So, I'm 42. I have excellent memory of my childhood through today. I don't remember every single moment. I'm not rainman. But I do remember the general jist of things from my own perspective at the time.

I'm not sure when it happened. Maybe it's always been this way, and I'm just noticing it in the last 10 years. I have noticed that there is an owners class, and literal sheep. I see record labels DECIDE what will be the next big hit single. I see them DECIDE who will be the next big superstar. Taylor Swift is absolutely manufactured. If AI were more advanced, I'd even believe she were totally AI. But as it stands, she's a woman, who billionaires DECIDED will be a big deal. And so she is. She became such a big deal, that she herself is now a billionaire. I often hear that billionaires only exist because of exploiting others labor. I think Taylor Swift accidently fell into a loophole. To my knowledge, very few humans were actually involved in making her popular. It was more so the customers voluntarily giving their money in exchange for music. Whether that's concerts, or MP3/CD's, or any other way you can pay to hear her music.

And then I start thinking about what is different between my childhood and today? Music wise, not much. Different performers. Different genres. Different audiences. But essentially running on the same business model. Taylor Swift today, Micheal Jackson in 1985. Britney Spears in 1998. So, what other aspects of life may be different?

And I think of my old childhood family TV. To anyone younger out there, there was a time when your whole house had 1 TV. No internet. Internet didn't exist at all. Your house had 1 TV, and the whole family had to share it at all times. Today, TVs are appliances. In the 80s, TVs were furniture. This thing was like 4 feet wide, and wooden. The screen occupied half of the panel. Think of the 50% on the middle as the screen. Then 25% to the left was a set of 2 speakers each above and below each other. And 25% was to the right of the screen, with the same setup as the left. Also on the right was a bunch of buttons. Power, Channel up, channel down, volume up, volume down, and menu.

Today, TVs are like an inch thick, and a 80' TV weighs 2 lbs. Back then you needed like a 4 man crew to move a 25' TV. You all joked around that it'd have been easier to just steal the forklift from work....and then obviously bring it back. Do it on the weekend when the plant was closed.

Yeah, back then factory jobs existed, and fed a family of 4 on one mans salary moving heavy things. Today, you gotta work like 4 jobs to live in a studio apartment.

But right now, it just feels like every aspect of life, is just getting shittier and shittier every 5 years. Plus it compounds! Which means each downgrade is permanent! 9/11 was 25 years ago, and TSA, which was originally intended as a temporary thing while investigations ran, is STILL in our airports! And they never even know WHEN they're getting paid, because first the government creates them. Then the government mandates them. And now, if the wind blows wrong, the government shuts down for 2 months, 4 months, and all the while telling these guys "FUCK YOU FOR EXISTING! NO PAY FOR YOU! DESPITE THE FACT THAT WE'RE THE ONES WHO MAKE YOU EXIST! WE JUST DON'T WANT TO PAY YOU! NOW SHOW UP TO WORK TOMORROW, DICKHEAD!"

And then people wonder why the TSA experience feels like a bunch of people pissed off at all times.

But what if I WANT a furniture TV? Like, YOU can still have your flat 4K lighter than air TV, but what if I want to tie my room together? TVs have no style anymore. It's just black rectangle. Zero personality. You look at a TV from the 80s, and you think "Holy shit, look at that thing!"

And that's what you do to TVs. You look at them. That's why they exist. So why make them LESS visually appealing? It's because we all need to have the same experience. We all need the same phone experience. It's either apple or android. It's not like politics. There CAN be more than 2. But there's not. Go on. Try to buy a blackberry, or a windows phone. I dare you! See how far that gets you.

But in the 80s, yeah, cell phones weren't really a thing, but for the select few that did have them, they were very different from each other. And into the 90s, you started getting like 10-20 different phone manufacturers. There was choice. There was personality. Now it's just "Here's the phone. Buy it asshole! We've made it mandatory in your life now whether you want it or not. Don't have a cell phone? Good luck surviving socially in the modern era, or even applying for jobs now."

It just feels like the experience we get in life today isn't a choice at all of what we want to do with our lives. We work multiple jobs, don't get to have a social life, and we get told which products to buy, which music to listen to, even if we're not listening to it. I know SO MANY SONGS just from being in public spaces. Because all places at all times need music playing. Not indie music, no. It's the same artists everywhere. Millions of bands and artists in the world, but in any given year, you'll only hear these 40 or so acts. So maybe 100 different songs for the year? Which sounds like a lot, but it's not. Not when you have to hear them EVERYWHERE you go.

Getting a haircut? Song.

Grocery shopping? Song.

Resteraunt? Work (depending where you work)? Even hospitals.

And I gotta be honest about television. I have no idea what the current trends for television are. I mean, I assume the answer is "streaming", but I don't know any of the modern shows. I stopped watching TV about 15 years ago. I saw this show on TV called "Deal or No Deal". It is the most asinine concept for a game show I ever saw. You just randomly point to briefcases trying to eliminate the smallest amounts with ZERO skill. Like, none at all. It's just pick a random number.....ok, this amount is now gone. And you as a viewer have zero way to root for these people. Yay, you're better at picking random numbers than the previous episode of the exact same bullshit! Like.....what?

So I decided that I put two and two together there, and decided that TV is pissing me off, and my TV has an off button. So I can't comment on TV these days, as I refuse to watch. But even not watching I know that someone keeps rebooting EVERYTHING and it never works. Everything I hear is like "People are excited for the new That 70s Show reboot!" and like 6 months later I read "The reboot is done. Everybody is fired. We're done. The show sucked."

And it's like this for every reboot I read about. Excitement before the debut. Then an absurdly short time later the show is done, and everybody hates it. Then you start seeing these youtube recommended videos like "Why did the Full House show fail? Click here to listen to some asshole talk about things you don't care about".

So think about that. I don't watch TV, yet I have a vague understanding of what's going on for a service I haven't seen. That very much feels like a result of everything being a controlled experience. I'm MEANT to know about these things, even if I've never seen it. So it becomes unavoidable. You experience what the owners deem profitable for you to experience. Rather then just the world exists, and you exist, and other things happen, and maybe you're there to see it, maybe you aren't, but either way you're living life. You're living a life. You're living your life. But you're not living the life. As in, the standard default life that everybody has to live.

I don't think people are as free willed anymore as is healthy. I don't think people today grasp the fact that when you're 70, you're not going to give a shit if you put numbers in a spread sheet, or replaced the coffee filter 30 years ago. Sometimes you need to just go to the park. Just call work and say "Hey, I saw a cool cloud, and I'm going to follow it." And just be happy you got to see a cloud for 45 minutes. And then grab a tea. Just to let your mind relax. Not your body, but your mind.

Nope! We gotta remain under lock and key with our schedules, stress levels to the max, political barrages from every angle, while your ability to survive is always no more then a 2 week interruption from having serious consequences in your life. So you can't say no. You can't chase a cloud. You have to do what they say, how they say, when they say, and experience it how they want you to experience it.

And I just want a cool living room with a cool furniture TV, and for society to collectively develop unique opinions.