two quotations on giving up and giving in

Nobody cares, the title says. Nobody.

As I drove and the music played, I felt nothing — but I felt that nothing with increasing acuteness. I was neither moved nor sad nor pensive, just aware of the fact that my body and mind exist in a tenuous zizz somewhere between life, death, and computers. This is second-order music listening, in which you experience the idea of listening to music. What better band to provide that service than one that doesn’t even exist?

But looking toward the blushing sky ahead of me, I realized that I didn’t even want this music to be art, or to feel that I was communing with its makers. I simply hoped to think and feel as little as possible while piloting my big car through the empty evening of America. This music — perhaps most music now — is not for dancing or even for airports; it’s for the void. I pressed play and gripped the wheel and accelerated back onto the tollway, as the machines lulled me into oblivion.

Second quotation:

He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

UPDATE, with a third quote: Charlie Warzel and Matteo Wong:

For all its awfulness, the Grok debacle is also clarifying. It is a look into the beating heart of a platform that appears to be collapsing under the weight of its worst users. Musk and xAI have designed their chatbot to be a mascot of sorts for X — an anthropomorphic layer that reflects the platform’s ethos. They’ve communicated their values and given it clear instructions. That the machine has read them and responded by turning into a neo-Nazi speaks volumes.

When I read stories like these, I always think: What would it take? Would would Spotify or X have to do for users to say, You know, I don’t need this, I’m out of here? It’s so strange to me how people get psychologically locked into particular platforms, unable even to consider the option of escaping. I want to say: the doors are unlocked. All you have to do is turn the knob and walk through.