Worst New Year Ever

There has never been a new year I was less looking forward to than 2025.

And it’s not just next year. It’s the next four years. I honestly don’t know how I, our country or our planet are going to survive them.

Trump hasn’t even taken office yet and we’ve already had a sneak preview of what the next four years are going to be like: complete chaos. (Of course, we already saw what his first term was like, but apparently Americans have a very short memory.)

Let’s review, shall we?

We just learned that Matt Gaetz, Trump’s pick for attorney general, is guilty of statutory rape and drug possession, among other crimes. Pete Hegseth, his pick to lead the Defense Department, is also guilty of sexual assault and is an alcoholic. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., his pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, is an anti-vaxxer and also a former drug addict. Kash Patel, his pick to lead the FBI, wants to basically dismantle that organization. Tulsi Gabbard, his pick to be the Director of National Intelligence, is a supporter of Vladimir Putin.

And that’s just a sampling.

We just narrowly avoided yet another government shutdown and now Trump wants to annex Greenland and the Panama Canal! Are you fucking kidding me?!!!

What’s been happening in my home town of New York City lately? Let’s see:

The CEO of United Healthcare was gunned down in broad daylight and his accused killer became a folk hero because that’s what it took to have a conversation about health insurance in this country.

And a homeless woman on a subway train was set on fire by an illegal immigrant, throwing into high relief the crises of both homelessness and immigration (not to mention the lackadaisical response by our police department).

Meanwhile, personally, I’m in the midst of yet another job search because a large chunk of our economy is being run by temporary, freelance or contract employees like myself and, due to “the holidays,” no business is being conducted between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day.

And woe unto the person who, like myself, had his prescriptions run out during the aforementioned holidays because chances are your doctor will be on his annual two-week end-of-year vacation, so you’ll just have to do without any medication until January 2.

Is it any wonder I’m not feeling the Christmas spirit? Bah humbug!

Oh, yeah, and happy New Year!

The End of Social Media

This morning, as I was about to look for a job on LinkedIn, I responded to someone’s post about how useless job postings in general (and LinkedIn’s in particular) were for finding a job. (I believe this is the definition of either irony or insanity.) The poster said that, based on his conversations, most people found their jobs either through networking or because they knew someone in the company. I commented that, indeed (no pun), only 3% of jobs were found from job postings and that on my last job search I had responded to 1,700 job postings and only gotten five interviews. (I eventually wound up getting a job through a temp agency which I said was, I supposed, like knowing someone in the company.)

My feed was immediately filled by people telling their own LinkedIn horror stories (as well as numerous advertisements), but no posts from people I was actually connected to. Similarly, a few days ago, I asked someone a question on Instagram in response to a post this person made about a friend of hers in the film industry. Although this person never answered my question, I immediately started seeing dozens of posts from her.

Is this the great future that was promised to us by A.I.?

In both these instances (and in business in general) the idea seems to be, “How can we remove humans from the equation?” If there’s a job that a software (in this case, A.I.) can do “better,” let’s replace the human with the software.

Two more examples:

I recently joined both Threads and Bluesky after deleting my Twitter account (because Elon Musk was instrumental in electing Donald Trump, donating $250 million to his campaign, as well as suppressing anti-Trump tweets and promoting pro-Trump tweets). After a few weeks, I have 131 followers on Threads and 52 on Bluesky. On both platforms, I see posts from basically the same two people (who must do nothing but post all day), to the point where I’ve started deleting some of them.

I just use these two platforms to vent my frustration at the election of Trump/Republicans, but I’m just preaching to the converted. I’m not actually changing anyone’s mind. So what's the point?

The only reason I stayed on Twitter after Elon Musk bought it was to be a “voice of the opposition” and look how well that worked out.

The best of these platforms might be Facebook, perhaps because it’s based on people I actually know. (I compare these other platforms to a bunch of people screaming into a vacuum.) But even here, out of 1,793 “friends,” I only see posts from about two dozen. And on all these platforms, the “conversation” seems to be very one-sided. It just seems to be people promoting or selling something (to be fair, I’m guilty of that as well), but rarely engaging in actual conversation.

Maybe I should just rely on my website and blog. If people are interested, fine, if not, that’s fine too. But, of course, then the issue becomes how to get people to pay attention to your website or blog, hence social media.

It’s a vicious cycle.

Now excuse me while I post this on Facebook, Threads and Bluesky.

Eat Drink Laugh at Pangea, Saturday, December 21 at 9pm

I'm hosting a stand-up comedy show at Pangea on Saturday, December 21 at 9pm, $10 in advance ($15 at the door) plus $20 minimum. Advance tickets available here: https://cur8.com/23871/project/127527

I hope you'll join me and this great line-up of comedians.

See you there!

Paul