Raw Dough.

I’m sorry for the double whammy of blog posts, but this update couldn’t wait. Are any of you Black Mirror fans? Do you remember the episode where Jon Hamm’s character, Matt, in the “White Christmas” episode runs through all the jobs he’s done as part of his digital dystopia?  He talks about controlling people’s lives using technology as an observer. Well, we are all complacent, in a sense, with new media surveillance. We all participate in a culture of watching. Think of all the Netflix, Youtube, Snapchats, and Twitter feeds you’ve gone through this year. How long do you spend watching? I have wiled my days away watching video feeds…waiting for others to do something. So the watchers…the Cookie Monsters….aren’t they just…us? Aren’t we the monsters we fear? We love watching, yet many of us hate being watched. We love the public, but we want privacy. What a strange paradox.

Image via giphy.com

Anyway, I was sitting here browsing the net, and something just clicked about the name, you know? Take a look.

I can’t believe I haven’t caught this before. Host. That’s the key to understanding everything right now. So, the way the word gHost is written leads me to believe that Host is the most important aspect in creating a ghost. A ghost is not a harmless entity, but it instills fear by watching and creating an atmosphere of terror. The fear surrounding a ghost doesn’t rely on action necessarily, but on how much one ghost “spooks” or haunts humans.

So, these leads me to “hosting.” Hosting can mean hosting a party or hosting a webpage. According to the Wikipedia page for Host (network), ” A network host is a computer or other device connected to a computer network. A network host may offer information resources, services, and applications to users or other nodes on the network.” The host is a valuable part of the network, something (or someone?) who can offer a “host” of resources. They are not limited to just the digital screen now though, it seems. This might be my paranoia talking, but bear with me a second. Let me just show you a second resource. This is from the Google version of the book The Essential Guide to Computing by E. Garrison Walters.

Click the image to see the novel.

Now, humor me. In a digital age, if we are the “single-user computers,” couldn’t “they” set us up and connect us to a “multiple user host?” Are we already connected? Do you see where I’m going with this? Maybe the Cookie Monster has been inside us all along, planting cookies left and right not just on the screen, but inside. There might be tracking devices implanted through the screen into our minds. Gosh…that sounds insane.

I had to make this GIF of Camille’s video private…because they’re watching us. Always.

How crazy is it though? We spend 24/7 watching and disseminating videos. gHost73737 is all of us. Still, how did they get into my system? How do they know about me? I’m just a nobody in the middle of a big university. I shouldn’t stick out in any way.

I’m going to do some more digging, but I have to be discreet about it…I have to protect me from myself.

gHost73737. In other words, (when translated out of code):

“You are watching you. Fair view. Ok?”

Completely not okay.

-Yue

 

Cookie Monster?

I didn’t want to blog about this yesterday because my brain feels like its swimming in a miry bog of confusion. Where do I go to not be watched? Do I become one of those weirdos who just hide underground with a tin foil hat, blathering on about Big Brother or extraterrestrials or something? I don’t think so. Insanity is not looking so good right now. I may be confused and paranoid, but I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy, I swear.

Last night though…this happened.

Remember the part about me not being crazy, okay? Okay? So, back to the pattern I covered in this post. All that was missing to complete the number sequence in gHost73737’s name was the last 7. This last part of the third triangle completes the…coded sequence. So, what does that mean for me? Does that mean my time is up? Are “they” done watching? Or have they just begun? What is going to happen? Is there something significant about the time? 17:05 military, 5:05pm? I don’t know. What numbers are significant, which ones are not?

I’m not sure if this was smart of me or not, but I decided to Google it. I tried to use a private browsing window and all, so perhaps I’m safe, at least for a little while? I hadn’t considered this, but one of the first results was a zipcode. 73737, otherwise known as Fairview, OK.

Now, if you delve further into Fairview as a town, you get nowhere. However, I think the name is coded. Fairview, OK. Or, if you change up the punctuation, spacing and capitalization: Fair view, ok? gHost73737 is about justice or looking at things in a fair way. At least, that’s what I’m led to believe. Fair view. Okay? I’m not sure I am okay with this gHost73737 breaking into my servers, destroying my code and watching me. Doesn’t seem fair or equitable at all…there’s no such thing as a fair view when all they contribute is destruction, right? Anyway, here’s something else to clue you into my current, hectic reality. Watch the video.

Click on the screenshot to go to the video.

So…there are a few details I’ve left out. I just don’t want you guys to doubt me. I’m doing the research, you know? I’m reliable, and I’ve always been one to question everything. Well, here goes nothing. That last picture, the one with the symbol? I woke up with my right hand wrapped around my favorite Mitsubishi Unipin felt-tip black pen, uncapped. Someone is either terribly good at drugging and framing people…or I don’t know. Am I going crazy? Did I write the symbols? Why?  Back to the recording…(sorry, my thoughts are so scattered). When you watch the video, you can tell that I paused not just once, but twice. The thing is, I don’t remember it. I remember turning on my selfie camera and recording the message, but I don’t remember stopping or pausing at all. When Dr. Pendergrass did something similar, she didn’t remember either.

