Time Travel in the Age of AI

This post is about time travel, DNA, and ghosts, and AI. Very sci-fi of me. Sort of. 

I got a text from a family member yesterday that required me to think back 30+ years to a time when I was very young, and very foolish at times, and thought I would be young forever (apparently) and thought I was way too smart for bad things to happen to me. HA! 

I had to think back to remember a couple of things (and by the way, I got a little bit of that wrong, in a "meet your own grandpa" kind of way that I'll have to try to remedy) and it made me realize JEZUS MARY AND CHEERUST it's been more than 30 years. I know this. I know this for sure; my hubster and I have been married significantly longer now than we were single without each other. And that's frikkin' weird. But in this particular moment & this series of text messages with said Fam I traveled to an ancient date. 

The early 1990s. THE 1990, in fact. This is where the DNA comes in. (See-- I'm getting that title into the text. This is what we writing teachers call a transition, and clever use of a hook.) Said fam was reacting to a DNA test his fam had gotten. And someone who we will call Cousin A was reached out to by Second Cousin B. So there's some family adoption and unknown relative distance (there's the time travel again) that's involved in this query. 

And again, I had to think back in time to a time when I was so young I had literally no wrinkles. No grey hair. I was actually skinny. Like annoyingly skinny, and said things like "I just have a fast metabolism" to people. NO. I JUST NEVER ATE FOOD thank you very much. And had a very active job and was seriously being neglected and needed to eat two sandwiches (thank you very much I did eat those sandwiches and hence am now a chonky middle aged who will slap skinny me for that "fast metabolism" curse.) Thinking back in time, I.E., time travel, is hard. There's a lot of water under that bridge and it makes the memories murky. 

This sentence, now, is where we work the ghosts into the story. I first realized that the idea of ghosts is often something we are just haunted by. A person, yes. A beloved pet was where I figured this one out-- Tituba, my black cat, my first kitty baby, would appear behind me sometimes after she was gone. I had to get more black cats to save and pamper to make up for losing her. She haunted me in the very best way. And then, after my father-in-law died, I would see men far in the distance wearing a shirt that he would have worn or standing with the slight stoop he had (as a very tall man, this was something of a defense mechanism, I think.) Or smelling whatever 1900s man cologne it was that he used to wear. A ghost. A person (or cat) that I missed in my life and wished I could really see again. THey also haunt you when you're sleeping, visiting in dreams, or those thoughts you have while you're trying to sleep, things you could have done differently, better, worse. Ghosts visit me a lot at about 3 AM, which is also (coincidentally?) when I have the most frequent sleep apnea drops in Oxygen. Those ghosts like to poke you awake, maybe? 

So. Back to the time travel and the DNA: this lost Cousin B. They might be someone who opens up a pathway that had previously closed, and that's a little scary butterflies in the stomach fear of "what if" but also kind of exciting in a way that I can't even relate but also a ghost of some previous timeline that I can see just out of the corner of my eye, if I look very carefully. I might update this with less obscure references in sometime future, time travelers from that future, let's see. 

And this is where the AI comes back into the conversation, and what we English teachers like to call the "reverse hook" where we go back to the beginning again and end up this clever post. I honestly don't know exactly where to fit the AI into this story.... but at least my narrative here is unlike anything that Ye Olde CHATEGPT is going to spit out. I think. (Look. I'm working on one cup of coffee here and also my left hand carpal tunnel is flaring AGAIN and I guess I'm gonna have to get that surgery after all. Dammit.) 

Dear future and past versions and alternate timeline versions of me: it's gonna be okay. Or it was okay. Or it wasn't okay for a bit but then we got over it. Love ya. Mean it. ~~ me. 

Evolution

This particular blog was created a few years ago as a place for me to post creative writing stuff. All of the energy was being put into promotion, talking with other writers, and trying to push myself into the whole "successful small press writer" niche that I know folks who have accomplished. (Ugh. that sentence construction sucks, but I'm not rewriting it). Because hey, we have FB and other social media, and we can have casual everyday conversations (kind of microblogs) there. Right? Right? 

Heck, I've been an early adopter of blog technology and stuff for a long time. I had a blog back in the mid-90s (shakes fist at the cloud to get off my lawn) that was so procrastinate-y that I managed to write thousands of words that could have been my dissertation.  It still kind of exists; it just got changed into a mommy blog and then abandoned. It's still cute. There are photos of my babies on there-- the babies who now are 19 and hogging up my couch and not paying income tax. 

