When you are occupied with reality, life becomes a lot easier. It becomes…something like a fantasy. Where you have what you need, and life is beautiful, and you can do what you want.

Before AI made fantasy our whole lives, fantasy was my business. As a phone dominatrix, I would listen to men struggle to name their fantasies. They paid me for telling them what they really wanted (which, of course, they told me first, in their way, through hints and suggestions. Then I’d parrot it back with direct clarity, and they’d say, “God, you’re good!” A woman discerning their fantasies was part of their fantasy).

I was the fantastical Google search. I played out your hopes and fears, in as many different contexts as you wanted, putting you through the wringer, manipulating you, making you beholden to me, and my magical know-how and expertise.

It isn’t just galling for me to see what the Internet has done to us because it stole my job, or because it’s ruined democracy, or turned people into vapid fucking morons–though all of this pisses me off.

It’s that people used to pay top dollar for something they knew was a fantasy. And now they believe their fantasies are reality, because they are told they are getting “information.”

“We’re too informed! There’s too much information!”

Is there too much information? I don’t know about that. I don’t think we’re so much “Too informed” as we are experiencing sensory overload at all times, as things that are not threats are presented as threats over and over again, and things that are ridiculous are presented as “The science is in.”

We are taking in a lot. But it’s not too much information.

I don’t even really know what that phrase is supposed to mean. “Too much information.” It implies that we have had less information at our disposal in the past. Back when it was manageable to get through a day without having our senses overloaded, it’s implied, we were ignorant. There was less information.

Well…obviously, this is not true. I say “obviously,” but I guess it’s not that obvious, because we generally believe it to be true that we are “too informed” now, and that our “puny human brains can’t handle it.”

But it’s really not true. I’m not even talking about libraries or newspapers (though, these things are certainly at our disposal). I’m saying, just walking around, you get more information than what you could get from, say, AI glasses or a Google search. There is plenty of information, and always has been.

Information. What is it? There are information specialists out there, who I’m sure know better than I, but as just a person looking around on this planet and seeing what we’ve got, I posit this:

Everything is information. See that flower? It’s packed full of information. You can study it all day long, for weeks and months, and watch its whole life cycle, and there will be an unbelievable amount of information. There will be so much information, that your puny, human brain can’t handle it.

And what’s it growing out of? Soil. Jesus-mother-fucking-Christ, soil is PACKED with information. It basically holds all of the information of ALL of the past of EVERYTHING that has ever happened at, and around, that spot of dirt.

And, oh, fuck, if you look up, you can find the sun–but don’t look at it! That information is too hot to handle! But luckily, you can feel it. You know, for instance, that the sun is hot. Because you feel it. You know basically what time it is, by the quality of the light around you. You know that the flower you were looking at before grows towards it, and the soil gets dry when it’s very hot, and it’s hotter at some times than other times, and that the predators go away when it’s cold, and that you are not as sleepy when the sun is present, and this is just the tip of the iceberg–things you can easily, readily observe without much active study.

That’s enough information to plan a day, a week, a season, a year around. You know when you’ll be awake, when you should eat, what you will eat, what will eat you, when you should sleep, what kind of house you should have, what kind of profit you can yield –And that’s just the flower, the soil, the sun–there is SO MUCH information just every fucking place.

It’s not just nature, either. That table, that polyester shirt, that garbage can, that knick knack–look, you get the picture. Every single thing in the universe is just a big behemoth of information.

We have always been riding the information superhighway. Information has ALWAYS been zipping around us, everywhere we look.

If we bother to look.

The difference with the internet, is that the internet uses psychological mind tricks to make you look where it wants you to look.

This is not giving you access to more information. It’s actually narrowing the information you take in. It narrows it to your personal hopes and fears. And then the internet uses those hopes and fears to steal your wallet.

The internet is a dominatrix. But she doesn’t practice consent. And she is not calling herself that. She’s calling herself “Google.” And she’s telling you all of the time that you know nothing, she knows everything, so you better leave the thinking to her.

There is nothing a dominatrix does that cannot be directly correlated with the online experience–except getting your consent.

Let’s talk about edging and ruined orgasms. For example.

So, a dominatrix might bring you to the edge over and over and over again. The idea is to really get you built up and frustrated, and desperate for relief.

And then, when she finally does get you off, it doesn’t matter. If anything, it might even hurt. Because she has got you jerking your dick well past the point of orgasm. It ruins the orgasm. It just feeds right back into the frustration. It leaves you unsatisfied, even though you’re covered in cum.

Does this sound familiar? Do you ever feel like this shopping online? Scrolling homes on Zillow? Going through streaming shows to watch? (Or hell, even watching porn. Not dominatrix porn, but just scrolling for the right porn?) Like you had your interest piqued so many times that you somehow cannot find what you want, and just feel gross and frustrated, even though you got what you came for? Do you feel like it’s YOUR fault you aren’t satisfied?

