‘Fuck customers’
“Dear George, thank you for your inquiry. I’d rather get beat in the ass with a wooden plank than ever go near either of you. Kind regards, David”
If I said “fuck consumerism,” you could nod safely. You could agree. Disagree. Debate policy. Stay clean.
“Fuck customers” removes the distance.
Because the problem isn’t an abstract system floating above us. The problem is participation. The machine runs because we feed it.
And we do feed it.
Not because we are evil. Not because we are stupid. But because comfort is easier than clarity.
Every gig worker reading this knows what I’m talking about.
You feel it when the algorithm changes overnight. When the rates drop. When the terms update without negotiation. When your rating becomes your leash. When you are optimized, tracked, nudged, analyzed.
You are not a citizen in that structure.
You are inventory.
You are data.
You are a revenue stream with a pulse.
And here is the part that stings: we sustain it.
We download the app. We click accept. We scroll. We post. We buy. We upgrade. We renew. We chase convenience like oxygen.
Imperialism does not always look like flags and conquest. Sometimes it looks like supply chains and cheap labor hidden behind glossy branding. Exploitation is simply greed scaled globally and sold back to the public as prosperity.
Greed is not abstract. It is appetite without boundary. It is Duryodhana refusing to yield five villages when warned that war would follow. He was not uninformed. He was not powerless. He was warned by elders. By law. By reason itself.
He chose appetite.
What followed was not revenge. It was consequence.
When appetite overrides duty, collapse becomes arithmetic.
We like to believe exploitation is something done elsewhere. In another country. By another company. By another class of people.
But the machine needs all its parts.
It needs executives.
It needs politicians.
It needs platforms.
And it needs customers.
The lie that “the customer is always right” is the moral engine of exploitation. If the customer is always right, then desire becomes law. If desire becomes law, production becomes servitude. If production becomes servitude, ethics become optional.
Corporations choose shareholders over ethics because we reward them for it. Politicians excuse corporate abuse because consumption stabilizes the economy. Data is harvested because we volunteer it for comfort.
We are complicit.
Not irredeemable. But complicit.
This is not a sermon from above. I am inside this too. I use the same systems. I buy from the same structures. I benefit from the same supply chains I critique.
But awareness changes responsibility.
Once you see the dirt, continued participation without thought becomes consent.
The modern empire does not fear angry tweets. It does not fear hashtags. It does not fear performative outrage.
It fears the lean observer.
Shakespeare gave us the image long before algorithms existed. Caesar speaking of Cassius:
He reads much;
He is a great observer, and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men…
Such men as he be never at heart’s ease
Whiles they behold a greater than themselves,
And therefore are they very dangerous.
Caesar did not fear the entertained. He feared the one who reads. The one who sees through spectacle. The one who cannot be lulled by music and games.
Empire fears the citizen.
It does not fear the customer.
Customers are predictable. They respond to price, convenience, branding, tribal loyalty. Citizens are dangerous because they ask where the supply chain begins. Who is exploited. Who is silenced. Who profits.
Comfort culture trains us to be “fat” in the Shakespearean sense. Entertained. Distracted. Soothed.
Gig workers know the opposite. There is nothing fat about precarity. There is nothing comfortable about being optimized into exhaustion.
This is why the anger is rising.
Not because people are irrational. Because people are tired.
Tired of being tracked.
Tired of being reduced to metrics.
Tired of being told that buying more is patriotism.
Tired of being told that convenience equals progress.
The reduction of human beings into cells on a spreadsheet is not a metaphor. It is a business model. Your behavior is logged. Your preferences are profiled. Your attention is auctioned. You are not the customer. You are the commodity.
And we still click accept.
Imperialism today is subtle. It wears corporate logos instead of armor. It moves through trade deals instead of cavalry. It exploits labor in distant nations and markets the savings as virtue.
We purchase the outcome and rarely examine the origin.
Duryodhana was warned. The elders told him appetite would lead to ruin. He believed power insulated him. He believed intimidation secured legitimacy.
Power often mistakes compliance for loyalty.
But compliance built on comfort is fragile.
Governments are meant to serve the people. All of them. Not a select few who can fund campaigns or bend regulation. But governments do not fear consumers. Consumers are stable. Predictable. Pacified by access.
They fear citizens.
Citizens withdraw consent.
Citizens ask for transparency.
Citizens stop rewarding fraud.
“Fuck customers” is not an insult. It is an identity challenge.
If you identify primarily as a consumer, your power begins and ends at purchase. If you identify as a citizen, your power expands beyond transaction.
Comfort becomes secondary to duty.
This does not require asceticism. It requires awareness.
It means asking:
Do I need this?
Who paid for this convenience?
Whose labor is hidden here?
Whose privacy is traded here?
Whose environment absorbs this cost?
It means refusing to confuse purchasing with participation in democracy.
It means understanding that buying from companies that exploit, surveil, intimidate, and silence is not neutral. It is reinforcement.
This is where ferocity enters.
Not violence.
Withdrawal.
Stop funding what you claim to oppose.
Stop equating comfort with freedom.
Stop believing that convenience is harmless.
We are told the economy must grow. Growth at all costs. Production at all costs. Consumption at all costs. But cost always lands somewhere.
Usually on the unseen.
The gig worker.
The factory worker overseas.
The community stripped of regulation.
The citizen drowning in debt.
The environment absorbing extraction.
Imperial appetite is simply greed made systemic. It does not need a flag. It needs demand.
When demand dries up, appetite recalibrates.
This is not about perfection. It is about direction.
If you continue to buy blindly, you are Duryodhana after the warning. You cannot claim ignorance. You can only claim preference.
And preference does not suspend consequence.
The anger in America is not random. It is compression. Years of being told that convenience equals progress. Years of watching corporations bend governance. Years of feeling disposable.
The political theater is loud. But theater is distraction. The real structure is economic.
As long as we behave primarily as customers, the machine is stable.
The moment we shift to citizen consciousness, the machine trembles.
This is why the informed are feared.
Not because they riot.
Because they refuse.
They refuse to be entertained into silence.
They refuse to trade privacy for novelty.
They refuse to call exploitation “just business.”
They refuse to reduce themselves to data points.
Which one are you?
Fat and entertained?
Or lean and observant?
“Fuck customers” is not nihilism.
It is a refusal to let appetite define identity.
We are complicit.
But it is never too late to reject.
Withdrawal of comfort is not regression. It is clarity.
When the anesthetic wears off, truth becomes visible.
And truth does not need to be sold.
It stands on its own.
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(written with the assistance of ChatGPT)