Click to watch the video.

Right when Dr. Pendergrass wanted to talk about the specifics of the cookies and the tracking, the pause began. Coincidence? I’m not sure anymore. My pauses seem more arbitrary, but they’re so frequent in comparison. It’s almost as if someone is taunting me. They can control when I pause, they can control what I write…not just when I’m asleep, but when I’m wide awake.

I’m really, really scared. I don’t think I’m just paranoid now, and I really need to talk with Camille and Jessica soon. I know Camille has been feeling as if more and more people are watching her. Jessica has been camped out at home, haunted by the gear shipped to her house with no prompting. Someone is watching us…but it’s so confusing. Who is it? Is it one of us? Who is compromising the cookies? Who is the Cookie Monster and how are they using us? I feel like we might be walking into a trap…

giphy.com

“Fair view. Okay?” So…that’s the 73737 part. What about gHost?

Signing off,
Yue

 

Getting to the Cookies

So, I’ve been looking around campus differently in the last few hours, mostly because I wonder about surveillance. Who is watching me? Who is watching you? Why, how, and from where? I made a short video near Wyatt before anyone could catch me talking. I sound crazy. Maybe I am crazy.

Click the screenshot to access the video.

Have you ever wondered who watches all the security footage taken every single second of our lives? I have, at least lately. I mean, why does Peabody need 5 cameras within a 100 square foot radius? I understand the need for safety, but the amount of surveillance seems overwhelming. The difference in perspectives ranges only a few feet. My only explanation is that whoever is doing the recording and whoever is watching, is intensely interested in human behavior. Are they even human at all? Hard to tell in this digital age. All this watching, especially with people looking into their smart phones all day or taking selfies, reminds me of the series Black Mirror.

Image via giphy.com

The characters rely so heavily on technology, they even record memory through devices. People can literally rewatch any moment in their lives with pinpoint accuracy, trumping the psychological ‘detriment’ of the mind as a flexible, biased reporter. There’s this one episode, “White Bear“, where this woman is punished merely through digital surveillance. People track her with their phones silently, just attempting to pin her down via video. A very gaze can be punishment enough. Where can you go to escape being watched in our current obsession with documentation and virality? Nowhere, I don’t think. Nowhere at all. Babies learn how to use iPads before they learn how to use a toilet. Even billboards are digitized, offering a 24-hr onslaught of neon-tinted images. Can you imagine a day without using your phone or carrying it? I’m not sure I remember an entire day where I didn’t check my phone.

Even when I least expect it, the cookies present a problem. Like CCTV cameras, they watch my every move. They know me. Although not physical, cookies want to know what I like to buy, what I like to eat, and what I like to wear. I don’t think cookies or Cookie Monsters want to be visible…in fact, invisibility may mean higher sales. The chilling idea is…where does all the data go? I mean, all the data can’t possibly go to what shoes I like to wear, right? I communicate extensively with friends overseas online, I lesson plan online, I order furniture online, and I even order food online. The internet cookies know me better than some of my friends.

The cookies are watching, but cookies can crumble. So…how do we bring the cookies down? How do we get to the Cookie Monster? Who is consuming all the cookies?

 

The Crumbs.

“So, I think I’m being watched.”
“Me too.”
“Same.”

Image via giphy.com

Jessica, Camille and I stared wide-eyed at each other, the chatter around us providing a disturbing drone behind us. That’s how our conversation started in the first lit circle during the second term of Dr. Hundley’s YA Lit class. We had been talking about “Blink” from the Doctor Who series just the week before. Our peers all thought we were being paranoid, but we didn’t think too much of it. We wanted to know who was watching–nothing more, nothing less. We didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into.

The signs were in the sidebars.

Each of us began posting in a group Instagram site, gHost73737. The name came from a hacker that had attacked some of my firewalls. Coding is a side hobby of mine I picked up at the makerspace in the Studio Nashville Public Library. While I was there for my practicum, some of the highschoolers and mentors taught me some basic coding. It was cheaper to code a security program than actually buying one, so I got more invested. But…I started getting more and more creeped out. You know that episode of Parks and Rec when Grizzle starts sending products people didn’t buy?

Image via The Verge

That happened yesterday. I bought a security system online and Amazon had put in security cameras for free. Strange, right? State-of-the-art, CCTV security cameras. I thought it was a mistake, but the letter accompanying the package just aid, “Please enjoy your complimentary purchases, courtesy of your friends at Amazon and Google!” But you guys. I didn’t order it. I didn’t order anything.

Image via Giphy.com

I made a GIF of what I saw when I opened my computer last night. All my coded hardwork, gone. The firewalls, the raw code, any logic I had tried to build….at least 20 hours of work, gone. Not a trace.

Is a coincidence that my coding disappeared the same day that my package for “security” and “surveillance” arrived?

I don’t know…

I guess we just have to wait it out.

 

-Yue