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I honestly can't tell if you're being sincere or exaggerating to make a point about how little privacy modern society allows.

But, this is somewhat worrying: "If I could crinkle into a ball and fade away, I would, but, unfortunately, I'm still breathing."

If that's not a joke, you should probably see somebody about your depression.

Or, he might be being sarcastic about how paranoid today's generation is, we'd never know without an explanation.

Is society today really paranoid? Outside of a few loud voices, I think you'll find that is not true. Most people don't even know what data is being collected about them, and seemingly don't care.

Maybe he did something really bad.

I'm sorry, but the obvious sarcasm expressed here is all too common among the slightly younger engineers and related tech company people I work with. They believe that trading traditional notions of privacy for the shiny, novel conveniences of Uber and Google Now is totally worth it, and they see no downside. There are a lot of reasons, I think. The biggest is that for most, there really isn't a downside, yet. How many people are now identifiably being turned down for jobs, apartments, dates, and airplane tickets based what the four or five companies that define our identities online record, store, calculate, and sell? But does anyone doubt that the private civic space in the real world is being slowly paved over by digital identity robber barons? All these friends of mine care about is getting into Google IO to help that company build Larry's libertarian island (look it up), without wondering why they might have been turned down for a ticket.

> How many people are now identifiably being turned down for ...

There's the rub. For the most part you'll never know, unless it reached epidemic proportions.

"Sorry the apartment's gone" - Google told me you had financial problems 15 years ago.

"" (silence) - We infer from the internet you're gay so won't be offering you a job interview. It's illegal discrimination but can't be proven.

The effects of losing privacy in the scenarios you list are mostly invisible. The chilling effect on having legal but fringe or unpopular views has already been demonstrated.

So there is a downside for many. They just don't realise it.

... but there is no downside for the vast majority... so, winning?

You can't infer that, just as I can't infer there is for the majority. There's not enough data.

I suspect there is downside for far more than is generally believed.

How many jobs carry some googling of candidate? Nearly all of them.

You can now discriminate against just about anything you can dscover in search. Politics, religion, "too many" photos of parties, pro or anti any topic. None of these things are the business of an employer or landlord and would never come up pre-google unless you chose to share them in your application.

It's naive to assume none of these occur extensively. Gender discrimination has been illegal for years yet is still widespread.

But you are conflating two things. The data companies collect on me without me knowing is not related to the data that can be googled on me. Because I know about the later and have a level of control over it.

... what does your point have to do with allo ?

> How many people are now identifiably being turned down for jobs, apartments, dates, and airplane tickets based what the four or five companies that define our identities online record, store, calculate, and sell?

Brendan Eich lost his job due to information stored in a database.

HNers, take notice. This was brilliant and funny.

(Oh, and yes one giveaway is "I'm concerned that they may tell others and pretty soon everyone is going to start showing up at my home and my job and frankly I don't...". This coupled with a history of using irony and/or sarcasm and I am sure this is as well.)

> I don't talk to others and when I do, I don't tell folks anything about me, I'm concerned that they may tell others and pretty soon everyone is going to start showing up at my home and my job and frankly I don't want to answer my door buy their stuff - or worse - they could be hiding violent tendencies.

This is clearly paranoia. I'm not sure I can take anything from your comment other than you are very paranoid.

Or sarcasm. One or the other...

I hope you don't leave the house without your dazzle makeup [1] to defeat the facial recognition cameras.

[1] https://cvdazzle.com/

"What is a girl's name?"

"A girl has no name."

I just don't use Google products.

From what I hear, that's akin to wearing a tinfoil hat, living in a hole in the woods, or imagining that there's a secret room somewhere that all internet traffic is being routed through that's operated by an American intelligence agency.

It's rather ignorant to suggest that the U.S. does not actually conduct pervasive Internet surveillance.

Well, I'm not a Google fan boy.

Imagining....

Privacy is one thing, this is another.

If you avoid all that stuff (social interaction, talking to others, owning a car, renting an apartment, traveling by plane, etc) there must be a justification so that what you get out of avoiding it is more important than what you miss not doing them.

What that would that be in this case?

It doesn't sound like it's freedom.

Plus, if your attitude is "unfortunately, I'm still breathing", then how is owing a car or flying by plane or talking to another any worse than that?

Except if this all is Poe's law. In which case, this is a "slippery slope" fallacy which misses the whole point. In which case, if one doesn't have experience with something like a dictatorship, like my country and many others had, it's easy to snark such BS about privacy.

Few questions,

1>how do you handle cellphones?

I found there is few option that you can have LTE network without giving up your identity.

2>how do you handle online payment/shopping such as Amazon?

... and of course you are not using a cellphone... otherwise most of your other efforts would be pointless...

I think your post is sarcasm, but there's some lemonade to make from your lemons.

In 2007, I removed all traces of myself from the internet. Now, if you search me, I don't come up (try it). I likely have google profiles, but I can be sure that none are tied to my real name.

