If zines were delivered directly to all of humanity instantaneously and were an actual money maker financed by mega corporations, sure.

That enforces my point. Why should anyone care about some other person who, some may say, should have been spied on?

I think the reason why this may be something you’re wondering about is because we have given podcasters a larger influence in recent years. Not to say that’s bad, but it’s new.

Personally, I don’t consider podcasters or YouTubers, etc., trustworthy sources of information or honest dialog. I’m not sure that’s something that even exists anyway now.

There’s a much larger conversation to be had about where we spend our time and give our attention and why. The real news is boring so we turn to salacious clickbait that we often know has a bias to it. The more time we hand our emotions over to this content, then more it becomes part of our psyche. Sometimes we don’t have a choice but I still know a ton of people who are entirely clueless about politics. So, some people are making choices, for better or worse.

I see Kirk’s legacy the same as Rogan’s and Trump’s. These people are a reflection of our times. Something is very wrong in our world today and we’ve spent the last twenty five years shifting, metaphorically, from CBS Evening News to The National Enquirer.

This is the result of great freedom: a wild storm of ideas with equal opportunity to be expressed and heard. Not something that existed before the internet or having instant world wide communications in your hand or selling your information in order to maintain your attention with biased (mis/dis)information.

I just want to ask on behalf of people who don’t care about this, “why should I care about this”?

Because every time I bring up how much we’re being spied on by the government or Amazon or Google, et al, people just shrug it off. At best, they’ll admit it’s a problem - for people who should be worried about it. Meaning, “I’ve got nothing to hide”. If nothing else, Americans lack (or choose to reject) the basic concept of a shared society. If there’s a threat that the government is spying on people, we believe it’s the “other” people, not “us”.

Threats to our privacy is largely hypothetical for the majority of people. I’d even argue that the whole premise of privacy is no longer what it was just 15-20 years ago. I’ve even had people argue with me that they ‘want’ to be tracked so the ads they see are relevant to them.

So, I could see some Americans read this story and be in full support of this. They believe in a spy state as a means of protection. Ironically, these are also often the same people flying “Don’t Tread On Me” flags.

If you are of the belief that AI and anime-style erotica are a reality you are unable to escape, you have a very long way to go my friend.

Yes. I find anime-style erotic content to be super weird and gross. I think people who fawn over drawings of cartoons are suffering from and / or burying mental health disorders.
I don’t think your issue is with AI though. You seem to have some other issues that, outside of professional counseling, may be helped by changing some of your lifestyle choices and avoiding the internet. I mean, there are plenty of horrors in this world (war / famine), but the world itself (the one we call reality) is not a horror; certainly not one with corpses readily on display.
You seem troubled in a lost-control-of-your-addiction sort of way. “Waking up” is a choice you have.

The problem is that Facebook isn’t just about keeping up with your friends and family. It’s an engagement platform designed to keep your attention by showing you memes and “news” and videos and ads that it knows you like. Most people have become addicted to this slow and steady stream of dopamine. You’re not going to get people off their crack addiction by substituting it with marijuana.

As these social platforms become more powerful, it’s up to each of us to personally find the strength to wean ourselves away from these platforms that once promised socialization but have quickly become little more than propaganda and influencing and ad-serving machines.

It’s great we’re seeing some alternatives but, aside from a small cohort, most people are not going to find the likes of Bluesky, Mastodon, or Lemmy engaging enough to give them that hit that they’re used to.

All hail the algorithm.

Personally, I used to be the early adopter who was on all these platforms well before most of the public heard about them. In recent years, I’ve either deleted or stopped using my social accounts (or have chosen to use less engaging ones, like Lemmy). This has given me more time to live a life.

Boredom is something I embrace. Rather than turning to a screen to occupy me; I’ll take a nap, make some tea, journal, go for a walk, do some cleaning, build something, practice something, read a book or comic. It’s not as dynamic, for sure, but I get to experience and learn more about myself instead of needlessly observing the lives of others. Boredom offers a renewed sense of self and humanity. Frankly, I’m afraid younger generations won’t know what benefits and beauty boredom has to offer.