Free Isn't Free

Yo, wag1 people. Had this idea floating around in my head for a bit and felt like it deserved to see the light of day, so here you go.

To kick this one off, we're going to do a thought experiment. Imagine someone steals your phone. What do you do?

A. Risk your life trying to get it back, even though its monetary value is worth far less than your life.

B. Let them take it and hold the L.

C. I'm not a dickhead. I'm not getting my phone stolen.

The answer doesn't matter. The instinct does. And instinct is immediate. When something's being taken from you and every alarm in your body goes off.

Now think about the last time you opened Instagram and just teleported a few hours into the future. No alarm bells. No resistance. Just gone.

That's the thing that gets me. We will fight tooth and nail over money, but sleepwalk straight through our time. And time is the only one of those two things you actually can't get back. Lose £20 today, you can make it back tomorrow. Lose an hour? That's just gone. Forever. No refund, no rollover, no bailout.

Not gonna lie, I didn't fully clock how wild this asymmetry was until I started doing the research for this post. Turns out the UK government has an actual official price tag on a human life, the Department for Transport puts it at just over £2 million. That's the number they use to decide whether saving your life is worth the budget. Now look, I'm not saying this is an exact science, but if you run the numbers down to an hourly rate across an average lifespan, you land at roughly £40 an hour. That's not what your employer pays you. That's what your time is actually worth.

So every hour you spend doom-scrolling, you're not just killing time. You're liquidating £40 of something finite for absolutely nothing in return.

And the platforms know this. They know exactly what they're doing. If Instagram charged you £5 a month you'd scrutinize that subscription like a hawk. But it's free, so your brain never runs the audit. Look ibr, I'm also harvesting your attention right now, let's not pretend otherwise. The difference is I'm trying to invite you to be more conscious. Their business model thrives on you abandoning that consciousness entirely. So if you're going to spend your £40 hours somewhere, spend them somewhere that gives something back.

Anyway, while I've got your attention let me give you some updates. Instead of doomscrolling I've been live streaming my process of learning to DJ on the site under BTEK.FM. Only been at it for a month or two, so I feel I haven't earned a DJ name yet, still in the deliberation process, might have to consult the Xbox 360 name generator. The plan is to eventually have other DJs on as well, but for now it's just been me doing little troubleshooting streams. Last one was pretty fun though, go check it out.

And for anyone keeping tabs on Pushinn, I'm still on it. Life's just been a bit hectic but it hasn't gone anywhere, trust me. Something's coming.

Watch this space.

Anyway. Guard your hours like you guard your wallet.

Stay Dangerous,

DPD.