Con.found.io’s Disruptive Transmutation of Excess Life into Revenue

(Glenn Marcoosie’s email signature; how you know you’re doing business with Confoundio)

“I mean, what I’d say to my critics is look outside! [Glenn waits expectantly.] Yeah walk over there and do that.. What you see is wholly due to individual efforts. Yours. Have you made any meaningful change? You haven’t. ...Ineptitude. That’s what drives a Reality Transformationalist to inflict his future. I didn’t ask “experts”--didn’t consider “implications”--I had an idea, and now you live in it.” - Glenn Marcoosie.

The story of Con.found.io’s founding, the realization of the seminal idea behind it, is really one of my favorite stories to tell. Even considering the consistently exceptional nature of the series of events that make up my life, I can’t think of another moment in which an idea has come so quickly into my mind with such clarity and such explanatory power--that’s to explain so much of that which was mysterious in the world at the time, to connect so many discrete threads that were understood but needed context, and to describe a future along with the path to get there.

One night, I was browsing on a social network--and let me tell you my favorite thing about social networks, even those before Con.found.io, because it will come around in explanation later: abstraction of friends as pure information in relational databases. This halves the number of people required to have a social interaction. Friendship can even be maintained with absolutely no interaction on either side; that’s friendship at 0 cost to either party! And, no, I can’t say Con.found.io invented that… I think we get it right, but credit where credit is due; however, I won’t name names as I’m not so sure who holds the IP there anymore. In any case, “Namaste” to you who came before.

Oh! And on specifically on Facebook, our competitor. We’ll we are OK with being smaller; we like being smaller. Until which point we’re bigger… that will probably call for a moment of reevaluation on which size is better. But one great thing about Facebook is they have a lot of money. We are actually really excited about the possibility of their funding us to show the world how ostensibly little they care about who we are and what we are saying and doing. It’s always a treat for me to see them do that, regardless of the recipient. We have a quarter planned out around it; we’ll just switch to that quarter’s plan whenever it comes around. We stay agile. And that gift situation would seem complicated to a naive outsider; they might get the wrong ideas about the relative and absolute prestige and the perceptions of power between our two businesses. We will make sure in our overwhelming media and outreach efforts we explain how a visible majority of it goes out. We’ve got a contest up on how we could do that most humiliatingly if anybody wants a shot--no prize, just having fun together. A lot of these entries are saying “charity” but we have a deficit, well a strength really--you know what I mean--in our overall institutional knowledge of charity.

But I… shouldn’t admit this--I hate to admit this, but I really admire Facebook’s character and the ability they show in just telling absolutely everyone to just positively “fuck-right-off” and “we do not care” and what you say or do in response will pass us with the insignificance that do radio waves bearing car insurance commercials as they pass the last dwarf planet on the edge of our solar system, that one we only ever mention in context of officially diminished relevance. Yes, Facebook makes it look effortless. Really, they are able to ignore individual human faces and communications directed at them with a natural and atypical ability characteristic to people in the autism spectrum. ...ew, don’t print that; I am sorry that I said that now; we should really keep Facebook guessing about what their strengths are if we can. I’ll have legal call you to ensure you are far too uncomfortable in a vague way about what could happen if you do.

Nobody has actually tried us on that before actually... I’m rather curious to see what would happen myself. So it will make things quicker if you could self-assess your journalistic integrity for me right quick, 1-1000? If you take your glasses off I’ll do it for you. No? I could have sworn you were wearing glasses a minute ago.

