Around two months ago, the overrated World Cup fever flooded the news, social networks, and homes (and the refrigerator with beer… in my case). I am the first to criticize how generic, and empty this hyperdigitalization and enshittification have become, where football has also been contaminated. Yet, cheering on my national team with a cold beer alongside friends, or just with my wife, became almost a weekly ritual this year… well, until our country was eliminated.

But beyond the event itself, the real fun (when it is fun, because sometimes it’s not at all) is catching up with friends you haven’t seen in months, having a laugh, or even sharing the fears of adult life. That is something to treasure. In all honesty, I don’t have many friends (not because I prefer it that way), but because my wife and I simply can’t stand certain foolish attitudes, or maybe just because some people can’t stand us either. That was a reality that took us time to realize, or perhaps it was just a matter of accepting it and embracing our quirkiness.

Fig 10. A planned hiding spot here, another uncommon plan my wife and I enjoy.

The Expected Answer, the Planned Hiding

Moving on, during one of those gatherings at our home, an old friend from college shared with me his plan to publish a book he wrote several years ago. Naturally, in that atmosphere of friendship, I didn’t want to hold back, so I shared this page with him and my firm stance on the misuse of the internet these days. I summarized my relief in finding a outlet to write about it, as well as the joy of sharing my enthusiastic and amateur analog photography as part of that categorical response as a peaceful, but almost insurgent tease against current technologies. The answer didn’t surprise me, yet hearing it out loud was not quite what I expected after sharing my dispatch: “But that’s simply a blog.”

I didn’t get the expected effect, even showing him the zine that my wife so lovingly made for me as part of my birthday present, filled with pictures taken from this dispatch. Indeed, from the very beginning of this page, the idea was clear: not to publicize it within a circle of friends driven by that common denominator of standard orientation toward utility and functionality, the kind we were shaped into by putting our brains in a box, always waiting to fit into the world. We already know I’m trying to open my eyes and taking steps toward other paths, and there is still a lot left to do.

A couple of days later, I wrote to him and asked if he remembered anything about my dispatch. Curiously, he answered that he had already forgotten until I brought it up. So I replied, “Even better, let’s keep it that way.”

Fig 11. Same in my head, multiple opinions on the same 'line'.

The Duality of the Same Bowtie

After that little chat, this article finally took its final form, about the duality of the software developer who must smile at all the new technical, organizational, or corporate proposals inherited from the tech business itself. If I criticize those things in my inner circle of friends (among that common square denominator I’ve already mentioned) I am singled out for being wrong, or for not thinking like them. I call it a duality because the counterpart is this dispatch from a bowtied mate who opposes, who shares opinions, who looks for something different in the 1s and 0s he writes and publishes, and who wants to remain in anonymity… yet still hopes to be recognized by someone saying, “You know what? That actually makes sense now that you mention it” (or something along those lines).

And here is where this case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde stops being strange and becomes predictable. But funnily enough, both of them wear a bowtie; both talk the same and look the same. Yet, for the old and new gods, they carry an inner battle, one that clumsily tries to find relief from being annoying through these letters that attempt to feel analog, even if, at the end of the day, they are just part of a digital file trying to expose the corrupted use of that very same medium.

The Predictable Case

I mean predictable from the very moment I turn on my laptop. The moment I open my web browser, I am greeted by two user icons: one with my personal profile, where my bank access, email, video game accounts, YouTube, and even the access to that toxic LinkedIn page to job search reside; and the other, free of any other accounts, holds only the access to manage this page and upload the photos and articles I publish.

When I see those two user profiles, I sometimes ask myself: Which one is the real one, and which one is the hidden one? Or rather, which one do I want to be the real one? Because unfortunately, one pays the bills while the other tries to think freely. I also wonder why there’s a need to keep them separated, hiding behind an analog camera with a WesAndersonian nickname (or so I think), fueled by the very same paradox that, deep down, despite my efforts to remain anonymous, I also long for these quirky opinions to be recognized and make a difference.