i unironically use 'corporate marionette' to describe people who are sheep to companies, usually in context of digital privacy, which is becoming a more and more concerning issue and worst part, nor people in power nor general public isnt doing anything abt it, its genuinely sad to see how brainwashed people are and how much they dont give a fuck about it, not understanding ( actually not even wanting to understand ) how big of an issue this is and how theyre basically marionettes for companies
in this post 'corporate marionette' will be referring to the more specific digital corporate marionette and not general corporate marionette, although there might be mentions of both types, the primary audience of this post are people who're ( if i say whore, i dont mean whore, i mean who're ) interested in digital corporate marionettes and people who are willing to learn more about it and are stuck in the corporate marionette ecosystem :)
before reading this, please keep in mind that i talk a lot about proprietary stuff, as that tends to be more evil than open source, but keep in mind open source companies can still be creepy and weird
lets start off with the issue itself -- at a high level this is purely a digital privacy issue, but under it, we have more issues, including addiction, bad education, other mental health problems and ignorance, sometimes even if youre aware its hard to make the switch without dropping half your life down the drain, todays society is focused on being a corporate marionette, once again due to the same issues
we already broke the problem down, so lets address some of the issues one by one,
first -- addiction, many people, probably including me ( although im unsure ), are addicted to technology, they get hooked on the dopamine rush they get from various medias online, lets say youtube has videos and shorts, instagram posts and reels ( although ive never heard anyone use them srsly ), tiktok is purely an addiction machine, twitter has a very good algorithm that runs on rage ( yk the feeling when someone says something obv wrong and you correct it and yall keep talking abt it and none of you wants to give up ? ) and so on, every big service runs on addiction and data collection, all are algorithm-ised, people keep going down the addiction hole and companies keep mass mining their data and its just an infinite cycle of addiction and violating your freedom, privacy and so on until youre so deep down the addiction hole you have no escape
bad education about digital privacy and general IT is also a huge problem, digital privacy is becoming more and more relevant as the new world is becoming more and more digital, companies get access to so much of our lives now its crazy, it sometimes feels like you can survive purely in that world and be just fine, almost every service has gone digital, from registering medical apts to shopping, from entertainment to communication and so on, people arent aware of how much data companies get and how much can be extracted from it and so on, people are so ignorant to the fact that data = power, also, IT education is also horrible, here in lithuania at least, its terrible, all we do is make word documents basically, in older classes we do get some more serious education, although its nothing serious, its mainly focused on specific proprietary software and how to use it, which
- isnt applicable anywhere outside that specific software as its usually 'so u press this, then that, then press this, drag that and this is how u import a picture in word'
- doesnt teach people anything
- does not teach anything outside IT that isnt 'computer = word = windows = chrome = OS = number'
its stupid how bad IT education is where everything is so digital
mental health problems is also related to ignorance, some people are just so broken mentally they cant be bothered to give a fuck about anything, and not like social media with plastering of numbers, insecurities, triggers and addiction ( this is the PERFECT formula for a social media site, make it cause mental health problems which eventually will lead to depression or something similar and then be the seemingly only remedy that will help it ) will make it better, so companies profit of that people ( not specific mentally ill people ) live in ignorance and they keep feeding into it
and then theres dependence, even if people are fully aware people face issue of de-transitioning from that specific software or ecosystem, e.g. apple feeds of this with their hardware and software being so incompatible with everything, being so good at integrating their software and hardware and giving people such status ( tbh it feels like the apple ecosystem is just a huge cult ), or for example friends and general social communication, i have this issue with discord, ive suggested multiple open source alternatives to friends and even offered to build one myself, they refuse to switch no matter what so im stuck using discord as i know how problematic discord is and how shit it is, how much of a data farm it is, how much it shoves nitro peoples asses, how much of a pedophilia problem it has and so on, i hate it, im also somewhat stuck on youtube, i had a project in the works which woulve been a good alternative to youtube, ive had it planned and stuff, but then just stopped working on it, although now its a mess and ive worked on it somewhat, a lot of UI and stuff, which i find distracting, i might rework it though, the problem im having is that it has so much content i watch and music and so on, its a nice service, although it works on my very hardened profile unlike discord so i can at least mitigate it more, with discord there isnt as much briar between it and me
the cycle of it continues, we need to unite if we want to have a free ( as in freedom ) world, else we wont get out of this creepy data-driven idiocy, make it paid or something, but omg, i want my data, you can have my money, but my data is very important to me and i dont trust this fucked up system
anyway, hope i at least explained some of this enough for you to get worried enough and join me in the act of stopping companies abusing users data and actual digital freedom instead of false and misleading marketing which turns people into sheep to fall into their sheep farm
cya