So, there’s a public feed on this one particular network, and though at times I do find it entertaining to people watch, as one might do outside a convention or like a hospital at all these strange beings of the world, I found this implementation persistently annoying. Keep that in mind to understand why I couldn’t just ignore what comes next--I am able to ignore this kind of stuff like 99.9% of the time, but can you imagine? Had it not been for this unusual response, we might not have Con.found.io. It’s just one of those strange things; you know, sometimes it feels like the undulations of the universe have just worn a deep path leading to some inevitable future, and from the time you stumble into it, you just have to walk it. This was definitely one of those times. There was this user posting these disgracefully emotional and unpleasant things. He was really letting it out. “homework is going to drive me INSANE”, “have you ever needed one person just so bad that you felt like” blah. Then he went to pictures. Is there ever a time I want to see a random snap of your weapon collection? No. I’ll tell you now, all of you, I’m not interested. He got zero interaction with that. Then later he posts a pill bottle he’s opened and spilled out. I mean….are you not disillusioned of this by the lack of interaction the rest of us are making and have made on all these posts? It’s a mentality that’s hard for me to understand. ...At times, I feel like there’s this weird disconnect between the normal brain that great leaders and innovators use to great effect and--how shall I put it--I don’t want to say “deviant” exactly because the readership for this will largely be users… ”divergent”. Well, so whatever drives a divergent mind to do such things finally posted something to the effect of “she’s finally gone for good; I swear to God I am going to do it this time.” By now it’s the type of trainwreck a man is drawn helplessly to seek out and watch; I’m looking for notifications of any updates to these posts while still being distinctly annoyed. In context it’s pretty clear what he’s talking about doing--he ain’t finally going to clean out the garage, ha. Random users had already jumped in and made all good comments. “Do it! What a waste of pills :O” and “Can I have all your stuff?” While that was mildly entertaining, I was overcome at that point to the point of response..

First I tried to contact the user directly. If I could only get him talking… maybe we could get him to take all this annoying nonsense down. After he didn’t respond I became worried. I think it is a fair and natural anxiety to have. I’m not questioning how well entitled to the comfortable artificial space we’ve constructed between things happening on the internet and connected cause and effect events actually happening in reality, the physical world. Part of me wanted to extend that separation to this seemingly credible threat. In truth, we have a right to assume that everything we read here is unreal and undue of any concern, because the consequences are “far enough away that there is an almost universal absence of evidence to us of their eventual happening.” That, of course, is fine for us to conflate with their “effectively not happening”--I’ll be the first to say it. And this was probably going to be one of those times. Then again, every now and then, you are confronted by news that some of this bullshit we read has corresponding actions in the real world. And that idea, that these eyesores, could in the absence of further user action, deface the public view forever, that was too offensive to ignore. So I reported all the posts. And instantly they were gone for me. Which is fantastic--really that’s tantamount in every practical way to their never having existed. But, I felt some dedication, some duty, to the world at large.

With increasing anxiety, I submitted tickets, and gave feedback, and sent email that described the danger of situation. And I don’t think I have to explain this for most of you, as almost all will have had some experience here: internet companies, especially we social networks I think, are forced to care about “you”. But when we do, we so in the plural sense of that pronoun: on the aggregate--that is to say we average all of you out. And so to come to us and say “I desperately need x” well that’s totally immaterial. Irrespective of your ability to demonstrate actual need on individual basis, “Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. I’ll be listening and if I hear what you say a threshold number of times, I’ll check the last five years of numbers for x and we’ll see if ‘you’ do or not, in fact, need x. And while I thank you for being a appropriately informative point of data and encourage that you do so more often, I regret to inform you that as great as is our care about ‘you’, so self-evident to the whole world as it is, performing an action responding to an individual need represents such inefficiency we disallow its considera--”[laughs] give me just a [continues laughing] whew.

I’m sorry, but to imagine an employee sitting there having direct discussion with a end-user, and one with that much knowledge as to give a relevant explanation of the true reasons behind something like that. “Hello, user! Welcome to HQ! Here’s your badge! Any arcane secrets of the technology you use daily that we and we alone understand that you’d like to understand better? You know--make those necessary practical evaluations and evidence-based decisions around the claims that we make, the reality of your privacy, and the safety of the data that describes and controls your life now?” Too funny! You are going to want to put your ad break before that, because the experience is going to get disrupted by laughter. You are turning out a comedy piece here!.

