The meter said I had 30 seconds to pay the water bill until I had to move my car, and… I just froze. Of course, then the meter attendant came. Said they were just doing their job as they booted my car, then looked down at their phone. Flashed me a wan smile, then reminded me I hadn’t taken out my recycling.
This wasn’t turning out to be a good day.
The attendant read off their screen — told me I was on my second strike: one more, and I’d lose streetlight privileges.
I’d heard about the streetlight thing: a social shaming punishment that some city in China had tried. The city would spam your location data to the streetlights so they’d turn off and cast cone of darkness around just you. It sounded horrible. I shrugged. I didn’t care anymore.
Of course, the next level was suspension of physical mail delivery (like picking up a package from the post office was difficult enough already) as well as a 30-day karma dock on Nextdoor.
Fuck Nextdoor.
Everything had gone to shit when they’d come in as the ‘social fabric platform’, a proudly-announced partner when IBM connected the city.
