Contact me
This site is an independent publication launched by me(Travis Giffin) in August 2023. If you subscribe today, you'll have full access to the website and receive email newsletters about new content when it becomes available. Thank you!
travisgiffin1122@gmail.com
Social Media
I recently deleted my LinkedIn account, and it was the last social media account I had. The rest have been gone since around 2017, when I left corporate America.
My reasons go back to my career. I spent 30 years in marketing technology, and a big part of that work involved the same tracking and data systems these platforms are built on. Every click, view, and comment gets packaged and sold, and their tracking scripts sit on millions of business websites beyond the platforms themselves, which is why ads seem to follow you from site to site. I understood how it all worked because I helped companies implement it.
Somewhere along the way, the whole business went from something fairly simple and ethical to something I no longer wanted any part of, so I opted out completely. The entire tech industry, in my opinion, is completely amoral and unethical - it doesn't matter the size or scope of any of them. This might sound like a generalization, but 1000s of employees are being duped by a select few men, billionaires mostly in Silicon Valley. They ruined what was once a vision of hope into an abysmal, dystopian, greedy machine. I know it's hard for these employees to leave, but they need to push back, re-evaluate what they are doing to human culture as a whole, and refocus on resisting the initiatives they are being forced to implement. For now, I have opted out until I can find a way to push back on them, too.
Since then, the spam calls have mostly stopped, and the junk email has dropped way off. I've also noticed I'm less cynical and less irritated in general, which I attribute to not spending time on platforms that are engineered to keep people agitated. I'm not on a crusade to convince anyone, but after 30 years of building this stuff, walking away from it has been nothing but positive for me.
I hope you enjoy the content I have provided.
Thank you
Travis Giffin