But, that’s how it is for now; though maybe one day we won’t even have to depend on “you”, and each day we can enjoy doing things on deeply personal level and call it business somehow--that’s the dream, but that is not the reality of the space in which we operate. I leave that to you cocky young upstarts--who we will absolutely crush; don’t get me wrong.

So in waiting for that information to be acted on, sitting there, playing a little minesweeper. That’s a kind of fun thing actually that your egghead reading fucks will want to hear about. I use a Mac from which I run Ubuntu, and that causes headaches sometimes. If any of the people in control over at Linux read your site, they need to call me. It’s going to be hard to find my contact info. I can’t give you any tips there, other than just do the work that needs to be done.. So but yeah, I had the IT generalists work up a very smooth and very integrated minesweeper experience for me that above all use a strictly traditional minesweeper experience, the real minesweeper--the first minesweeper.

There was a lot of moaning about that and some insistence that I did not understand(there’s always some irony there because as so frequently is the case, these guys just. don’t. get it) but it came out great! Unfortunately a few too many eighteen hour days and on-call nights were spent on this. And one of these assholes got a little screwy and tried to push the software we made for this out to some downloaders--for free! Now if he had tried to sneak it out as a product and sell it, we might have been able to make some kind of deal with him, hell--I might have even promoted him for that. It’s real weird though. It didn’t seem like it was out of spite either; he was in a great humor about it. There was a lot of his whole deal that was just... Well, anyway, we charged HR with getting him a psych eval and now he’s getting the help he needs… in the sense it is the help we need him to get. I don’t know how much internet they get over there, but if you are reading: “You better get right Reggie! Better give up all that nonsense! You owe us money! Time to get a new job! .....But don’t you come here for a reference you crazy sonagun!”

That night I played what must have been at least three or four games of minesweeper; I mean, I was getting tired of seeing the numeral 1. But nothing came back from those many reporting efforts, so I went on a journey to all the social networks connected to this user. And with the same ignorant diligence in contact attempts, within the labyrinthine user feedback collection structures in which suicide and self harm reporting is given no special prominence--and that’s being generous to these places! I reported the entire series of events to them along with the evidence to motivate their action, along with every piece of context I could muster and the promise of my assistance to any degree it could be useful. The fact is some stranger had communicated a threat to his own life which I felt gave, on its surface, every indication of credibility. Something like two-three hours had passed. Is he still out there?

It was like I was watching some human shape in the middle of an interstate at night illuminated in ever greater relief by the lights of an oncoming truck. I couldn’t make out the look on his face, but I knew with a certainty that while it could be said “usually a person will have the sense to get out of the road when faced with the clear reality of standing in the middle of it” or “it’s quite possible that he arrived there without intent of actually being hit by a truck,” if I was to have stood there and been presented, with as the lights pared down his face to full resolution, a person who in a genuine, desperate hope had a moment of skepticism in total disillusionment with this world and the people in it, then cried out “help” or “stop” only to be actually destroyed... I believe despite the impressive powers of willful ignorance and cognitive dissonance I rely to navigate this modern world, I may well have been affected to the extent my memory holds. And I can imagine admitting his death as strong positive evidence of the world in which he believed. So while there was still hope of stopping that traffic or having him walked over to some people with kind hearts and genuine concern for his well-being, I was desperate to accomplish one simple thing: have a conversation with these powerful entities, entities with considerable resources who held significant information that would allow for his protection by the most appropriate authorities for the situation (whatever those were, as I had no idea when I started looking). I felt like that conversation could save this guy’s life, or push his life in the direction away from danger, or do whatever needed to be done according these entities’ experience in these matters which--let’s be honest--must be quite great by now so that nobody would ever be in danger of having their eyes roll--just get right stuck in rotation--at such a series of “ugghhh” inducing posts. Well, this was the stupidest, most ineffective series of thoughts and actions I have ever produced. It’s rather embarrassing to me the degree of ignorance I showed that night, but at least it’s easy to see that I learned from it.