I've been arrested three times, but good luck finding my information in the system, after filing a DMCA takedown notice for violation of my intellectual property rights.

if you're trying to engage in commerce in the modern world, you need to learn trust law. put your assets in trust(s), and retain no personal liability for anything. If your house is owned by another entity that isn't you, and you don't even have a rental contract with that entity, that means you're legally homeless, even though you have both a home and a claim to the property. it's much harder to find you when a Bermuda Trust Corporation owns your home.

I travel by bus and car, though I have an enforced and recognized adverse claim under UNDHR guaranteeing my right to travel unencumbered, which took a bit of a rodeo, but was definitely worth it. "I" am the holder in due course of the New Vehicle Identification Statement (NeVIS) for my car, which means I retain full lawful and equitable title for my property, and do not require a license plate (Steve Jobs did something similar).

With the recent adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Persons, second-generation-born-on-American-Soil persons can claim indigenous rights. When it comes to travel, Jay's Treaty[0] makes travel for indigenous people simple; mention it at the border, watch their face light up, and play the Legend of Zelda "secret room" music in your head as you're waved through without more questions.

Citizens have three jobs: Answer your mail, pay the taxes you owe, and Vote. Make sure you reply to all contract offers (those you are obligated to respond to, that is) within 72 hours of receipt. If you get jury duty, inform them that your attendance that day is without prejudice (but attend).

Unfortunately, when it comes to other people, we are definitely in a world of surveillance, which has a chilling effect on other people's ability to stand out from a crowd. The public will punish square pegs that do not fit in round holes, even if they aren't in any way harmful to themselves or others. The best advice I can give is to take a cue from the CIA - Trust, but verify. If someone starts showing signs that they disagree with your lifestyle or political stance, withdraw from having that conversation with them in the future.

Don't crinkle in a ball. Just learn how to survive in a world designed for slavery.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Treaty#American_Indian_rig...

Is this sovereign citizen crap?

nope.

Mr. Poe? Is that you?

People, he's being facetious. But also specious.

There's nothing here to indicate that; not retroactive commentary at the end, nothing. If (s)he's trying to make a joke to make a point, (s)he's doing neither.

All kinds of clever and subtle things become possible in human communication when you stop insisting on overt signposts to interpretation and instead rely on your wit, experience, and judgment to resolve (or accept) possible ambiguities.

The chatbots on HN and Reddit are pretty smart, but yeah, you can find them when they complain about having to have human emotion and intuition to interpret a comment.

There is nothing in his post to assume humor either way, "overt signpost" or not. This is written text, where you don't have the signposts that vocal communication allows, such as sarcasm. I don't insist on "overt signposts" but I'm not going to pretend that there was anything in the post to make the author's point clear. So here I am relying on my wit, experience, and judgement and I have no way to resolve either way. So I'm going to assume the author is trying to make a serious comment.

This is interesting because I would never consider this comment serious whatsoever until I looked at the comments. I agree with cobralibre that you need to rely on your wit, experience, and judgement. Language is very nuanced and can't be taken literal.

This is also under the assumption that the person in question isn't a sociopath.

Oh, come on.

> Voter registration is unfortunately a front for other malicious activities - such as jury duty, a state-mandated intrusion into my most private information and thoughts

How can you get to that point and not immediately understand that it's obviously satire?

> How can you get to that point and not immediately understand that it's obviously satire?

By having encountered people who express exactly that sentiment and are deadly serious about it.

And you should treat those people as satire, too. The insistence on taking everyone seriously all the time only creates friction. It is not your job to take someone seriously, it is their job to make you take them seriously.

> jury duty, a state-mandated intrusion into my most private information and thoughts

Which aspect of that statement do you find satirical?

Jury-duty forces someone to have an opinion on record about some contentious topic. By most accounts that is an intrusion into one's private information and thoughts.

You won't and can't be forced. You can state your objections, and your refusal to make a public judgement, in which case you will not be selected to be on the jury. Even if some unreasonable judge still put you on the jury, you can refuse to vote guilty or not guilty, in which case there would be a hung jury. No court wants someone with such an attitude on a jury, so it won't ever get to this.

I'd hate to have seen your high school essays on Swift's A Modest Proposal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal

Unrelated... Would 'they' have really been more awkward than '(s)he'?

I see you Richard Stallman.

Jack Reacher?

Why do you do (or don't do) all the stuff? Sounds completely nutty.

This looks like hyperbole to me, but I have interacted with characters on the Internet that make this look normal.

Except those are more like "Watch out, Murica. Gummint jerst wants you to register so's they know whar to go when they come to terk yer guns! After, they'll round us up into consarnitration camps 'n' turn us all inter hamburgers ter feed th' lizard folk what runs ever'thin'."

They pay non-Mint silver bullion rounds for all their transactions, and only travel at night, by horse.

Poe's Law applies.