Google remembers everything: the immigrant's digital adaptation story

Фото: Depositphotos

Google knows. Google knows more about us than Zuckerberg, more than a wife, friends and, of course, more than parents and children - these generally exist as restricted access rights.

From the moment when we opened the web search, we start a diary, not knowing about it. Then, to heighten the convenience of our own blood, they will persuade us to settle a spy in his pocket like Tamagotchi. But you can forget to feed Tamagotchi and watch his ridiculous electronic agony, and we plug this demon into the socket, like true Muslims doing namaz. And he will report where to go.

But today is not about paranoia. Today about the most private blogs in the world, the diaries of an escapist.

Isn't this amazing? No photos, no likes, no meaningless flood and psychos. Only biographical facts, cleared of chaff. What was I interested in 3 years ago? Five years? What he lived, what he listened to, what he read, two people know - me and Google.

I have 8 years, a year more than the term for which each of my cells is updated, if scientists do not lie.

Eight years ago, I was a different person on 100%, and now I look at it with today's eyes. Google rewound my life and stopped - very symbolically - on April 2008, when I crossed the American border: a typical immigrant who, like a nervous horse, is frightened by his own shadow.

1 June 2008, the first time I googled "mile" and "gallon", in order to somehow find support for my legs. How much is it at all? Is gasoline expensive in the country of ounces and dozens? Similarly, an immigrant from Europe 150 years ago made inquiries about prices for oats.

And I arrived in the USA on April 17 and didn’t Google anything that day, and for almost a month I didn’t bother the wizard once. Because I walked around New York with my mouth open, that's why. Or they took me like a calf to get a social security number, for example. A dusty office, saturated with other people's expectations, bored clerks behind glass, looking like Chinese dummies.

Фото: Depositphotos

13 June, after 2 of the month, I am using Apple, Amgen, AMD and Applied Materials to look for work, moving down the Fortune 500 list. What a holy simplicity, how ridiculous now to think about it! .. I’d be more likely to have packaged the cocaine in the Medellín cartel.

“Expected salary is $40 thousand,” I type into the online translator, already in California. A typical attack of optimism from a person who doesn’t know a thing about the country in which he ended up because of his adventurism. For 40 thousand a year you will have to struggle. Department of Motor Vehicles - I received the license. 8/08/2008 – 3 eights, a lucky sign, and a year later the request: “How to challenge a fine for speeding.”

But the beginning of assimilation, there is already work and even medical insurance, which saves hypochondria from attacks. It is necessary, how much time can be spent looking for the symptoms of non-existent ailments.

The protracted period of stagnation, the oath of allegiance to the American way of life - a couple of years of online shopping. Cameras, laptops, sports shoes, the nearest IKEA store. Heaps of clothes that should make you a different person: more beautiful, successful and balanced. Comparison of American and European sizes. That which did not fit is so easy to return, and now a quiet voice whispers to you: “Buy, buy, think a big deal.” Just do not be surprised later when moving. This will tell the story of shopping at Amazon, that is also a chronicle. That's what I bought stoned, and this thing is still in the closet waiting in the wings, which has not yet arrived.

Here is the family, as the polaroid photo - Craigslist, the site of private announcements, dozens of options for apartments, the addresses at which I rode on a bicycle. It was as if the dust had been wiped off the screen, and again I saw: klopovniki, dog kennels, sheds, where the smell of roasted garlic was knocking down. Stoned in the dust guys show a collection of hats left over from the former occupant. What a joy I forgot about it when I finally settled down!

“Chicken Little download”, “origami paper steamer”, “pediatricians of Santa Cruz”, a year later - “rating of Santa Cruz elementary schools”. This is my child, 2 years of his life in California. Oh, this is the request - “get a deferment of tax reporting.”

Two accounting courses at Cabrillot College, six months after - “cost of sold goods”, “gross margin”, “quick ratio”, “callable bonds” and other curses. Then I googled “the lyrics of the song “Across the Wild Steppes of Transbaikalia” - what else to sing after months of fighting sleep over pound volumes full of terms as cold as fish? - only songs about convicts.

But I started looking for pistols. Heckler & Koch, the nearest shooting gallery in Watsonville, and musical tastes suddenly tilted towards Slayer and Metallica, why? Oh, yes, this is a year before the divorce, trying to find a valve, relieve the pressure. “Free divorce consultations”, “Download divorce forms”, “Santa Cruz County Superior Court address”, there’s nothing to explain here.

What does a free man do after a divorce? Chooses a quiet porn pier to taste. PornHub, PornTube, Tube8, until you find the most comfortable one - without pop-up windows and with the best set of perversions. Behind them "free dating sites." Fill out the profile, trying to interest these American women who do not understand what you need from an East European man with a winding biography.

Separate categories of network pastime:

Procrastination: why did I search the web for the word “gimp”? A poem with a finale, “Did a poodle run around the room after her?” Amanda Lepora, a terrible woman, a victim of plastic surgery? The song "Icarus" group "Aria"?

Vaniti-check: Kolya Sulima, Nikolay Sulima, both in Cyrillic and Latin, as if it depends on this whether I live or not.

The search for the former: what does she look like now? Still saying "theirs"?

And shots of the schizophrenic chronicles - "Kevin Carter, photos", "Boris Butkeev, Krasnodar, conducts an uppercut", Julio Iglesias, Cantona and Paul Gascoigne, "700 types of women's tears", "decapitation of Chechnya" ... "Recipe for Olivier salad" (guess what what date?). Whitney Houston something, already 4, how I gave my soul, do you know at all? It was literally yesterday.

And the smartphone also keeps a list of WiFi access points - cafes, airports, train stations and cities, romance in the spirit of Gennady Shpalikov, “oh, if I drown in Zapadnaya Dvina or die some other way ...”.

Like a stroboscope, which accidentally snatches from the darkness an invisible, forgotten construction of my life - a click, a click, a click.

“I am not Negoro, my name is Sebastian Perreira,” this is Jules Verne in The Fifteen-Year-Old Captain. I don't remember why I needed this. But it still sounds great.

Read also on ForumDaily:

What an immigrant looks like: a statistical portrait

25 areas most often employed by immigrants in the United States

Immigrants of what nationality moved to the United States over the past hundred years

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