Instagram and the not so subtle manipulations of tech

 2021 and I have finally found a way to get photos back onto my computer.  At this point in my life I use just my phone 90% of the time.  Lately I get messages several times a day urging me to buy cloud storage.  It is a statement to my lifestyle that I have the time to be bothered by these constant pop ups.  I found out that gmail doesn't erase message, so each time over the years I had swiped emails to what I believed to be a method of removal, I was only sending them to some archive function.  I then, spent, hours and hours going through and erasing tens of thousands of emails dating back to around 2013.  Yet still the prompts about storage kept coming.  Then I waded through whatever this newest version of the podcast storage works...deleting many shows I no longer listen too, or that ended.  Still prompts each day, soon I started looking at all attachments, messages, photos, still the prompts.  

I have now put the issue of storage and whether or not I need the cloud in my 'let it go' column.  I resisted the cloud for years, but now if I want to use my mac email, the one email account I have paid for over the years, it must be forced to the cloud...to be seen on my phone, as this is the same company that would take my money for more storage, that makes sense.  All these coercive methods of tech bother me.

Which in turn reminded me of this blog, which I used to resist instagram.  I recently went to MONA the week they re-opened after Tasmania re-opened its borders.  The first instagram photo I ever took was there, in 2011- then I didn't use the account until 2014.  It is funny to think that I was using Facebook, but worried about the security of instagram, or I was less worried about security but I could see how it was going to be monetized before I could see how that would happen to facebook, but then when more than three people I loved were using insta regularly, I gave in.

I think 2021 will be too much like 2020 as far as our ability to leave the island so I am going to use the blog this year, if only for my own journal of events.  Plus, I have erased a lot of email...which has prompted a lot of memories that I was to mull over.  The photo is from a flowering plant somewhere in the area of the Tarkine.  

I think that I will rarely edit or re-write- at least until winter- there is too much to do and too much sunshine to sit at a computer for long.