that we need to give in order to access every website in the world. This is a structural problem. From domains and servers to user experience and blockchain, it’s a long lesson to teach. I got into Instructional Design thinking I had the skills to draft a syllabus that was relevant to this new generation and demand for knowledge and new ideas that could shape the future of the web, but remember Uber? It seems we don’t always think about the whole phenomenon, but convenience first. In 2025, going out with your phone could mean two things: you’re being tracked by the police or you’re being targeted by criminals, and the problem nobody’s pointing out (while bragging about the transformational powers of AI) is that nobody knows which is the case. And it’s a question to think about, because why would the police track you? We saw protesters get arrested and fined because they opposed the actions in Gaza, aided by the United States. But we’re too far, and we care about whether or not the old lady who’s our neighbor is going to sleep alright if they hear a recurrent noise at 3am in the morning. They don’t seem to care that, if you’re talking about me, I’m watching the Opening Trade, and rolling my eyes over the priorities they seem to have, in a completely demoralizing corporate world which only gets worse, with fading working rights, minuscule salaries and job openings for literal beggars who are tossed away after the prettiest influencer type speaks confidently and shows charisma.

I’m not sure what to expect about the future of work, but I do see that education plays a prior role. Before entering the workplace, a certain set of skills is needed to master, and in a changing world, the curriculum also changes. But people thought seriously about AI and came up with real products that were advertised and got a pass to be spread across the globe, that write books on their own. What about writers? The same happened to teaching, allegedly the most affected area with AI dominance, but when it comes to legislation, we’re debating things such as the right to choose for pregnant women who didn’t wanna get pregnant, and we’re losing. So what use is the law, if it’s being articulated against us? They banned teens from using social media in Australia. But they didn’t educate them first! They don’t even know what’s gonna happen, and when the reports come saying “we’ve concluded that questions of sexuality, gender roles, family values, political leanings, identity, role models and household income determine how students interact, but we have no way of predicting what’s going to play out throughout the school year”, we’re gonna have to remind them this is what teachers are for, and we’ve been saying this all along. We made materials, but they banned them. So who’s to blame? The answers were there. The directors and coordinators (and deans) were the ones who didn’t accept what was proposed.

As for the economy and immigration, I’m not gonna comment. I’m a Brazilian man, who dreamed about travelling if I got paid minimum wage. Listen, I have extensive qualification, and all I was asking for was minimum wage. I don’t think you understand how I was treated. One after one, they denied me, and tried to school me — or scam me. And here I am, posting about things that will split opinions and make people go like “but why do you avoid talking about this or that subject?” (and I’m not here to answer to your whining). I just hope that some of this resonates with people, and we have different laws in place, with limitations and obligations for the corporate world, to put an end to this massive exploitation plan. If you call me a content creator, at least pay me accordingly, because this shit matters. And about the future… I wanna live my life instead of getting updates from government decisions, or worse, gossip about people in the government, which is what Brazilian media and foreign media have become. I say gossip because Trump was elected, and although there was evidence of everything, he’s gonna be in charge. For how long, I don’t know. But this election was bought by Elon Musk and a few others. Everybody pointed it out, do they want views for that or did they think that if people knew, they’d do something about it? You assimilate information, and then you do something with it. And I think the time to talk about it on social media is over. Unless we go to official channels and make sure they listen. The UN’s LinkedIn. Representatives’ emails. That kind of thing. Journalists may look like a good choice, but in the end, they’re not. So we gotta find a way to organize and to fight for our rights. No more work for free. No more privacy infringements. No more surveillance without motive. More security in our neighborhoods. More recognition of our educational history and life trajectory, not what’s being done, which distorts who we are and how we can contribute. Honesty. Truthfulness. And people to look up to, which don’t have to be famous, just be with us. That will do. Until then, no reason to celebrate or be thankful.