The power of names
Over the last few months I progressively stopped doing a few things that otherwise keep adding importance to the too powerful entities of this planet: I don't utter their names, I don't write their names, I don't read news articles that contain their names.
Quite simple.
I don't use their names: I use periphrases, and I try to be as inventive as possible to make people smile as the penny drops. Just picture what would be the effect of news outlets using "wick man", "the wicked orange", "a1 mouth", "compensator" and the many other silly circumlocutions to be invented instead of the 5 letter word I don't use anymore when playing tarot. Algorithms including search engines and so-called "AI" wouldn't have the required keyword to biaise our news feed... At scale, this ought to make a dent in one of the unhealthiest cult of personality we've seen since the 1930s, and restore plurality.
Talking about search engine... I am old enough to have seen the Internet without search engine, then with several, then with one and a half (the current state of affair). The monopolistic search engine went through several levels of usefulness. For a while I was asking for 50 links in order to find an interesting link, then inline operators made my life much easier, then the number of links got reduced to useless links. Recently they have decided to summarise the afore-mentioned garbage with a less than clever algorithm whose output takes most of the space on my screens. Passed that bull are the sponsored links I don't need, and at last comes the meaty part which often brings me to bias the search request in order to return the useful material I am looking for – and there's isn't much of it these days.
I am really fed up with clowns, especially those who try to push trash down my throat. So I have temporarily switched to a different front-end (they all take their feed from one or the other half), and I am slowly warming up to the idea of developing a browser extension that will perform the few tasks I'd like to get from a smart front-end to a search engine:
- show me the links and only the links,
- profile the content by the way I read it (skip the clones, prefer C level language...),
- re-order links as to present first the sources I'm likely to prefer,
- present the content the way I read stuff: excise the ads, jump-to-the-recipe style browsing with an in-page search based on my keywords... Will I succeed to automate the re-structuring of the actual content that I'm used to do on the fly?
- make me smile by replacing my own list of blacklisted words with random periphrases coming from good humour users I'll have accepted as fun providers.
Bad names have the power to make me get out of my comfortable habits and take additional actions. How is it with you?