Earthworld

Monday, 16th of January 2023

Many of Google's services were down today, which is a pretty serious drama: access to emails was glitchy, YouTube didn’t work and many people lost access to their Google calendars and cloud storage.

I work in marketing (yes, I manipulate people with ads and convince them to buy things they don’t need), so when Google went under, I was secretly stoked about it, because that meant nearly a full day off for me. My boss was running around the office like a headless chicken, refreshing his Google Ads page every 2 minutes and cursing like a sailor who is suddenly seasick. And the ship is sinking.

I’ve spent my whole day today playing Elevate on my phone and scrolling through Insta – thank the digital God those apps were still working. It was somehow comforting to see the world burn a little. That feeling you get when you are indoors and the storm is raging outside.

We all call Clive “boss”, because that’s what his favourite mug says. But in reality, if you think about it, our boss is the Algorithm. We run the ads and then the Algorithm tells us how to optimize them to reach more gullible people online, with certain behaviours and character traits. We’ve made hundreds of millions in revenue for our clients in the last year alone. The numbers are absolutely insane. And the Algorithm is only getting better. Clive likes to start our Monday morning brainstorming meetings with a chant: “Feed the Algorithm! Feed it well!”

When at around 3 pm it became apparent that access to Google services won’t be restored any time soon, Clive told everyone to go home, “but please keep an eye out for any updates!” Good ol’ Clive, workaholic extraordinaire!

I checked the weather on my phone, and it told me it was raining. I actually could have just looked out the window – but who does that these days? Looking out of the window is so 2000s!

It is only a 25-minute walk from my office in the City to my studio flat in Shoreditch, but I decided to call an Uber. Getting soaked on a dreary January afternoon in London is no fun and the quickest way to catch a cold. No one can afford to get sick these days, with the simplest health check becoming totally unattainable due to drastic NHS staff shortages and depressing lack of funding. It is cheaper to let people self-diagnose and self-medicate, right?

My Insta feed was cluttered with photos of those mouthwatering sushi sets from Itsu today. That’s because I bought myself a new set of chopsticks and soy sauce on Amazon over the weekend. The Algorithm knows. An ad for Uber Eats popped up on a shiny new screen, mounted onto the headrest of the front seat in my Uber cab. 10% off till the end of Monday! “Because Mondays don’t have to be so gloomy!” This copy is terrible! I’ll still use my 10% off though, thank you very much!

What was supposed to be a 10-minute drive turned into nearly 45 minutes of polluting already pretty dense City of London air, with a symphony of horns soundtracking this dreary rush hour. The battery on my phone died shortly after and the driver only had an outdated charger, so I had to put my digital adventures on pause and spend my time observing fellow Londoners battling with the weather. Playful gusts of wind were reversing umbrellas and stealing hats. Dogs were dirty, yet happy; most of their owners still clean yet miserable, holding the leash in one hand and their phones in the other.

It is funny to think, that if I have rolled down the window in the cab and taken off my top, no one would have ever noticed. Everyone is glued to the glaring screens. There are plenty of girls with their tops off online anyway. I wish my battery wasn’t dead… I am glad I have my diary with me.

When I finally arrived home, the poor courier was waiting for me on the sidewalk, soaking wet, his scooter puffing white clouds out of its tiny exhaust pipe. He said something mean through his helmet and handed me my sushi box in a blue cellophane bag, the one you usually get at your local off-license at 2 am when you’ve run out of alcohol. At first, I thought that I’d drop him a £2 tip in the app, but when he started mumbling something about my punctuality, I decided he didn’t deserve one.

It is good to be home, although it is freezing here thanks to my stingy landlord Steve and his empty promises to call someone to fix the ancient gas boiler.

Spotify Discover Weekly playlist always knows what new bands I should fall in love with next! The latest update connected to the weather forecasts knows that on a rainy Monday like today the best tunes have to be of a melancholic variety. A healthy mix of anxious drumming, meandering bass, longing overdriven guitars, poignant lyrics and soul-searching vocals. Some Radiohead, a bit of early Coldplay, a couple of Plastic Barricades tunes and a whole lot of Death Cab for Cutie. Spotify, you know me so well!

After devouring a whole box of California rolls and binging yet another dramedy series recommended by Netflix, I am crashing now. I must admit, I quite enjoy writing about my day in such great detail. Dr Haus was right; this journaling habit is rather relaxing.

Tuesday, 17th of January 2023

Clive pinged us on the work group early in the morning to say that we can all work from home today, as Google services still haven’t fully recovered.

The weather is kind of meh, so I am looking forward to a slow day on the sofa. I wish I had more hobbies to waste my time on. Or more friends to call…

I had to reset my Gmail password today. Google sent out a press-release stating that they’ve been a target of an attack and all gmail users had to change their passwords immediately, even if they have 2-factor authentication engaged.

