I’m at the limit of survival, which is not ideal. By this, I mean I have no income, no financial support, and my van doesn’t start. This last bit turbocharges the first. If I can’t shower, I can’t go into an interview.
And so, my ex shows up, as she always does. She moved back to Oregon and discovered that where one is at does not assist what one wants. So she’s in Texas now, needing to be useful in some way that her increasingly shitty job cannot provide.
Which puts us on the same path for the first time since meeting 14 years ago. There was a lot of throat-clearing on the call last night before we realized we’d found our own paths to the same place. I don’t know what this means … I don’t think regaling y’all with details is particularly helpful, but she has energy I don’t to throw at my family, who’s given up on me because I see late-stage capitalism for what it is.
Given prior art that would necessitate a trigger warning, I can’t see being part of the machinery that tells us to obey.
But what’s so absurd is the person who may be my biggest exponent is also the person who crushed me and turned me into who I am. It’s like Stockholm Syndrome on steroids.
I’ve spent more of my adult life in Oregon than anywhere else. But not Portland. Ashland, Coos Bay, Medford. I was the news editor in Ashland 20 years ago, and I ended up at the Medford Mail-Tribune in 2014, which required the publisher getting involved because my ouster in Ashland was political.
Late-stage capitalism follows this. It is essentially the first attempt at enshittification. What people are coming to realize is what already happened to journalism. Quality is unimportant. As such, gutting the editorial staff is business, as no one else has a press.
Brass tacks, it’s about making sure a product or service is just convincing enough to keep an audience. So, pay less each year until you lose readers. And then stop and view that as cost of doing business.