Maya Manolova apparently had a little time freed from keeping MOCHA and found a new cause – the fight against self-service checkouts in large supermarkets.
For several weeks, the cash registers in question have been in the crosshairs of other activists around social networks, who are already envisioning bankruptcies of chain stores and fast-food establishments with fried chicken.
With no particular surprises in their profiles, the rebellion against the machines is mixed with other conspiracies – HAARP, the coronavirus pandemic, banning domestic chickens and pink tomatoes.
In other words, we must see that the self-service cash registers are another instrument of genocide against the poor Bulgarian.
Or, to put it even more differently, it’s yet another conspiracy theory that serves foreign interests by flirting with people’s fears of the new and still relatively unknown.
Similarly, logic and reason fuel a horror of bank cards, card payments and POS terminals with allusions to some rising “digital slavery”, surveillance of every move and an apocalypse where ATMs will almost certainly start eating people through the cracks for banknotes.
However, bank cards and self-service terminals are not scary. The attempts, not to call them pushy, for politicians to become relevant again by exploiting the choir’s concerns are not even that terrible.
The scary thing is that these conspiracies still find some fertile ground to fester and multiply. Come on, that’s enough!
Self-service checkouts, like almost any other piece of machinery, are here to save us time and effort.
In supermarkets, they are intended for those in a hurry and those who have few goods to mark. In gas stations and fast food restaurants, they ease the queues and the frenzy that necessarily accompanies them, especially during rush hour.
This is how the world is structured – it wants to move forward, to look for ways to make life easier and to develop technologically. Oh, and save your time.
And no one has the moral right to keep Bulgaria away from technological development and innovation by confusing the heads of Bulgarians with conspiracy theories.
The world is currently reeling from discussions about the dangers of artificial intelligence and its power, and it would be a stark sign of inadequacy for us to be discussing self-service checkouts and their imaginary threats to national security and well-being at the exact same time.
It’s like an Italian and a French arguing whose cuisine is better, while we argue about eating walnuts in their shells.
Moreover, the fact that Maya Manolova’s rebellion against self-service cash registers is not anywhere, but on Facebook, is ironic enough and proves a subtle hypocrisy and bigotry.
Although it would be wisest for him to really stay out there somewhere around the web and not overstep its bounds and the handful of shares he’s sparked.
And without her supermarket revolution, we will survive.
