A basement office hidden somewhere in what used to be Gaza City, now a wasteland. Abandoned by the original inhabitants and declared an international no man's land from the river to the sea. In the first month after the war, left-wing preppers, driven by an international call started by @colonial.shield making themselves human shields to a potential third invasion, settled in what once was a vivid coastal community with bazaars, schools, and merchants from far and near. Through the irony of history, the initial shielders brought their gear and started settling themselves, finding the place to be essential to their cyber warfare against the rising global techno aristocracy. What started as a squatting venture turned into a multi-million bitcoin funded basecamp of the international resistance movement against neo-liberalism.

Light and Sael are two analysts who met each other at MIT during a conference on decentralization. Well actually, they met there in a conference room designed in Roblox, not IRL. They came here six months ago as part of a program which recruited them to support journalists investigating the state of infiltration and interconnection of the top IT oligarchs and kings into everyday life.

Light, 26, Asian-Black descent, born in Milwaukee, bright mind, faster than a fiber optic cable, sometimes spiraling into social awkwardness, but the heart in the right place. Suffers from malnutrition due to their extreme diet and the occasional skipping of food. Comes from a rich family but wasn't interested in taking over their parents' real estate business. Was radicalized during George Floyd and is friends with a huge network of activists of the American left and social justice movement. Loves Taylor Swift.

Sael, 21, Moroccan-French descent, born in Lille. Climate activist with Fridays for Future since day one. Despite their talent for languages and logic, they barely made it through school and dropped out early. With just an old ThinkPad, they started digging into data sludge[^1]. First available on open data platforms and later on, when their hunger became bigger, through ever more sophisticated leaks and hacks. Through their emotional breakdowns of major climate violations, Sael made a name for themself on YouTube and became an icon of the movement. Sometimes this goes to their head. Sael hates Taylor Swift's sound but loves the Swifties, which they learned to instrumentalize by linking memes with Swift lyrics and their own message about climate justice. Sael is, so to speak, more a social programmer, and actually not so good with the code itself.

Sael: Hi

Sael keeps staring into their screen with headphones on. Their mouth is slightly open, pupils wide open, as they erratically hack into the keyboard.

Sael: …

Light: Do you have a minute?

SAEL (mumbles): Hu?

LIGHT (louder): Hey, I need your attention. It's just for a minute. I want to run something by you.

SAEL (annoyed): What is it? I was just trailing these trolls 🧌 that were trying to shut down our Mastodon servers. If I don't…

LIGHT: I know. I know. Don't worry. I'll help you right after. But come, take a look at this!

SAEL: What is it?

Light hands Sael a tablet with sketches of equations. Sael begins to read.

Taking the first Instagram post of a visual artist and their first posting which is in some way sponsored or sponsoring or commissioned directly and indirectly through agencies for Nike.

Light: Remember how I built that crawler that automatically adapts to API changes on any social media platform?

Sael: Any crawler does that nowadays.

Light: No, the other.

Sael: The one which was archiving the entire timeline of an account and applying basic taxonomies?

Light: Yeah, that one.

Sael: What about it?

Light: Well, how to put it...

Sael: Just put it. Spit it out already. There are more serious issues going on in my head. Maybe you forgot? We are in the middle of a genocide. And now Trump wants to invade.

Light: Sure. It will just take a minute. And I think it's somehow connected.

Sael: Nike? You don't mean the goddess?

Light: No, the company, you dummy! {GIGGLES} Remember how you were trying to figure out why nobody gives a shit about any of the monstrosities that are happening here? Why no one cares?

Sael: Yes, yes. But I do, but I still don't see it.

Light: You don't speak economics well enough, I guess. Like Jang Ha-Choon said in his address to the Oxford union.

Sael: Habibi, that seems like years ago now. Ancient internet history.

Light: Yeah, must have been before the pandemic.

Sael: Different times. Everything changed. There are no rules anymore. Numbers mean nothing with emotions anymore.

Light: Nothing changed? Do you see this here?

Sael: What am I looking at?

Light: That is the meridian weights of a prediction I made about Nike stock prices…

Sael: Hm.

Light: And this. I plotted all the mentions of Nike on social media at the exact same times. Those two lines are corrected for product placement, and those are the lead-to-conversion prices they pay… that's the cash that flows back to influencers.

