Last night my husband got very sick. He was vomiting simultaneously with diarrhea and shat himself. He was restless through the night and got up early, clearly still feeling ill.
This morning when I came downstairs I asked him how he was feeling. Not so great, he told me. Still have diarrhea, but I’m not feeling as nauseous. I still can’t hold water down though. I think I have the norovirus, or food poisoning.
I put on my Dr. Mom role. Whatever is in your system you have to get it out, I told him. So, drink a lot. Start with water, or Gatorade for the electrolytes. Sip it throughout the day if it makes you feel sick drinking.
I don’t know if that’s the best idea. The internet says I should avoid drinking if I keep throwing it up, he told me he’d read earlier, likely off some bullshit site selling pharms but claiming to be ‘medical,’ like WebMD.
I felt my irritation building as he sat at the kitchen table and scrolled his laptop. You lost a lot of fluids last night, I told him. You need to replace it to help your system fight whatever you’ve got. And you need to eat something. How about a banana? They’re binding. Or a piece of dry toast, no butter.
Let me look it up and see what they recommend, he said and continued scrolling and reading.
Are you kidding me? I asked, miffed. Who are ‘they?’ The Internet!? By the time you find any real information on not only what is wrong with you but also what to do about it you’ll be convinced you need hospitalization. I’ve played Dr. Mom to our kids hundreds of times. Stomach flu, even norovirus is manageable with a few key steps. You don’t need to look it up! You need to stay hydrated. Bananas are binding and will help suppress diarrhea, I told him. Water will help flush your system of whatever is bothering you.
I know why he got sick. It’s the height of Spring, and we’re in New Jersey for his mom’s 90th. By the second day there he was suffering with recurring bouts of rapid-fire sneezing. Wheezing. Continual runny nose. Four days of severe allergies taxing his immune system, and he got on a plane to come back to the w[b]est coast. And while his allergies eased on the plane and entirely once home, someone in overpopulated New York City — the cesspool of the country, the crowded airports we waited in for hours with delays at Newark, or on our plane had something, and he got it.
Used to think the internet was the savior of mankind. Now, I fucking HATE CELLPHONES and the INTERNET! Both spread lies on a global scale, enable massive, unrelenting GREED, convert blind believers (Christians) into Trump supporters. And most all of you are addicted to both!
Raise your hand if you know someone who constantly pulls out their phone during casual conversation to ‘get the facts’ (what a joke!) on whatever the subject of your dialog. Hella annoying! I’d rather contemplate the answer than have it served to me by an unreliable source.
We got together with a friend of my husband’s while we were back east. He’s ‘one of those guys’ who whips out his phone to check if whatever is being said is ‘right.’ He read aloud with authority whatever [garbage] he found on the net. But iterating the first thing that pops up on his phone screen is, well, idiotic. Today’s internet makes it impossible to find any real facts without hours of searching multiple sources well beyond Google or Chatgpt, and even then, the information you’ll find is limited to the recommendation engines behind most platforms.
Do you pull out your mobile when you’re on the toilet, in line at the store, even with friends or fam? Text someone? Check your email? Scroll Insta? Look for…whatever? At both airports, on both planes, in line at any store, in most public places packed with people, or even just a few passing by, and most everyone is on their phones most all the time. Take your face out of your phone and look around to see what I’m saying here is real. The TRUTH*. Instant access to the internet through cellphones or tablets are creating a massive addiction problem. People are relying on their connected devices like junkies rely on heroin. And like the drug, it may feel good upfront getting that dopamine rush from instant access to entertaining ‘information,’ regardless how amusing there is little truth to what most are getting from quick searches. And addicted phone users supply far more data to AI engines making them easier to manipulate you with personalized, targeted messaging. The Republicans have used mobile marketing far more effectively than the Democrats. Clearly.
WebMD says I’m supposed to eat bananas for the diarrhea and stay hydrated with water or tea or something with electrolytes, my husband read aloud this morning. Like most today, he’s becoming one of the converted, a true believer in the Internet, whoever he deems them to be.
That’s what I said, I defended. Without looking on the net, I added cuz I was feeling pissed off, and a bit scared of his internet addiction right then. My husband doesn’t go to the toilet without his phone or laptop. The Internet has become his God. And I have no interest in, nor trust in blind believers.
Cellphone and Internet usage, whether for ‘convenience’ or entertainment or ‘information’ is moving humanity in the WRONG direction, away from compassion, empathy, and quality, to idiocracy. It is creating more blind believers than any religion. Your cellphone and the internet are TELLING YOU WHAT AND HOW TO THINK. Think you know why there is no customer service at Macy’s, or why most retail is shutting down? Yeah, Amazon, but more to the point, no one protests their spending their life hours in the long line at Macy’s because they are on their phones, being entertained by messaging to convince us to buy [into], try, subscribe!
GET A CLUE! It costs me (and likely you) MORE to order plane tickets for New Jersey using Chrome than on Edge. Why? Dynamic or Personalized Pricing, except the profit is for the airline, and the assholes who make and manage their SaaS. Google (who runs Chrome) has more data on my spending habits, my income, my ‘purchasing power’ than Microsoft. Clearly. So Alaskan Airlines went with Googles data and charged me over $40 per ticket more. And most everything you buy online now has variable pricing — you are CHARGED MORE the more data you give them through your phone because every site you look at, every platform you engage with, every purchase you make through your mobile is recorded and sold to the highest bidder.
Have I lost you yet? You want to be ENTERTAINED, not brought down with the TRUTH. Look it up and the Internet will tell you I’m a conspiracy theorist. The Internet saves lives! It moves society forward.
Well, it sure has. It’s creating a planet of junkies.
Don’t think of yourself as an addict? Well, if you got this far and are reading this on your phone right now, put it down and look into a mirror. NOT a selfie. A real mirror and then ask yourself to tell you the TRUTH. Most addicts can’t see it — can’t admit to being addicted. That’s why the #1 Rule in Alcoholics Anonymous is first to ADMIT YOU ARE AN ADDICT.
Do you care you are a junkie, addicted to your phone? If you don’t believe you are, then put it down and leave it for two hours. How many times do you think to pick it up? Just check it, quick check, see if it has anything you must know about right now?
It doesn’t. That’s algorithms designed to convince you to stay on your device. That way you are a target for selling — products, services, messaging, belief.
If you are one of the very few junkies who understand mass addiction to corporate talons is bad for society globally, take the Internet off your phone so you’re not tempted to spend hours every day blowing away your life’s time on mindless content meant to get you to blindly believe whatever political agenda or corporate America is selling you.
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*How can you trust I’m not touting conspiracy theories, that I’m telling you TRUTH here? My husband is a software architect that helped design the first recommendation engine [for Netflix]. I have been marketing SaaS startups in Silicon Valley since the dot com boom in the late 1990s, and teaching entrepreneurs developing SaaS and ‘AI’ at Stanford and Cal Berkeley for a decade. Sometimes I wish I didn’t know what you all do not know — that I too could be an ignorant addict like most of you. It’s certainly easier to live with your head up your own ass. Too harsh? Maybe. But really, in the long run, ask yourself what kind of world are you leaving for our children when everyone is a junkie sucking on the corporate tit.
jcafesin.com 