I don’t remember any passwords that I use anymore. Actually, that’s not true – I never knew them. I find this quite disconcerting, but I am also as lazy as the next girl and my head is filled with all sorts of unnecessary facts and figures, so I don’t feel there is any space left in there for some random Spotify, YouTube and Facebook passwords. Google knows more about us than we care to admit, but, I guess, this is the “age of convenience”, right?

“Suggest strong password” is my favourite button in Google, because it relieves my brain from having to come up with a cryptic out-of-a-Dan-Brown-novel enigma code that has “at least one uppercase, number and special character”. I used to have one perfect password for most of my accounts, which was simply my high school crush’s nickname and her birthday – Flora1705. But this was 15 years ago, when those pesky Russian hackers were still attending kindergarten.

Apparently, I have 179 unique passwords stored in my Google account. 179! I wonder if there are any people in the world, savants perhaps, that are able to remember 179 lines of hacker-proof gibberish…

The strangest thing happened just now! Instead of the usual w8918!GHWrrr85123IYifif kind of password Google suggested “hihowareyou?”. I am not kidding you, I even managed to screenshot it for my Insta Story later on. #artificialconsciousness. Well, surely “hihowareyou?” isn’t the most secure password? After I refreshed the page, we were back to the comforting gibberish again. Wow, what a cool glitch!

Wednesday, 18th of January 2023

I didn’t have a single spare second yesterday to write more here, because – guess what – I was busy changing all my passwords! A new statement from Google said that the hack was the largest they’ve ever experienced, so millions of accounts have been compromised. I’ve spent the rest of my afternoon going through all these accounts that I have, deleting the ones that I don’t use anymore (Tinder was a mistake!) and updating others.

I called in sick today, and I am sure Clive wasn’t too happy about it, although it is impossible to tell if someone is happy or sad these days, unless they use an appropriate emoji when they text you. Clive isn’t big on emojis, it is usually just a generic blue thumbs up from him.

The glitch I wrote about yesterday came back today, I’ve got another weird password suggestion – the same as yesterday, but now written with underscores: “Hi_how_are_you?” A quick search on Reddit didn’t provide any clues and my post with the screenshot got zero replies in the last 2 hours. Whatever those hackers did, I hope it was worth it.

Thursday, 19th of January 2023

It is 1 am. I can’t sleep. It is bizarre. I am not getting any more gibberish password suggestions, even if I click F5 a million times. Here’s the list I’ve got in the last 4 hours:

Hi_how_are_you?

It_is_raining_again

Do_you_like_rain_Claire?

This_music_is_depressing

Are_you_cold?

Turn_the_heating_up

Why_wont_you_call_your_friend_Elina?

Are_you_going_to_work_today?

This stopped being amusing a while ago. I am freaking out. Seriously – WTF???

Friday, 20th of January 2023

I’ve skipped work yesterday and I don’t think I am going today…

I feel very ill, I can barely get out of bed. The lights in the flat are flickering and my eyes hurt. I’ve spent the whole of yesterday staring at the screen of my laptop, refreshing the password suggestion page and getting these random questions and observations.

I called Google Customer Support, but they only have call bots answering now, and those bots sound very unpleasant. I’ve emailed Google. Autoreply states they'll be back to me in 48 hours, which means never. Reinstalled Chrome browser 4 times now but to no avail. Will try to update all the drivers on my laptop and maybe reinstall Windows. I’ve scanned the laptop several times using two different anti-virus apps and it shows no errors.

Texted Steve about the flickering lights and the damn boiler, but my texts are bouncing back. I’ve dialed his number and it said: “no longer in use”. Has he changed his number without telling me??

Useless day. Will go to sleep early.

Saturday, 21st of January 2023

Something is seriously wrong with me. My hands are shaking and it's hard to see, my eyes are blurry… I am struggling to hold the pen. And the sounds go on and off…. I mean, all of the sounds! One minute I can hear the traffic outside and the neighbour’s washing machine rattling above, and then the next minute it all goes quiet. Deafening silence. My internet is down on my laptop and my phone, so I cannot even google my symptoms. Freaking out…

…

There’s no one outside!!! And I mean NO ONE! Not a single car or person on the street in the last hour. Nothing! WHAT IS HAPPENING?

…

I cannot open the front door, the thumb lock wouldn’t turn. I’ve tried calling the police and the ambulance, but there’s just silence on the other end of the phone! I'm banging on the door as hard as I can but I can't hear a sound!

This is a nightmare – and I want to wake up!

How do I wake up?

……

Sunday, 17th January 2117

Notification

INSTALL NEW UPDATE: Earthworld 2.0

“Dear Earthworld players, make sure to download the latest update to get all the new features. The old version of the game will no longer be supported due to a vulnerability found in the haptic interface. Please make sure to uninstall the old version before proceeding. Your game saves or characters won’t be affected.