Post #4014633

2026-07-22 14:47 UTC

The rich people's problems are OUR problems messaging is so subtle and insidious that it's easy to miss. New (to me) computer and I have yet to turn off all the crap I don't want on it. I have a little ticker on the bottom that's a graph and a curving upward arrow. I hovered over it and it was telling me that the TSX (Toronto Stock Exchange) is up .88% like this is important news that effects me the same way the weather does (the icon has now changed to a cloud with the temperature). I don't (directly) own stocks anymore. Most people don't. Even if we did, does a small change in the daily index really impact my life that it's worthy of an info icon the way knowing it's raining outside does? At least I might have laundry to pull in. It's a reminder that "THIS IS IMPORTANT". It is as important as knowing the weather. It is as important as knowing the air quality outside. Because it is a thing important for the rich. And therefore it impacts us all. And we all have a stake in it. This is part of the corporate propaganda machine that we drink and breathe without even realizing it. It makes it really hard to speak out and say "We don't care about the stock market, give us clean water". Clean water indicators are not on my screen. I don't get alerts that the local beach has so much bacteria it had to shut down. But I got a notification that the TSX moved .88%. One is important that affects us all... while the other is not. And we must internalize this and know what matters because our overlords have skin in OUR game.

Replies (6)

@hamishb@mstdn.ca 2026-07-22 15:46

Yes, things like this and the 'news' channels that run constant chyrons of headlines, stock reports, traffic cams, etc., all add up to the visual equivalent of Bannon's "flood the zone with shit," keeping you feeling overwhelmed and helpless. I hate that they're ubiquitous in waiting rooms (insult upon insult), gyms and other public spaces. @chu@climatejustice.social

Open ##4015878
@SpaceLifeForm@infosec.exchange 2026-07-22 23:01

@chu@climatejustice.social Install #Debian

Open ##4021509
@PedalHoppy@mstdn.ca 2026-07-22 23:37

@chu@climatejustice.social I have always felt the same about the “business “ report in every news broadcast. Why don’t they tell us who won at poker or sportsing… oh wait.

Open ##4022100
@chu@climatejustice.social 2026-07-22 14:55

Update: It doesn't look like I can even make this icon go away.

Open ##4259025
@femme_mal@mstdn.social 2026-07-22 15:12

@chu@climatejustice.social That's one of the things I change immediately when I get a new machine. I keep bookmarks I store on a flashdrive I move from machine to machine, copying the bookmarks to each machine. - National Weather Service local forecast for each locale/area I visit; - Drought Monitoring; - AirNow air quality for each local/area I visit; - Environmental Working Group's tap water page; - earth.nullschool.net for global info. My state has a beach monitoring site but not all beaches have reporting.

Open ##4259033
@MaddieM4@raphus.social 2026-07-22 15:48

@chu@climatejustice.social I bet some of it comes from the fact that stocks have, historically, been the implementation-easy solution for "the boss wants us to have a good demo of why internet-polling widgets are cool and why we're cool to have that feature." I look at it and feel convinced it's a perpetual hanger-on from early days of tech demos, now impossible to get away from (because to a business idiot, if they were to not include the stock ticker as a standard feature by default, the new version of the OS would be worse because "they don't have the stocks thing anymore" - it's a crowd with a lot of your fate in their hands, but who can't figure out how to enable an optional desktop widget). None of this is to disagree with you. There are a lot of implications to be read from a world where this is the path of least resistance.

Open ##4259035