Something like twelve hours after the series of posts, far too long to ensure no one came across the content by accident, I happened to stumble upon links on a social network to his immediate family. I was forced to pay the social network to contact these people, but of course even then I had a great deal of money and I was happy spare some of it under the circumstances--I would however have appreciated the courtesy of a little haggling first. For the record, that “pay to shatter someone’s illusion of privacy” feature is something we haven’t implemented yet because of the special nature of “relationships” at Confoundio--I will explain shortly. Luckily the family were good people, immediately acknowledging and becoming properly aghast at the inappropriate nature of these posts. They wasted no time in contacting this misguided soul who posted them. He was safe. But in an unbecoming display of emotion, one of those TMI moments that is all too frequently shared between people thrown into tense circumstances together toward accomplishing a common goal, this family member admitted that after talking to his brother, he wasn’t completely reassured. It confirmed a suspicion he had long held but had no evidence on which to act. He thought it could have easily gone either way that night. He said that almost as he was thinking aloud in the way one sometimes does when a situation or thought is so difficult to parse so that the audience in the telling includes oneself. There was a real danger. For all of us; that nonsense might well have still stood out there today. You might have seen those posts. You have kids? Your kids might have been subjected to the embarrassment of those posts. I’m sorry, it kind of sticks with me after the fact.

It’s lucky they were good people, which didn’t have to be the case; as I understand it poor or abusive family ties could even have escalated things. More, it’s lucky that it was the right call on my part. I was ill-experienced to make the decision, but my hand was forced if you accept what I believe strongly: doing nothing would have been malicious neglect, the kind of action through inaction that we shouldn’t allow to go unchallenged in each other.

It certainly doesn’t go along with a portion of the social contract that we see in our media after someone’s life is saved, the kind of thing you hear from an unlikely rescuer, "When there’s a life in danger, you put everything aside, cut through all the bullshit, come together and save a person’s life. You do everything you can. And you were wrong when you called me a hero, because I’d count on you to do it for me."

Maybe it’s just because I just don’t like the idea of dying needlessly that this bothers me so… one doesn’t have to have a high tolerance for ideals to consider what must necessarily occur on both sides of the equation: the willingness and poise to act that must be demonstrated consistently to keep the promise of intercession afloat.

On that night the promise was jeopardized from several directions. For one, from where I stood, it seemed like the social media sites in question made a determination of liability on the individual basis or policy basis that allowed some imminent danger to this person’s life to persist unnecessarily. That’s a speculation from a importantly limited amount of evidence, and certainly one that all the best in me doesn’t want to believe. But I do note there is no hindrance from concerns over privacy and safety when there is an opportunity to read all the messages I send, my browsing history and habits, and every scrap of information I input to analyze, establish trends, make inferences on my situation and my nature--all to improve the efficiency at which I’m sold things. They cannot while doing those things be bothered to check for only the most explicit evidence of threat to my life and those of my friends and family? But I said, “Namaste” earlier, to my knowledge, my first written usage. This is because there is a somewhat cynical ascribed connotation, in the context of American society at least, of presentation of false or incomplete adherence to something not understood, whether it be through deceit or naivety.

I guess those last few words should be a place for me to remember and record: I don’t understand every aspect of suicide. I don’t understand every aspect of intervention. And I don’t understand every aspect of the burdens constraining the institutions I dealt with that night or the actions they undertake to mitigate them. But understand, from my perspective, experiencing just one life importantly endangered, seems enough to seek a better understanding in the form of the very natural human action of hailing other people for conversation as I do now--or if no, what other number is more appropriate to trigger such a response?

That’s a difficult task now in the age realized on the assumption that life together does not absolutely require proximity--as had been assumed for all but the last few years of a comparatively enormous history of fundamental similarity in our social behavior--for better or worse; I am not sure. And that is what that is all about, overcoming that difficulty. If you’ve had a similar experience,, or find yourself asking the questions asked here, I hope you’ll join me in calling for dialog, discussion of these topics, in discovering what should be done and making it happen.

