integument
integument
a natural covering, as a skin, shell, or rind
I’ve always used pseudonyms online, often adopting different names for different spaces. Didn’t want to mix work (making Fancy Shirts on Ultima Online), with pleasure (making puns on Acrophobia). That sort of diffusion is discouraged these days though. Our data mining overlords prefer the ease of a single spigot.
Modern tech companies, in partnerships with the state, have cultivated an environment where your privacy is written off as a cost of doing business. The grocery app knows how often you run out of milk and the insurance company sends an email when you slam the brakes too hard. It’s an opt-in panopticon that secures little more than a 10% discount.
People agree to this because they’ve bought the false narrative that only criminals have things to hide. Respectable folks shouldn’t care about an ever-expanding surveillance web that’s beginning to block our view of the stars. Only radicals worry about stuff like that.
These companies take advantage of our transparency and lock the spoils in a black box. Your information is secure though, unless there's a breach or a data broker comes along with the right bid at the right time. We’re all just nodes to this industry.
Remember to try and keep some things for yourself. If secrets weren’t useful, governments wouldn’t collect so many of them.
ContextFall
How the secret police tracked my childhood - Carmen Bugan