Fuck Computers

Feb 1, 2025

I fucking hate computers.

I hate how much of my life revolves around staring at and tending to various fucking computers.
I hate how much time I spend thinking about doing this or that to the computer, not doing meaningful stuff that happens to involve a computer, but just doing stuff on or to computers.

In the room I’m writing this in there are 4 computers:

There are other computers elsewhere (they reproduce like rats), but at the moment I am angry at these four.

I hate how much money I’ve spent on the fucking things over the years.

This laptop wasn’t too bad, £100 all in, a reasonable amount of money, I actually do things I get some kind of reward out of with this thing, if I screw my eyes up and clench real hard it almost feels like it’s worth it.

The phone likewise was £100, not all that much but a princely sum to part with for a self harm rectangle I don’t actually want. The modern smartphone as it exists in the benighted year of two thousand and twenty five is, I think, a genuinely demonic technology. I hate having one, but I can’t even have a job anymore without a smartphone, much less do something as outlandish as buy a bus ticket, so what can you do other than scream? Can’t get rid of the damn thing, that’s for sure.

The work laptop was free as in beer, ruinously expensive as in every other possible metric. Never get a goddamn email job, the juice ain’t worth the squeeze. When I was 16 I was scraping shit and blood off hospital walls, at 21 I was hauling bricks on a site, I spent year 26 watching people’s lungs pop in a respiratory ward, all were less stressful than the email grind, less demeaning than the endless meetings.

If I could go back in time and tell my younger self one thing it would be to learn a trade; never learn to touch type or speak PMC English.
Fuck computers, fuck computer jobs, and fuck being an information worker.

Now the desktop is a singular beast, a mistake of my own making.
How much money over the years and how much time? The money is easy, at least 5 grand over 15 years, the time is incalculable. I’ve 3000 hours in steam games, probably another 3000 in other stuff and I think perhaps a hundred of that six thousand really stands out to me as especially worthwhile, the rest is dross.

Everything else this machine enables is likewise a waste of fucking time with almost nothing worth remembering to it. I am sick of the thing and I’m sick of looking at it, I’m sick of logging out of the bad computer I’m paid to look at and logging into the bad computer I voluntarily look at for twice as long.

I’m sick of how ridiculously wasteful all of it is, miles of copper wire, feet of gold and silver, countless gallons of brent crude, all to bring me a 20" * 10" * 12" box to look at meaningless noise through, a thing for gobbling down distraction on while the world bleeds and the oceans boil.

I was up to 3am last night theming a desktop environment like that is a sane or good thing to be doing on a Friday night. This worthless machine has got its own place of honour, its own special chair and desk and body posture. I hate how it’s become the default place to be, that it has presence and territory in my home; like it’s a person, rather than a possession. It’s dumb and shit and sad and it’s getting dressed out and pulled apart as soon as I’m done writing this. Its lesser auxiliaries, the monitor and peripherals and all the other meaningless shit mounded up around it are going to. Fuck the lot of it, all of it was a mistake.

Computers should be there when they’re needed and get the fuck out of the way when they aren’t. If it cannot be put away in a drawer and/or picked up and thrown into a skip one handed it’s too much and probably harmful.

I read a book last week, an actual book, the kind made of paper, not a fake book on an LCD monitor, an honest to God ink and dead trees book, sat on a chair designed for comfort rather than optimal operation of the Babylon box and it was amazing, fantastic, transformative.

I want more reading, less computers.

I went for a walk today along the river, the wind was rising, the sun was hiding. Herons and cormorants on the water, robins and crows in the trees, my feet sinking in the mud, my breath wet in my lungs. There were no computers on the river, not a single one.

I want more nature, less computers.

More running, less computers.
More walking, less computers.
More sleeping, less computers.
More music, less computers.
More friends, less computers.
More sex, less computers.
Less computers, please just less computers.

I sometimes sit down and try and envision my ideal life. It’s one of those dumb thought exercises you’re supposed to do when trying to make decisions.
It isn’t meant to be realistic, but it gives you something to work towards, a perfect to shape good against.

My ideal life more or less looks like this:

Notice the absence of computers, emails or any of this meaningless shit.
There are no screens in heaven.

I am going to shoot for perfect and see where my shot falls.
Everything that can go will be.
Immediately.
Because fuck computers.

Fuck ’em all.