I was sitting in a Starbucks one afternoon, eating lunch while working on my laptop, when I noticed the guy beside me constantly peering over at my screen. People in Silicon Valley tend to be paranoid about digital privacy, especially while working on a new app—which everyone in the Valley always is, including me. My current app idea was HairDu: like Uber for haircuts, where the barber comes to you.
At least I was supposed to be working on HairDu, but in actuality I was browsing 4Chan and Twitter. Trending hashtags and wojack memes weren’t exactly confidential material, but still, I didn’t like the idea of someone spying on me, so I turned to give the guy a disapproving glare.
He was in his mid-twenties with messy hair, a grizzled beard, glasses, and a zip-down hoody with a “Don’t Be Evil” t-shirt. He looked (and smelled) like a pothead. Then again, in Silicon Valley, where micro-dosing LSD was all the rage, he could have been a billionaire CEO for all I knew.
Despite my glare, the stranger continued staring at my screen. I’d have simply moved to another seat except there were none available—at least none near a power outlet, and my MacBook battery was on the fritz.
“Can I help you?” I asked with an intentionally sardonic tone.
“Huh?” He finally shifted his gaze away from my screen to my face.
“Is there a problem, bro?” I spread my shoulders wide while eyeing his “skinny fat” frame. I could take him if need be.
“I couldn’t help but notice you’re using Firefox,” he said.
“Yeah.” My annoyance grew. “So?”
“Do you work for Mozilla or something?”
“Not that that’s any of your business,” I said, “but no.”
“And I see you use ProtonMail instead of Gmail,” he said.
I rolled my eyes and nodded, hoping if I ignored him, he’d leave me alone.
“You’ve got an Apple computer,” he proceeded to my disappointment, “so I assume you’re an iPhone guy too.”
I was, but I wasn’t going to dignify him with a response.
“That’s all well and fine, I guess,” he said. “But DuckDuckGo? Seriously, dude? You got something against Google?”
“Yeah,” I snapped, having reached the limit of my patience. “Google is too powerful. I don’t want them tracking all my data and knowing everything about me. I value my privacy.”
“You probably use a VPN too.”
I did—but he didn’t need to know that.
He chuckled condescendingly. “You think anything on the internet is actually ‘private’?”
I shrugged. Admittedly, he had a point. It was a fool’s errand to try to be 100% secure online. Nothing was hack-proof; there were backdoors to everything. Then again, if someone really wanted to break into your house, they could—but that doesn’t mean you should leave your door unlocked.
“How can you trust a company whose motto used to be, ‘Don’t Be Evil’?” I nodded at his shirt. “That kind of implies they’re evil now, doesn’t it? Just look at what they’re doing: manipulating search algorithms to promote specific political agendas, demonetizing ‘problematic’ YouTube videos—or de-platforming people altogether. They’re even working with the military to create killer drones. Not to mention Google’s products have gone downhill since the company went woke. They care more about ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ than truth.” I almost barfed voicing their three favorite buzzwords. “They say they want diversity, but only in the way people look, not the way they think. They shadow-ban conservatives—not that I am one—but they’re even going after libertarians now. Plus the company limits hiring Asians just because we’re better programmers. My parents risked their lives to escape communist China with my sister after becoming pregnant with me, now Google HR has mandatory struggle sessions. These woke American Millennials take freedom and capitalism for granted. They don’t know how good they have it. ‘We’re all for free speech,’ they say, ‘just not hate speech.’ Well what the fuck is ‘hate speech?’ Whatever speech the most sensitive snowflake hates? Should we cancel all comedians because one SJW can’t take a joke? Google helped build the internet as a place for true freedom of expression—to escape Big Brother censorship. Now it’s become Big Brother. Google is as much of an authoritarian threat as the government—if there even is a difference between the two. The deep state has its tendrils all over the company. You know they were initially funded by In-Q-Tel, a CIA front? Look it up.”
I realized I’d been ranting for a while, and he had remained suspiciously silent the entire time. I glanced over and noticed he was staring at me with shocked eyes, as if I’d just committed blasphemy. I feared he was a brainwashed leftoid Marxist himself, had been recording our entire conversation, and was going to post it on social media to try to get me canceled. That was, until I noticed his Chromebook and the YouTube video paused on its screen—a “Talks at Google” with Nick Bostrom. On the table beside his laptop was a Pixel phone, and his glasses were actually Google Glass, which I thought had been discontinued—but I guess he got a new prototype. It then all started to make sense. He obviously worked at the Googleplex.
“No offense,” I said.
“It’s not me you have to worry about offending,” he said. “Just don’t say I didn’t try to warn you.”
I should have just ignored the guy, but that last comment piqued my curiosity. “Warn me about what?”
“Have you ever heard of…” He looked around the coffee shop then whispered, “Roko’s Basilisk?”