The screen flickers. A pale, blue light bathes your face in the glow of a thousand broken promises. Welcome back to the digital panopticon, where the terms and conditions are written in human fat and the ‘Like’ button is a dopamine-laced cattle prod.
I’ve just emerged from the pages of Sarah Wynn-Williams’ “Careless People,” a memoir that reads less like a career retrospective and more like a detailed inventory of a soul being dismantled by a HR department from the ninth circle of Hell.
It is a fascinating, harrowing, and deeply confusing trek through the Meta-verse. Reading it, one is struck by a singular, screaming question that echoes through the corridors of your mind like a banshee in a server farm: Why the fuck didn’t you just leave?
It’s the ultimate toxic relationship. Zuckerberg isn’t just a CEO; he’s the ultimate “Twat-King” of a digital feudal system. He’s the guy who invited the world to a party, locked the doors, and then started charging us for the air while whispering that we look “stunning” in our digital shackles. The book highlights a culture of institutionalised nastiness where the elites operate on a plane of existence so deviant, it makes the Epstein saga look like a misunderstood Sunday school outing. We’re talking about the top 1-3% of society—a demographic where empathy is a bug, not a feature, and where the “unthinkable” is just another Tuesday in the boardroom.
But let’s pivot to the “Education” section of this dystopian masterclass, shall we? Because beneath the surface of status updates and brunch photos lies a technical horror story that changed the world.
The Great Glyph War: ASCII vs. Unicode
Once upon a time, in the primitive “Before Times” of my early career, we lived in the binary simplicity of ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange). It was a simpler, more xenophobic era. ASCII gave us 128 characters—enough for the English alphabet, some numbers, and enough punctuation to tell someone to go to hell in a very basic font.
Then the world became “Digitally Global.” We needed more. We needed emojis, Cyrillic, Kanji, and the ability to say “I’m offended” in every dialect known to man. Enter Unicode.
Unicode was the ultimate globalist handshake—a way for every machine on Earth to speak the same language. On paper, it was a triumph of human cooperation. In practice, it was the opening of Pandora’s digital box. By standardizing communication, we didn’t just share knowledge; we shared our capacity for absolute, unmitigated hatred at a scale previously reserved for gods.
The Myanmar Massacre: Death by Algorithm
This is where the dystopian humor hits the concrete wall of reality. While Sarah was navigating the toxic office politics of Menlo Park, Facebook was being used as a weapon of mass destruction in Myanmar.
I’ll admit, I was a little ignorant of the scale. Over 10,000 people dead. Women and girls treated with a level of viciousness that makes you realize Man isn’t just a “nasty animal”—he’s a creative sadist with a Wi-Fi connection.
Why is it always women and girls who bear the brunt? Because in the eyes of the algorithm, they are the most effective “engagement” triggers. Hate speech thrives on the vulnerable. Facebook didn’t just allow the incitement of genocide in Myanmar; it optimized it. It served up the dehumanization of the Rohingya with the same efficiency it uses to sell you overpriced sneakers. It turns out that when you bridge the digital divide with Unicode, you also build a high-speed motorway for blood-soaked propaganda.
The Moral of the Story: Burn the Blue Box
The takeaway from Careless People isn’t just that the tech industry is a viper’s nest of narcissistic sociopaths (though it absolutely is). It’s that we are the fuel.
We watch these people wallow in self-pity and professional abuse, wondering why they go back for more, while we—the users—do exactly the same thing every time we refresh our feed. We are all Sarah, staying in the toxic relationship because we’ve forgotten what life looks like without the blue glow.
Zuckerberg and his cabal of “twats” aren’t just building a business; they’re building a digital version of those high-society islands where the rules of humanity don’t apply. They are the 1% who have figured out how to monetize our darkest impulses through a standardized character set.
The verdict? Facebook is shit. It is a monument to our own collective masochism. It is a tool that turned a universal language (Unicode) into a universal weapon.
Get the fuck off it. Delete the app. Smash the phone. Go outside and talk to a real person in a language that doesn’t require a server in California to translate it into a targeted ad.
Because if you stay, you’re just another “Careless Person” waiting for the algorithm to decide it’s your turn to be the victim.
Stay dark. Stay witty. And for the love of all that is holy, stay offline.
Shiel Yule 