Back in the late 90s, when The Matrix was still a cool movie franchise, and my friend group and I spent a whole day watching the Star Wars movies three times AT AN ACTUAL THEATER, sandwiched with cool restaurants and margaritas, we used to have bulletin boards where we would chat with "friends" we met there about random topics, unrelated to the ostensible subject the board was designed for. I had a good friend on the "David Bowie's pants" thread, and we would regularly team up to tease one other poster who was known for being sort of cranky (I can't remember their usernames.... it's been 20 years... but there was something about flames? or bombs? in his username, like he would be "explosive" woooo. So hence the teasing). And it was fun! 

And then, circa 2009 (ish?) FB was invading campuses across the nation. I was teaching in Louisiana, and students thought I was still cool (I had some fun RYP things back then. Even a hot pepper rating for a while 🌶️ and now we think that's kinda gross, even though as a chonky middle-aged woman I wouldn't mind qualifying for one again). And they begged me to sign up. It seemed sort of innocuous. Fun. I did learn a little too much personal info about a few of them and developed a policy of not being friends until after there was no chance they could be in one of my classes again......

And so. Almost 20 years later, we find the landscape of today. Right-wing fascists have absolutely taken over Twitter (I will deadname that site forever. They don't get to hide from me.) We know more about some people than we ever, ever wanted to know. For a while, FB was kind of holding firm, not being a total hellscape, even though it was definitely making me shop too much, but then, the algorithm decided I was really into conservative X-tian merch and probably guns, and also Celtic knot jewelry and started showing me random ads. One of those three is kind of true. So I started getting all these ads, and try as hard as possible, I couldn't stop them from showing up in my feed. 

It might be some kind of negging strategy, but JESUS I don't need that. So, since summer, I've been mostly avoiding it. I took it off of my phone, and only log in now periodically via laptop, like the Goddess intended. 

I went on there this past week, and immediately was upset by politics, (which granted, is rational right now, but sheesh; I already know these things are happening). I also almost immediately purchased something... which I have been kind of cutting back on after seeing the horrific documentary on Netflix called Buy Now..... where I immediately deleted all of my cheap Chinese product purchasing apps. So I binged, like a true Aholic does. You can't have one because it turns into more, and the next thing you know, you're waking up on a wet lawn covered in Twinkie wrappers, and packages from China will show up in a few weeks filled with fast fashion. 

And now cue the announcement from Mark Z. (who now looks a lot like the meme that was going around of him last year that someone had fancied up to look prettier. He took the advice of the world, and honestly, I kind of don't love that for some reason.) FB is rolling out AI "people" to chat with us. And no longer using fact-checkers, who were definitely the problem here. /s.  And more. So, I'm probably not going to post there anymore, and I probably won't full-scale delete my account forever, but my pop-ins are rare and getting rarer. Read the article above because honestly, it's even grosser than I realized. 

I'm also trying to wean myself off Instagram, because it also makes me shop, in spite of all the cute bird (and hippo!!) content. And because I love my VR headset workout and Beat Saber, I am still worried about the influence of certain companies on my life but also doggedly pretending it'll be ok. 

I do read too much Reddit, especially the Leopards Eating Faces group, which I am calling social media methadone, because it's not fun, but it keeps me from getting the DT shakes. I tried Bluesky for a hot minute, but then I accidentally agreed to follow like 100 people I didn't know, and my feed filled up with their content, and I don't really know how to extricate myself from that problem. And right now I'm not really motivated to do that on there. It gets a "meh" from me, dog. 

But also. It's a full 10 days away from the semester's start and I've already finished all of my syllabuses AND learning management platform prep and am almost done with the full first week of lesson plans. And I finished playing the newest Life is Strange game (mostly two thumbs up), and played enough Stardew Valley to get bored with it again. I might even read some actual printed books later. I have barely shopped, enough so that I suspect Paypal and Mastercard are going to start emailing me sad "Where are you?" emails. But like. Who knew not scrolling through hundreds of hours of doom and ads and people trying to stealth sell you candles was taking up too much time? 

Anyway. I'm about to start a new semester where I will be actively trying to stop students from writing with too much Chat GPT and doing a cool conference and committees and fun parts of my job, so I don't know how much I'll really write here, but I think our shunning of MySpace was probably premature and we should all navigate back to less actively chaotic evil platforms. So this particular blog is going to be where you can find me ranting in a non microblog way, as long as my carpal tunnel doesn't flare like it just did and make my left hand typing almost impossible.... 

Also-- Grammarly keeps trying to change things and sometimes it is right but sometimes HELL NO LEAVE ME ALONE. 

Anyway. One last meme I found when I was looking for the template to create my bad viral template of the above Anakin/Amadala post.

Come see me here sometimes. We don't need social media overlords who were creating that platform to diss hot chicks who were mean to him..... we can chat in other places too. Really. 

I miss y'all, so if you do stop by, leave a comment. Back the way we used to in the 90s. When a certain future world leader was just a TV show personality we could ignore. ::hysterical laughcry::