“La Casa Tomada” (The House Taken Over) is a story written by the great Julio Cortázar. It tells the story of a couple of brothers who live alone in a large house that strangely begins to be “taken” by something immaterial and Ominous. It is never known what exactly it is that “takes” the house, it is only known that little by little the brothers “can not” enter certain rooms, not because they are closed or blocked, they simply “can not”. I am not going to tell the ending so that those who have not read it can look it up and read it on their own.

Cortázar wrote the story in the context of a dictatorship in his home country, Argentina. It is impossible not to see a parallel between the story and Cortázar’s situation then, living abroad, unable to return home because it has been “taken”.

Since all this “digital migration” started in several networks, I have not been able to stop thinking about “La Casa Tomada”, in how it seems that little by little the digital spaces we inhabited have been “taken” and now we “can not” to be in them anymore. There are several factors that are causing this: the shittification, the rise of reactionary ideas, the bots and AI, the increasingly intrusive advertising, all an abominable and amorphous amalgam that seems to engulf everything around us.

But let’s not kid ourselves, this didn’t start with Musk. The Internet has been taken over since Facebook and other social networks came out. It’s been slow and systematic, it’s just that now it’s become unbearable.

The Fediverse has become to a greater or lesser extent a refuge for those fleeing the maelstrom. It is far from perfect, paradises do not exist, but that does not imply that it is not worth fighting for.

After all, the Internet can’t really be dead as long as we are here. It has been “taken”, and sooner or later it will have to be taken back.

EDIT: More accurate English title of the story. PDF of the story in English. Wikipedia Page of Cortázar.

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.caEnglish
    40·
    2 days ago

    Like others have said, you can’t take back or nothing can really be taken if what was there was never yours.

    Instead of thinking of it as a house we were once invited in to enjoy (and we are still allowed to visit) but never own … we should concentrate instead on building a little shack in the woods for ourselves. I really don’t care if it looks pretty, is modern, or even has any running water or a toilet … all I care about is that it’s ours and under our control. I’ll help build these little shacks and support those people who are maintaining them. And I’ll stay in this little unpretty place and enjoy it because I know it’s not controlled by a big corporation.

    I grew up jn a poor indigenous family in Canada. We didn’t even have indoor plumbing in the 80s when I was a kid … in first world Canada! So I feel perfectly comfortable living with little or nothing.

    I will always prefer going to things that are not owned and controlled by corporations because I know that people or even I own the things I use.

    I will go visit the fancy house once in a while to see old friends who don’t want to change but I’ll spend the majority of my time in the woods.

    I can try to change people or try to change the world and I may or may not have any success but the only person I can actually ever change is myself.

    EDIT: Another added analogy that reminded me of all this was the company town. I have a very old friend who grew up in a mining town in northern Ontario, a place where a big mining company owned multiple homes and maintained them for employees. As long as you were a good worker, you kept your house and paid minimal expenses to stay there. As soon as you fell out of favour, didn’t do good for the company, said anything wrong, retired, grew old or just got too sick and unwell … you were asked to leave and if you didn’t, you were forced to move. Meanwhile, the majority of every other worker who wasn’t a well paid employee of the company, took the little money they had and built their own home in the outskirts. These workers built shanty towns with tiny little homes with leftover lumber and covered over in tar paper and sawdust insulation. They were terribly built, leaked and cold in the winter … but it was theirs and no one could throw them out. People in the company side of town came and went and no one ever owned anything there. They lived the high life when things were good but when they fell out of favour, they lost their prestige and their money.

    The point of this story is that in the long run … the shanty town became more developed with activity because of people. Those little houses turned into renovated spaces that evolved into modern houses with people that happily lived in them. The company houses meanwhile all disappeared or almost all disappeared, were demolished and forgotten and the spaces turned into strip malls, grocery stores, parking lots and hotels.

    I’ll keep building my little space with my friends in the woods. Hopefully, someday, we’ll end up building a long lasting thriving community of activity maintained by people that will outlast big grand mansions owned by a company.