The internet will set you free
At least that's what an instagram fortune-teller has predicted but I have my doubts.
I’m typing these lines surrounded by a pile of used kleenex and fuming ginger and lemon tea, the yin and the yang of vicious colds, as at the moment I am undergoing the effects of one myself.
I am convinced without a trace of a doubt that its onset has been caused by a stressful few days dealing with house issues which in turn have culminated with an email from my landlady informing my flatmate and myself that she has to increase the rent because tradesmen are very expensive. As it’s being alive in general if you ask me.
What can I say? Life is sweet now. It’d be really selfish to ask for more when everything seems to go your way at last.
And yet I can’t help but feel slightly betrayed by the turn events have taken in the last few days as this is a far cry from the life I was promised by Flowergirlreads a few days ago.
Who is Flowergirlreads? I hear you ask. A visionary, a clairvoyant, a luminary of the occult. Or as she describes herself “a girl with an intuitive mind, and a deep soul.” For simplicity let’s say that she is also an instagram account that popped in my feed during my usual bedtime procrastination in the form of an image with four moon icons and a line above them that said “Next 3 months”, which each moon presumably containing a different fate for the next 90 days.
If you’re getting ready to jump to the comments because you don’t believe in these things, I kindly invite you to do so in
post We Need to Talk About Astrology, where you’ll find a lively conversation on the topic.As for Flowergirlreads I doubt she can be considered -at least technically- an astrologer, but that is not something I’m concerned about, especially when my future awaits to be unveiled and I have nothing better to do.
That’s the good thing about being a night owl. I’m at the top of your game, feeling completely unstoppable, at 01:34 am. The down side is that I don’t always have very productive ways to use all that energy so that’s how I end up choosing a full yellow moon (definitely the one that holds the most auspicious omens) and eager to jump to Flowegirlreads’s life-changing predictions. At least in the short-term.
My chosen moon (number three, bright yellow and full) reveals that I’m indeed a very lucky girl and that my mastery in my chosen knowledge field is ready to be expanded by 85% - 90% . And that’s only the tip of the iceberg of my good fortune for in the next three months I will finally be able to share my experiences and teach others about them. If one is to believe Flowergirlreads, the next 90 days will see me rolling from success to success as I achieve progress. In fact, I seem to be one to look forward to goals and a future that will add more value/financial success into my life.
Now that’s intriguing and I’m grateful for the algorithm gods to have put on my feed this post that has unveiled a change for the better is just around the corner waiting to catch me off guard. As I blow my nose and worry about how much rent will increase I can’t help to think that it is about time prosperity manifested into my life. Maybe this is it.
However there’s something in Flowergirlreads message that seems off. If I am completely honest, I don’t have a clear idea of what my area of expertise really is, unless random trivia on unconnected topics counts as such. I can’t help but wonder what on earth I can ever share with people that has a) value and meaning b) will lead towards significant enlightening in said area of knowledge, whatever it may be, and c) can be monetised as I expand my knowledge on said field as surely that’s the success Florwergirlreads is referring to.
According to her, there are also higher goals to achieve as the message in my chosen moon also says that I’m on a “learning journey” and that the next three months will be incredibly liberating, refreshing and joyful for me. Like a plant, it continues, I tend to gravitate towards water and I choose to go forward regardless of how my past has been and say yes to new opportunities.
But it’s the prediction on matters of the heart that convince me that Flowergirlreads is the real deal when it comes to fortune telling. She doesn’t beat around the bush and gives it to me straight: I either wish to stay way from love or I am not at all interested in any romance that can drag my energy away from other pursuits.
No matter how much I tell myself that I’m a pragmatic person that believes in the law of reason over the occult and whimsical, she’s damn right on this one. All my doubts about how this is just a copy-pasted broad and ambiguous message that doesn’t really mean anything and which probably has been shared thousands of times before by every fortune-teller that ever lived or posted online vanish at reading the accuracy of my non-existent interest in a love life.
Here’s the thing: I really want to believe in Flowergirlreads’ words because something in me hopes that doing so may turn them into a reality. A lucky self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts, but one that for a change is about things going right for me instead of manifesting all my doubts, fears and worse-case scenarios. In short, I'm hoping for the opposite of having a hunch about a very steep increase in rent only to get confirmation a few days later.