Beyond the particular connotation I have described, Namaste has a literal meaning and suite of associated ideas which I find rather attractive. In my far less than authoritative understanding: I greet you; I acknowledge your presence. I also, through virtue of your self-evident humanity, hold belief that there is something in you, something essential, something importantly deeper than any superficial aspect of you I can easily see, and it’s something good. More I’m going to go forward with that as an assumption, acting on it in good faith by showing the the respect warranted such an individual. As I bow to indicate this, to get it right, I’m also going to get in touch for a moment with that in same part of me, that which builds my best self. I’ll let that inform me in what comes next.

And though I have not seen it said, I imagine there must be some implicit hope and expectation in the practical application of this greeting over its being so reciprocated. So let me extend sincerely, though not without some mild embarrassment, this greeting to the individual people that comprise these institutions,: “Namaste”.

As for the situation, I had to go forward on 1. what I knowledge I could integrate from the hand full of authorities--or at least claimed authorities--whose emergency intervention services weren’t closed for the weekend (?!) many of whom seemed confused by the technological aspect of the problem and the vague relationship I had to this stranger to the point they were uncomfortable and unwilling to give advice 2. the written sources whose authority I was incompletely equipped to evaluate, and 3. finally the advice of some informed friends who indulged in caring with me. Their careful thought applied to the nuances of this individual situation and the subsequent advice, weighed most heavily in the final decision on what to do. Without them there would have been important mistakes made, it would have taken a much longer time or even ended up differently.

I can’t decide to what degree making a decision on these grounds is heresy in the company of rational minds, but I am at peace taking it all in its context. I should also note here that these very interactions were enabled by the social networks themselves. It follows that in my first foray into the science on the topics of suicide, loneliness, social isolation, etc. in their relationship to penetration and usage of technologies like the Internet and social networks, I would find that confusing paradox reflected. There seem to be ways this aspect of modern life can make things better for us, and ways it can make things worse. And as far as I can tell it’s hard right now to sort out what’s more important: the cloud or the silver lining.

I’ve been fascinated by technology all my life. I’ve sometimes expressed the kind of wonder and captivation over even small innovations that has driven others to confusion or even, what I hope was more often than not, good-natured laughter at the incongruity. What held my attention, at least after I grew up a bit, more than the flashes and bloops, was the promise, the vision. Once, just after I got out of school, I was wandering around the building of my first internship, and I happened upon a flyer with an essay prompt asking about “access” in the coming of the global society. I don’t think anybody had before ever had the misfortune of asking me that question. I didn’t finish reading the section describing the prizes. That’s absurd, but it’s true. The sparkling image of the coming age racing through my mind, I went to my desk. I put this appropriately bombastic and inspiring piece of classical music on over my headphones. I pulled up a blank page, and I wrote with a comfort, clarity, and confidence that was and still is completely unique throughout my history of writing. I’m not sure how many times the cursor stopped moving. There was no outline, no draft, only very minimal editing. I wasn’t even writing, I was just copying down a picture in my mind that seemed to have complete fidelity--the beautiful, inevitable future which would soon arrive and the ways in which it promised itself to me and all of us. Well... it didn’t exactly promise itself did it? Many brilliant people had done so. But I capped this essay with a flourish that at the time I remember being embarassingly proud of:

If in John Donne’s time the simple toll of a bell inspired such feelings of connection and solidarity, what can we expect in this new age of access? The coming transformation of human society at the hands of access will be every bit as dramatic and meaningful as the transformation of Donne’s tolling bell into the modern video conference. From even the most remote outcroppings of our world — from the very islands that inspired such feelings of loneliness and vulnerability — man is connected to his fellow man by the sight of words on a page, the sound of human voice transmitted through a line or a familiar smile displayed on a screen.

