Stop scanning QR codes, you dolts

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Stop scanning QR codes, you dolts

Updated: June 3, 2026

Imagine the following scenario: Every day, you wake up, and you want to go online. You are asked to scan<br>a QR code. Then, another. And another. As part of your Internet habits, every now and then, this or that<br>site, this or that service challenges you, requesting identification and verification and whatnot. Like an<br>obedient monkey, you whip out your approved latest-generation expensive smartphone running latest approved<br>software, and you scan the QR code, time and time again. Then, you are allowed to continue. You proved your<br>human worth to the machine.

This may sound like a far-fetched tinfoil story concocted by dinosaur conspiracists on some disgruntled<br>forum or some such. But it may actually become the Internet reality in a few years, considering how things<br>are going recently. As "AI" bots flood the Web with their spamminess, ordinary humans will get drowned in<br>the dross, unless they play ball and submit to proving their humanity to the system. This may happen<br>because idiots cannot stop scanning QR codes left and right.

QR codes promote illiteracy

Back in ancient times, civilization uses hieroglyphs and alike to convey symbolic messages to the masses<br>that couldn't read or write. Then, we got the printing press and things got better. Then, we got touch<br>screens, and things got worse. Nowadays, across the globe, schools are reintroducing pen and paper, because<br>the current slash future generations cannot write. It took only about 10 years of "smartphones" to destroy<br>one of the most precious skills humanity has developed. Handwriting. A tool of preservation of culture and<br>history.

Enter QR codes. For all practical purposes, you could show one to someone in Ancient Egypt, and they<br>would nod with approval. But QR codes mean nothing to the human eye. Nothing. It's a square jumble of<br>lines, designed to be read by some camera. Why? Because touch interfaces are<br>inefficient crap, and typing in URLs into the browser<br>address bar is oh so hard. To make things easier for the hyperactive generations with the attention span of<br>a newt, you have QR codes. No reading, no thinking. Simply scan a code and go on.

Do you have any idea what you scanned? Maybe. If you're lucky.

QR code are an excellent soft indoctrination tool

If you think about it, the world is upside down. You, a human being, are now being asked to perform<br>machine rituals to satisfy technology (companies), and not the other way around. When you go online, this<br>or that service will often ask you to prove yourself. To "protect" against bots. Now, you have two options.<br>You can simply close the site and go elsewhere. Or, you may say, well, it's just a QR code, and relinquish<br>that much of your personal dignity to the Borg.

Over time, the QR scanning ritual becomes a habit. A norm. After all, in the 'rona pandemic, it didn't<br>take much to make (most) people willingly scan QR codes all the time. Efficacy and value of the ritual<br>aside, it gave the normies a sense of "social contribution", in that their little action helped the greater<br>good. It also created two precedents. One, ever since, tech companies (and governments) have had a<br>neverending hardon for personal data. Two, it showed how easy it is to convince people to perform opaque<br>software rituals.

Today, QR codes are mostly a convenience for people using touch screens. But tomorrow, the ritual may<br>include all sorts of checks and verifications. Choose and name your favorite moral virtue. Security,<br>anti-bot measures, proof of identification or age, and so on. As humans have no way of knowing what QR<br>codes show or display, and as they have no idea what happens on the server side that shows these QR codes<br>or similar pictogram symbols to the end user, it doesn't take a genius leap to see that this scanning<br>ritual can be used, extremely easily, to destroy any last shred of privacy and anonymity on the Web. You<br>asked for Web 3.0. This is your Web 3.0, plebes.

I mean, take a look at Google's latest<br>CAPTCHA<br>idea. To solve these "puzzles", your device needs to be running certain software, including Google Play<br>Services, or you may "have to" use an app. Think about it. You could be using your Internet on a<br>10-year-old computer. But hey! That does not stimulate the economy, does it. However, if you "must"<br>use a modern mobile device that meets the requirements, then all of a sudden, you are beholden to<br>technology. You must carry a new and supported smartphone around, and every few years, you must refresh<br>this device, so it meets the software standards. Just so you are ALLOWED to utilize certain content.

For all practical purposes, QR codes and whatever other alien-looking symbolic challenges you can think<br>of are one and the same. It's the same idea. You "prove" your humanity to the machine.

What can...