wearing a fur coat in 2025

With anyone in his or her right mind shaking their heads at the developments in the USA, I thought I needed to have a closer look at my own behaviour. I am talking about my use of social media. Once a heavy user of Twitter, I already left that platform when I could no longer filter the tweets presented to me according to the writer being someone I followed or not. The crap passing on my screen was horrendous, so I decided it was time to remove my account. I know I was not alone, and when Mr. Musk took over Twitter and renamed it X, I found my choice (and theirs) was the only possible one. 

Now that the inhabitants of the USA have lost their collective mind and put Trump at the helm once more, and some obscenely wealthy men - Zuckerberg, Bezos and last but not least first buddy Musk - declared themselves his friends, I started studying ways of taking a stand and making a point. There is no way I can find an excuse for my supporting a regime that takes away money from taxpayers to even more fill their own already bulging pockets, that takes away minorities´ rights, that starts trade wars, that does not give a f*ck about the sovereignty of other countries, and that generally is just about greed. No way I will add to funding those horrible people. 

That decision taken, I started to search the internet for alternatives for Amazon, for anything META (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram) and for X, though I was already weaned off Twitter. 

The latter was easy. There is now Bluesky, a twitter-like platform that has clearly distanced itself from violating their users'privacy and selling their data.  

Finding an alternative for META as a total is less easy. But I did find an alternative for WhatsApp. It is called Signal, and it works as easily as WhatsApp, in some respects even a little better. I was surprised at the number of my contacts that already had an account there, so starting to use Signal instead of WhatsApp was a no-brainer. I did not yet find a 100% alterative for Facebook. Still, I have started to try and exclusively use Bluesky instead of Facebook, and I will probably find easy workarounds for the Twitter-like limitations of Bluesky. I did not find an alternative for Instagram. For me, that is no problem, as I have never really befriended the platform and I have never been a serious user. And I am sure something will pop up soon.

So, will I remove my META account? Or my WhatsApp account? Not just yet, but sometime, definitely. For now, I can´t afford to cut ties with so many of my contacts. It is not easy convincing others to take a stand. I can divide my contacts in two categories. The first one, like me, are early adopters and already have made the move. The second category is hesitating  and waiting for the others. If we (the early adopters) stop urging them to make the move too, they will wait forever, morally and financially supporting a regime that is despicable and harmful to all of us. Those are the ones that fall asleep at night thinking 'it won´t be all that bad'. Well, there are lessons to be learned from history. 1933. Sounds familiar? 

As for Amazon, when we are in the Netherlands we have our own trusty Bol.com, and we just learned that Temu has started to collaborate with the Portuguese CTT Postal Service to ensure delivery on our island as well. Problem Bezos solved. 

I have not yet mentioned Tesla. Not a difficult choice for me. I will never be able to afford a Tesla, but honestly, who wants a car that can take us from zero to 1933 in 10 seconds? Driving one would be like wearing a fur coat in public in 2025. You are likely to be spray-painted, like the furs in the 1980's. I think it is safe to say that, like wearing furs, driving a Tesla in our days is not done, like using WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter or Amazon.  

So, am I being a pessimist? No. Am I being afraid of what is to come? No. There is much that you and I can do to help ensure a safe future. So I keep faith, but I try to take my responsibility as a person and man the barricades once more, albeit electronic ones. Join me?

I will be watching out for modern day virtual wearers of fur coats, and I will have my electronic spray paint at the ready.

PS: please not that the text links are meant for use on a desktop or laptop. On mobile devices, just install the apps from your app store.