Ten days have passed between reading Flowergirlreads’s rosy predictions and my current circumstances, where I’m surrounded by a mountain of germ-filled kleenex, still recovering from a cold that has knocked me over and diminished my physical and mental strength as well as the news of a rent increase that will surely diminish my income and will to live. These two quite literally.
While I don’t think Flowergirlreads has lied to me, or not on purpose, I struggle to picture that bright future the full yellow moon I picked ten days ago had in store for me. Then I tell myself that it’s still early days to jump to conclusions as I’m only ten days into the 90 in which my successful self, the one going from strength to strength, is meant to emerge.
A couple of days ago I had a conversation with a tech conference producer to discuss an opportunity that can be very interesting for them as I wanted to connect them to an organisation that is planning on launching a report on the UK immersive economy around the time this tech conference will tech place. This could increase the profile of the event significantly, which the conference producer realises as we speak.
Spotting opportunities is the bread and butter of my role and it’s something that, truth be told, I’m quite good at. I think the secret for this is wanting to understand what people do and then wanting to help them do it better by not gatekeeping who could be a good contact for them.
The conference producer, experienced as she is, understands this could be indeed a great partnership and elaborates on the rest of the programme for the event, which will include a stream on AI for Creative Industries at one of the main stages. I share that I’d be happy to suggest a few names to fill out the different sessions as this is an area I’ve been focusing on for the past year and a half and right now they’re a bit behind with speakers.
And then the question slips from her mouth. Would I be interested in getting involved as a speaker/moderator myself? I surprise myself by saying that I’d love to. Me, an introvert terrified of public speaking, have just agreed to be talking in front of an audience that will be in the hundreds given this will be one of the main stages.
Is this the leaning forward like a plant that Flowergirlreads predicted? Can this be the beginning of my good luck, at least for the next eighty days?
When we finish our call I tell myself that as much as I get very anxious with public speaking at least I have plenty of time to prepare because the event it’s in early June and I already moderated an event on this same conference last year, so this is a natural progression.
Maybe it’s time to resume my tech newsletter, which has been on hold since January, and go back down the tech rabbit holes that I often struggled to get myself out from but which were instrumental in getting me up to speed in understanding key trends and AI developments and how they were impacting creative sectors.
As I consider potential content to write about and laugh at some pun titles that come to mind, I remember that earlier in the week two colleagues were telling me how much they enjoyed reading the newsletter and had wondered when the next issue would be out. These colleagues aren’t the only ones who have made remarks about how much they enjoyed reading it. In fact, someone else working in the field of AI and Creative Industries was very complimentary and kept recommending my newsletter to people at an event we were both at recently, which I really appreciated.
There is undoubtedly something serendipitous about the well-meaning predictions of Flowergirlreads about increasing my knowledge/embarking on a learning journey and thinking of resurrecting a newsletter I thought I was done with in order to be prepared for this tech conference, which I realise falls within this three month period where blessings are going to be raining on me.
Interesting, maybe it’s worth revisiting Flowergirlreads’ message.
A new close reading, however, makes me realise that her insights on what I thought would be my next three months might be far less personal than I first thought when I came across her words in the small hours of the night.
Writing about a topic on a regular basis is the best way to increase your knowledge on the subject and in fact many of the speaking opportunities I’ve had in the last year have been a direct or indirect result of people being aware of me writing this tech newsletter focused on AI and creative industries.
Besides, if there ever was a time where one could become an expert in their chosen field (maybe even by 85% -90%), share their experiences and teach people through them while getting ready to embrace the unavoidable success that will follow afterwards this is it.
And it is all thanks to the internet, which has made it possible to publish, and therefore have access to, information on any topic and lived experience under the sun. Whether it’s via links, articles, social media posts, niche content or newsletters we are all able to look forward to a future that will add more value/financial success into our lives thanks to the power of typing furiously in front of a screen in the hope of monetising our online selves.
In case you don’t know the best way to become successful by typing furiously in front of a screen, worry not. You only have to look at the amount of posts on the topic that are proliferating on Substack, which I expect have been furiously typed. In fact, as we speak, or type, the number of people making a reality their own Flowergirlreads predictions is probably growing by the minute.
The internet has given us the tools to be in charge of our lives and become masters of our destiny by writing about our experiences, offering information, practical tips or inspiration on a myriad of topics, from embroidery to photography and financial freedom, or what your short-term future looks like based on which moon image you choose.