Of that text, I was proud enough to ignore the advice of the very bright and world-wise executive who managed my internship as her least important responsibility when she, encountering a certain hopeless expression on my face, offered in an uncharacteristically delicate way, “might you want to include the quote for those who don’t know it?” I don’t think even back then I had the gall to say aloud the answer, which was, “absolutely not.” I will, however, include the words now from John Donne’s Meditation XVII:

No man is an island entire of itself; every manis a piece of the continent, a part of the main;if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europeis the less, as well as if a promontory were, aswell as any manner of thy friends or of thineown were; any man's death diminishes me,because I am involved in mankind.And therefore never send to know for whomthe bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

And what I took from this at the time was that if the simple technology of a tolling bell could remind and reassure us of our fundamental “togetherness”, the fact that we were not alone in all this, when I have the ability to press a button to connect “face to face” with my family and friends, surely this would be orders of magnitude more capable of the same task? ...I was sure it would be. There are a number of assumptions he makes here though that should be examined. Do we now and will we forever have the same cohesiveness, as Donne describes or should an opinion be allowed that “islands are exactly what we are.” That, in fact, “everyone is an island,” and one on which not to be trod. And are we all certainly “involved in mankind” to the same extent, or are the numbers of us so great and the cracks between us so big that not everybody gets practical involvement in humanity?

I won the contest. Though I wrote with honesty, I also knew my brand of honesty at this time was what they wanted to hear. In the wake of my win there was such a universal outpouring of support and praise and reverence, from every direction--friends, colleagues, superiors, leadership, vaguely connected but somehow interested academics--that even that younger man of my memory, as unshakably confident and absorbed in the idea as he was, found it profoundly embarrassing and ever so slightly disquieting.

Now we live in that world. I wonder now if those people most important in bringing it about felt those same emotions as they and their work was expedited and applauded and celebrated. I wonder if they felt that same twinge of disquiet and wondered the things that I have come to wonder…

Back on that night, there was one thing, as I peeked through the window of this stranger’s publicly shared online interactions of which I was absolutely sure--beyond any doubt: somewhere, during the night, by himself, in front of a computer screen (just as I was) there is a man, in his late twenties, and he feels a loneliness. It is a profound loneliness.

And I am forced to ask, could it not also be, importantly, an unnatural one? A loneliness foreign to our nature? A loneliness that our millions of years of evolution as social creatures have not tempered us against? Could we be fundamentally ill-equipped to withstand this loneliness?

In that contest, I beat out people from all over the world, those in developing countries, countries recently penetrated by the Internet and other modern technologies. In retrospect, should perhaps we have ascribed a little greater importance to the people feeling the acute reality of going from a “traditional” to “global” society? That’s a lot to consider, and I do not intend to do so alone. Because if we can not solve the problem of this loneliness together, maybe by coming together for an attempt we can at least drive it off.

After that experience it hit me like a brick. A single, simple idea, absurdly revolutionary in its assumptions about what we want and how we should interact with each other: indifference. It’s not enough to be different in social media. You’ve got to be in different. After that, it was easy. Social networks of the past made great strides in freeing us from the annoying bonds that historically constrained all humans. Still, there are trappings of interaction and exhausting pretenses of concern! We pretend to care about you; you pretend to care about each other. Well, why?

We bring it all out into the open. Here, any “interactions” between users or between users and us is beyond the illusion, they are necessarily indirect and steeped in explicit indifference. For example, here instead of “sending a message to a recipient” you simply reference your recipient in an open message to the greater public and they happen to be provided a copy--that is you talk about them, to everyone and no one. And it’s always labeled clearly as an offense, a slight, a false compliment--whatever your intent, even the naive know exactly what you mean. Our Comparison Engine brings an end to the tiresome keeping up with aspects in others that you value in yourself. Extensive judging software provides a numeric score for every trait on every person in real-time--I don’t want to make this a pitch though. If people want to be a part of Confoundio they’ll go find our registration form that signals an intent to participate so that they can then be put on our blacklist of people who cannot. We hope people will reach out on their existing social network choice to find out more about and connect with Confoundio. Those who do make it in, “Welcome to Confoundio!”--we will never say it. That’s something you can be sure about.