Drones Over New Jersey
The psych hospitals must be packed
I’m coming up on my one year anniversary of last being hospitalized for a manic-induced psychotic episode. So I’m due for another one. Here’s hoping my injectible antipsychotic holds the line keeping me from going off the deep end.
I haven’t written much here since then, partly because I’ve been busy with school and partly because I haven’t felt like I had anything to say. If you read my Sweet Emotion post I went through a bit of the fantasies that had captured me during that last episode. Psychotic breaks are fun because everything feels good. For me, it’s the feeling of unlocking hidden truths. But the fantasy is always followed by paranoia and that fear is real. Like there are powers that be who don’t want you to know what they know.
If I were to have an episode now I’m damn sure the narrative I would spin would be directly related to this whole Drones Over New Jersey story. My first episode, the one you never see coming, started around the time Edward Snowden released his revelations on the federal government and their corporate spycraft.
As a gamer, I remember the big gaming news in 2012 was with Microsoft’s advent of their upcoming Xbox One, their predecessor to the Xbox 360. The story, which surely has since been scrubbed from the internet, was that owners of an Xbox One had to always have their console connected to the internet for any games to be played. This made no sense. What about people who don’t have first-world internet availability? Are they just left behind?
There are plenty of story-driven single-player games released every year that one should be able to play without the need for constant internet updates, you know old school. At the time my forums were in panic and Reddit was on fire over this story. Microsoft came off very headstrong, pushing the internet connection story ahead of the release of their new console preparing consumers for the next generation of authoritarian gaming. Then came Snowden.
Edward Snowden's disclosures revealed extensive collaboration between the United States government and various corporations in its mass surveillance programs. These companies were involved in programs like PRISM and other data-gathering operations conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA).
Companies Involved in PRISM
PRISM is a program through which the NSA collects data directly from the servers of major U.S. internet companies. Companies named in the leaks include:
Microsoft
First company to participate in PRISM (2007).
Provided access to email, chat services (e.g., Skype), and stored data.
Google
Provided access to search histories, emails (via Gmail), and cloud-stored data.
Apple
Began participating in PRISM in 2012, allowing access to iMessages, emails, and other data.
Yahoo
One of the earliest participants in PRISM, offering user data like emails and chats.
Facebook
Shared data on user activities, messages, and connections.
Chat GPT is a hell of a tool. So after all this came out Microsoft changed their tune and said, yeah we were just kidding you don’t have to always be online to use the new Xbox One.
Those bastards! My exact reaction at the time. What the hell were all these tech companies up to? In 2012 this led me down a dark path. First was the thought I was being spied on, then later that I was being recruited. The recruitment thing is a common theme with my psychotic episodes. I read somewhere that the advent of The Patriot Act put a lot of people in the hospital. You know, the thought that now that we all knew we were being spied on. That kind of shit can make people go crazy.
Here’s a prime example of my crazy I could never prove. In the sentence copy copy-pasted above: PRISM is a program through which the NSA collected data directly from the servers of major U.S. internet companies.
My Grammarly program put one of those red squigglies under the word collected and offered the replacement collects. Suggesting that the PRISM program still exists. If not I’m sure something worse has taken its place. I noticed the second time I pasted that sentence Grammarly didn’t make the same suggestion. Interesting. Could Grammarly or even Substack have some sort of backdoor allowing someone to read what I’m writing before publishing? Absolutely. Someone who wants to tell me something? Nah
That whole narrative propositions that I’m important. Do I want to believe it? Yes. Is it true? No. Seems like my meds are working. I still notice these things, they just don’t send me up that upward spiral that stops me from sleeping.
My last episode was a consuming narrative that was picked up based on hints (such as the above example) and easter eggs from news stories my mind scraped up from my overactive perception. I started writing out that narrative as a modern science fiction inspired by C.S. Lewis’s Ransom series. While I have made progress it hasn’t been as easy to invent a story and characters whole cloth. The idea is still there and maybe one of these days I’ll have something worth publishing.
Like myself and the others who were triggered by The Patriot Act and later Edward Snowden files, I bet there are a lot of crazies out there currently snapping due to this Drones Over New Jersey thing. The less is known, the bigger the grand mystery, the more room we leave for we crazies to spin and toil over. The Truth is out there.
Just having fun, missed yall!