Sael: I know that. Sure. But why Nike?

Light: So, I predicted that with every crisis, the price goes down actually, and the value of the stock increases. So they are spending less for marketing in times of crisis.

Sael: That doesn't make much sense.

Light: So did I think, but now I got the numbers. That crawler, what a magnificent beast.

Sael: So what?

Light: So each time a crisis hits, people are forced to leave their homes. Move to other countries. Lose their jobs or, well, their businesses. And where do they end up?

Sael: Well, you know. The ones that get out now, if they are lucky, to the US, England, Europe, I guess.

Light: 'Cause there are jobs, but unless you want to work in an Amazon Fulfillment Center or be slaved out as a food delivery guy, people start educating themselves in the language of economics. The consume, that is the education you need to survive. Nobody will be able to pay their rent from philosophy or art studies. That's for the rich ones, those with a background. I guarantee you all some type of middle class. Even the ones that have a side job…

Sael: You are drifting into pseudo-Marxist babbling… Get to the point.

Light: Well, so they study "design," they learn a language of aesthetics, these social media channels are big-ass equivalent of a Bauhaus, educating everyone on aesthetics for the neo-liberal age. Like the Bauhaus educated their students about industrial aesthetics. The content age, however, has a different product; it's only a few people that build those platforms, and even fewer that run it 'cause it's so centralized, but what is still a pure numbers game is the people that create the content.

Sael: I got it. You talk about demonetization. I talked to Fae a day before she got killed; she said she doesn't know how to pay for food anymore, but she just couldn't stop creating reels of the attacks and the hunger. I still believe she was targeted, singled out about this as well. It's not just journalists these days. Everyone is a journalist.

Light: Yes, but an unpaid one. This content fuels a different objective. Whilst, God have mercy on her soul, Fae was before posting about self-made fashion and the hipster community in Gaza City, which made her some good amount of monthly revenue and got her into contact with some sponsors—remember she also did a Nike piece with this Dutch-UK rapper kind of vibe and the burka? The new content wasn't marketable… at first…

Sael: So you are telling me these graphs show that corporations are exploiting us by not paying us, so after we give up, they can pay us less because we are needy, or we end up coming to them by ourselves? No hiring needed? Trained by the vision of a "better" life… well, better than being bombed to death or starving or being used as human shield by radicals.

Light: It's exactly what I am saying.

Sael: I think you're going a bit far. I do see the relevance of your Nike conversion rate. This here?

Light: Exactly, this is 100 Instagram accounts of graphic designers and influencers that at some point started posting Nike content or worked on a campaign with them. The y-axis shows the mentions of Nike or artifacts, x is amounts of posts from account creation to date of crawl. I justified for date. So I can add events of global scale alongside it… hoping to prove my point of an interconnection.

Sael: Well. So first things first. It's taking an average of 107.241 postings for all accounts you tracked, right?

Light: Correct. But you see here? I split the accounts into ethnic groups… and classes, based on income. Please don't ask me how I obtained those details now, not my point. But clearly, the poorer, the faster the conversion goes. Some even closing in at 20 to 30 posts. Like here, this TikTok superstar Khaby [Lame] from him posting the first time from an Italian refugee camp to wearing Nike sneakers and pointing at them in just 27 posts. That's impressive.

Sael: Good for him

Light: Good for Nike too. The center-left liberals on social media love their Nike, and they love to endorse their global crisis. Calling reposting "solidarity." Ever since punk rock, crisis is marketable. So these "kids" are functioning as dual carriers. They raise their own social value by being on the morally right side of whatever their peers believe is the morally right side at that moment, and they will eventually become deceptable for influencers that, after the crisis, start working freely or cheaply for those major brands. Because all they have learned is the language of economics too. On these platforms, everything has an economic purpose.

Sael: Even the content that's demonetized!

Light: Demonized! Inshallah. We are doomed.

Sael: Yes, we are! So where are you going to release this data?

Light: I have no fucking idea.

https://youtube.be/XvfD3TYzkg

https://youtu.be/5gnlhmaM-dM?t=666 Why I got a Nike Tattoo

[^1]: Sludge that is waste produced by AIs. Librarians call generic books they have to filter out from their subscription to bulk suppliers.