Loneliness

there's an app for that...

I regularly receive phishing texts, some in Chinese asking me how I am, or what I’m doing or if I’m still working in America. I have read about the slave labor phishing factories in Cambodia where Chinese nationals who are enticed to go there for jobs end up imprisoned in warehouses where they send these texts to phone numbers bought off the dark web. There was a story of a Chinese American woman undergoing chemotherapy who received one of these texts, befriended the texter and was conned out of a million dollars.

I have responded to these texts asking after my well-being in Chinese or English with the following questions.

I ask “Who is this? How did you get this number?”They respond, “You don’t remember me? I’m ____. Did you not save my number.” I respond, “You have the wrong number. I don’t know you.” They respond, “I’m sorry to disturb you. I must have entered the number wrong. You seem like a nice person.” I respond, “Would you like me to call Interpol? Are you in a slave labor camp?” Then I never hear from texter again.

Recently, I received this text.: “Dear Lisa, long time no see. I hope you’ll be on time for Alice’s birthday part tomorrow.”

Yesterday’s Reading Group meeting saw conversations about how the political horizons have become so grim and each member of the group seemed to have had some experience on the interpersonal level of how how atrophied field of collective action has bred mutual surveillance, scapegoating and general mistrust alongside demands for absolute emotional conformity and rigid expectations of correct behavior in circles in Left/liberal circles.

A friend pointed out to me that there were actually friendship apps that helped people find friends, not sexual partners. We joked that we have been so deskilled in matters of simple socialization, what with the medicalization of anxiety, otherwise know as shyness and the fake forms of immediacy and choice offered by PornHub, Tindr and Grindr that we actually need mood and friendship apps to gather our data and find people with whom we might form bonds based on algorithmically groomed compatibilities.

So I was thinking about how a phishing text like “Dear Lisa” could work. Out of the hundreds of thousands of telephone numbers to which this message was sent, there only needs to be one mark who reads such a text and feels that it would be so nice to be eagerly awaited at Alice’s birthday party. The conversation that not Lisa would start with the texter who apologizes for disturbing them leads to a friendly exchange that seems to promise an invitation to that birthday party and contact with a group of friends who might be welcoming and offer this person, this not Lisa a place in a community or a ready made social circle. Maybe Venmo or Paypal Alice’s friend $500 for liquor for the party? They want it to be really nice and she’s just a little short on cash today. She is paid tomorrow morning. She promises to pay her back at the party and then maybe could not Lisa throw in another $500 because they’re short that much for the new Balenciaga handbag that they bought for Alice, but she promises she will pay not Lisa back tomorrow. You’re so great! Don’t be late! And not Lisa who has not been to a party in five years sends the money and waits for the text that would give her Alice’s address, which never comes and not Lisa is down $1000. The number is blocking her and not Lisa goes on with her life a little less trusting, but no less lonely.

The phishing text only works if you have a lot of numbers and can cast a wide net, because you want to catch that person who craves contact and has disposable income.

Maybe those numbers are too low. The Chinese American woman with cancer who lost $1 million had a long and elaborating texting friendship with the scammer who probably told her they were in financial difficulties or had a great investment opportunity and she sent him or them the money, 50K at a time over a few months.

The fact of the matter, however, is that in interpersonal matters, we have been gradually deskilled, deboned and undone by a economic system that creates and then feeds on our isolation.

The scammers in Cambodia are small fry in the larger scheme of things. Social relations deteriorate because the demand for conformity (the interpersonal “like” button) replaces actually dialogue. Low key agreement is what is offered and expected. Differences between people are rendered intolerable even as the rhetoric of a hollowed diversity lubricates the functioning of organizations of large numbers of people, from DSA to BlackRock. Social media capitalism sees us as organic beings that have value because our data can be aggregated and sold.

Yeah we hear a lot on the Left/liberal side of things that the bourgeois subject is bad and that the rugged individual is the perpetrator of all sorts of crimes. But to reverse Margaret Thatcher’s dictum, “there is no such thing as society, only individuals,” there is no society if people can’t become individuals. Individuality is the right of every human being and it is not a given. Without some kind of autonomous individuality that has found its own reason, emotional and political, if we are all just soft boiled egos looking to a world of mirrors for recognition, we can’t even begin to imagine the forms of solidarity and trust that we would need to change the world together.

The Reading Group discussions make me feel less alone. They remind me that we are passing through this dark period together and there are people all over the world who are grappling with the same issues I am. Thanks for that.

Next meeting will be May 5, 2024, 8:30 am PST. We’ll be talking about Dune and Dune 2. Some one in the Reading Group suggested the topic, to close out the Authoritarian Personality discussions and I’m a huge Dune nerd/fan. I loved the first two novels and loved the David Lynch Dune film; I’m ambivalent about the present Villeneuve adaptations and I will go into the reasons why. It’s going to be a wide ranging discussion and I am eager to see where the discussion takes us.