This is a tactic that keeps you coming back. Because it’s soooo close to satisfying, you know that the dominatrix has the goods you desire, if only she would let you have them–

The point is to own you. A real dominatrix–which is to say, one who is openly selling you fantasy–will say, “I’m going to own you.” And if you are a sub, you will say, “Great! I want to be owned!”

But the internet is not honest. And you didn’t come to it as a submissive. You wanted information. And it said it had all of the information, from every perspective. The internet told you it was the only ticket to freedom and autonomy.

And then the internet employed domination tactics and owned you, against your will. Which is abuse.

I never had special insight into my clients, other than being an observant human who is good at listening. And my clients knew it. They knew we were playing a game. But while we played that game, I was supreme leader, Goddess, and I knew all, I knew what was best, and you were the dumb bitch who just had to follow my lead and do as I say, and then everything would be just fine.

The internet does not have special information, either. There is information everywhere you look. The real trick is knowing how to find the information you need, and what to do with it when you get it.

As above, so below: You can get the information you need from almost anywhere, because everything is basically the same, made of the same stuff, and behaves similarly.

Online, what is real and what is fantasy becomes obscured. In real life, it’s pretty clear–although there is plenty that attempts to obscure.

But it’s either raining or it’s not, you know? It grounds you in what is worthy of your attention. It tells you what information you need to get next, when you are living close to the elements.

The less time you spend in fantasy land, the easier the “information superhighway”–and by that, I mean the world around you–becomes to navigate. It gets you where you need to go, directly. No detours.

What’s interesting to me, though, is that…reality has gotten such a bad rap. But it’s our fantasies that are honestly terrible, frustrating, vexing, hideous and frightening.

In our fantasies, we want to be important. We want to matter. That’s a big part of the domme/sub relationship. It’s not just that the sub wants to be punished. It’s that the sub wants to matter enough to someone that they are worth punishing. They want their behavior to matter.

The problem is, in order to feel important, we need others to be “not as important.” And look, okay, I’m not here to tell you that you need to find every human being of equal importance–it’s okay if you want to matter a little more than everyone else matters. Because of course you do. In fact, if you claim otherwise, I don’t believe you. You’re just hoping someone will notice that you are more egalitarian than most–better than most. That you, and your ideas of how things should be, are more important. It’s not that it’s good or bad, but there’s no getting around this fantasy. It’s there. It simply is. Probably because it would be hard to get up every day, knowing you’re going to die and probably no one will remember you, unless you could tell yourself that you are just a little bit special. That perhaps you’re so special you’ll be spared–or at least remembered.

It’s why I always found it to be good clean fun, and quite fair and good, that people should pay me to indulge their fantasy. It was healthy, even. An outlet for the fantasy that makes our reality possible, in an appropiate place, with appropriate compensation, done in such a way that you cannot help but acknowledge it’s all fantasy–if only when you look at your credit card statement.

It’s when this fantasy takes over our lives that it becomes hideous and vexing. Because your attempt to be particularly important is always going to be torn down. It breeds hatred and resentment and supremacy. It breeds greed and corruption and authoritarianism. It creates towns where there are luxury condos everywhere, and thousands of homeless.

In reality, I’m not any more important than the bear that shits in my yard, or the squirrel up in the tree, that I callously cut down. And neither are you. When you are sharing a property with wildlife, it really, really doesn’t matter what prestigious university you went to, or who your dad is, or even what you’ve accomplished in the past, except for what it has taught you to help you grapple with this moment. You and the bear and the squirrel all have equal claim to the land, and must navigate each other, moment to moment. You will all be nice, until you decide you have to be mean. You’ll try not to get to that place, because the reality is you may die in the battle if you take it on. But you are all aware of it. You’re all aware of the reality. The bear has no money, pedigree, education, or home, but he’s clearly the most privileged in a battle of Naked and Afraid, just by virtue of his weight alone.

But you all have your advantages. And you all will do better the more you know about the physical space you occupy.

Your knowledge of politics, philosophy, economic theory–these things will not matter as much as knowing each other, knowing the landscape, knowing that you are mortal.

But knowing those things–real life things–might make your politics, philosophy and economic theory make more real life sense.

What is Real Life? Real Life is this moment. Right now. You, in time and space.

Fantasy is you in some other time and space. Any other time and space, besides right here, right now.

When you are occupied with reality, life becomes a lot easier, and more like a fantasy, where you have what you need and can do what you want, because you are engaging with the here and now. You are taking the here and now on its own terms, and making the best of it. When you are engaged with the moment, you have already found what you were looking for: Yourself, operating at your highest capacity. Possibilities all around you. Answers to your problems. And yes–surrender to something bigger than you.

(And you can call it God if you like, but what is bigger than you need not be supernatural. Your circumstances are bigger than you. The here and now itself is bigger than you. But you aren’t nothing. You are packed full of information.)

What you are not doing is searching, searching, searching, searching, searching for what you need outside of yourself, and your present circumstances.

The next time you are scrolling endlessly, looking for something, put down your phone, close your eyes, and say to yourself, “I already have everything I need.”

Then open your eyes, and look around your physical space. Look for the information you are missing, right here, and now.

You will find it. Because there you are.