numbercaste

The only things I can__ offer you are children and politicians: the first is illegal and the second is expensive

I have never seen anyone drink like he did. To say he drank with a vengeance is almost understating it: it was almost as if there was a thirst there, a deep and insatiable craving that made the man keep going back for more and more until he sat down in one corner with a bottle.

This is the Number. It is in the things we do, the people we meet, the ID cards that we carry. It's part of our identities, our credit cards, our social interactions. It takes our influences, our biases, morals, lifestyles and turns them into a massive alternate reality that no-one can escape from. It lives on our phones, in our televisions, in the cards we swipe to enter office. At its best, it__ an exact mirror of how human society actually works - all our greatness, all our petty shallowness, all our small talk and social contacts all codified and reduced and made plain. At its worst, it__ also exactly that. It__ how poor and rich and famous and desirable you are. It__ the backchannel given a name and dragged out into the limelight for everyone to see.

We__e going to tell these people that they dropped because Facebook dropped us. We're going to say the Number needs the data and it's their right to share it with us. And we__e going to drop their Numbers again. And again. Until they riot on the Internet and make those Menlo Park motherfuckers come to us with their hats in their hands.