In this journey towards a better, more accomplished version of ourselves, are we or are we not all embarking on a learning path to understanding how to capitalise putting ourselves out there? Maybe even increasing our knowledge on social media, SEO, digital marketing, do’s and don’ts by around 85-90% along the way? Don’t we all choose to go forward, on to the next platform where the promise of success lies, regardless of our previous failures online?
As I ask myself all these questions I have to come to terms with the fact that Flowergirlreads never intended her predictions for me personally and this realisation hurts.
I wanted to believe her so badly that I overlooked what she was really saying. A much more simple and obvious prediction despite the many words she had wrapped it in. For what Flowergirlreads was really communicating is not a general, non-descriptive, impersonal message, but a truth universally acknowledged not only by Instagram fortune-tellers but by anyone making a living online, as I suspect Flowergirlreads is. What she was actually saying is “the internet will set you free.”
Whether that’s actually true or just another weapon of capitalism to keep us enslaved and chained to a keyboard, spilling our guts and our words online in every medium available to us, hoping to make a living out of it, is a different question.
Having said that, if Florwergirlreads is correct (let’s give her the benefit of the doubt) and the way to success, enlightenment and achievement lies in the power of the internet, I am not quite sure about how compatible her prediction is with the next three months being liberating, refreshing and joyful.
In the words of Justin E. H. Smith “the internet is addictive and is thus incompatible with our freedom, conceived as the power to cultivate meaningful lives and future-oriented projects in which our long-term, higher-order desires guide our actions, rather than our short-term, first-order desires.”1
Not everything on the internet is a soulless black hole that sucks the life out of you. There are pockets of hope. I thought Flowergirlreads was actually one of them. So much for instagram fortune-tellers and their empty promises of short-term success built on online engagement and outreach.
However, always working on the assumption that Flowergirlreads might be right and success is around the corner for me that can only mean that I’ll make it -whatever that means as the Artic Monkeys sing- online, a thought that only conjures up images of algorithm dependency, non-stop content production (a combination of words that I personally hate but is fitting) and eternal worries about keeping engagement rates up and growth steady which is the opposite of the freedom I’ve been promised.
And here I return to Smith as we seem to be of the same opinion about how a system that is governed by algorithms which then govern us can’t really bring much liberation or joy as “human lives under the pressure of algorithms are not enhanced, but rather warped and impoverished.”
For all her misguided revelations that for a moment made me think were actually meant for me and that I could actually see a change in my fortune for the best without having to become an online slave, there is one thing where Flowergirlreads has been very personal in her message despite my disappointment with the rest of her predictions.
Almost two weeks later I’m still not interested in romance distracting me from other pursuits, which right now include recovering from a cold and the blow of the rent increase as well as resuming writing a tech newsletter.
Unfortunately the internet is adamant on setting me free on its own, which is rather annoying, so if you’ll excuse me I have to leave you here as I need to increase if not my salary at least my knowledge on all things AI as well as my workload, both by 85-90%, as I impulsively decided to move forward and said yes to something I should have probably said no.
All because I believed in the word of Flowergirlreads, insta fortune-teller, perhaps not quite the visionary I hoped but certainly someone who, in all likelihood, was also promised that the internet would be the solution to all her struggles and the key to her freedom.
I am positive by now that Flowergirlreads is both victim and enabler of a system that is rigged and she has become another operator in this global Ponzi scheme where everyone lures someone else in by convincing them the internet is the answer, that it worked for them, that if they are making it, so can you.
And if you aren’t conquering the freedom -creative, financial, professional, personal- the internet is bringing to everyone else then you must be the one doing something wrong, or not doing enough, or not on the right platform.
Wherever (and whoever) Flowergirlreads is I do hope her next three months are actually liberating, refreshing and joyful. For the time being, her account reveals that she’s no longer doing personal readings unlike two weeks ago. One small step for an Instagram fortune-teller, one giant leap towards online freedom.
And on that note, have you thought about starting a Substack? It’s lots of fun as a creative outlet.
Seriously, it’s a great way to connect with others and share your expertise on your chosen field or your passion about any subject. Plus I’ve heard some people are making money through it and changing their lives for the better.
You should give it a go. It could be quite liberating.
Abroad is an independent publication about identity and belonging, living in between cultures and languages, the love of books, music, films, creativity, life in London, and being human in the age of artificial intelligence.
The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, A Philosophy, A Warning (2022) by Justin E. H. Smith.