This is long. But I write it because I suspect it mirrors the experience of a lot of people.
As a christian I have read and have had read to me Revelation from just about the point I could read. So the concept of people cruelly taking over the world came just about the point I had my abc's memorized. As a kindergartner it's scary, but as a christian, you know it doesn't end at the scary part, even if you get killed in the process.
But having said that, I always figured it would be a long time (like when I was in my 50s or 60s at least) before any of that would happen so I could see it.
I'm not 50 yet.
But the first tie I started to both see and hear evidence of this stuff in my real life was strangely at a work conference. One of the little workshops was not about surviving the work place or how to get ahead; it was run by a futurist called "Brother X." He was definitely NOT a christian, but he was spouting off stuff that sounded like the secular version of the antichrist, mark of the beast, and global control, and claimed it was happening RIGHT NOW!!! As proof, he claimed one of the first steps along this process was that as we spoke grocery stores were implementing self check out lanes. Right now they would voluntary and convenient. Soon you would be mandated to have a chip in your hand/head/etc (mark of the beast -- motb) in order to "buy or sell" at all. In my mind it was GREAT science fiction, but it was ~1997 and I had been to all the grocery stores in my area and in different states: not a self check out lane to be had.
Until about 2 months later, when one of the local stores started trying out their self check out lane for the first time.
And I got one of those credit card offers in the mail for a smart chip card that seemed to everything but turn your home lights now.
But maybe I was just seeing stuff I wanted to see, right?
It was troubling, but nothing too serious, right.
And then I saw the movie The Net within a year or so after that.
That's when I realized there was a real possibility all that stuff in Revelation could happen NOW. And indeed was.
And then 911 happened, and soon afterwards I started hearing Stan Monteith talk about not only was that suspicious, there were a whole lot of other suspicious stuff afoot.
The problem with a lot of these theories is that it isn't "backed up" in the mainstream media, so if you ask normal people about it, they think what you suspect yourself: you're kuckoo, and you've been listening to too many kuckoos. So I just let it go. I figured if this was really happening, at some point, it had to come to the surface so that no one could really deny it anymore. Whether these reports were true or not, at least I had some advance knowledge and could prepare my mind for the worst.
But there were two things that forced my mind to click over from "this is possible" to "this is coming." One was from my mother. I found a transcript from from guy claiming he had attended some physicians' seminar in the late 60s where the participants were forbidden from taking notes. This dude claimed he wrote as much as he could remember down afterwards. You can find copies online under the title of "The New Order of the Barbarians." The two reasons this account affected me was because come of the stuff in it were things my mother had been telling as a very small child (and these were things that had nothing to do with a new world order). As most kids think, I thought my mom just had her special brand of lovable kookiness. But if that were true, how in the world could this guy write it down almost word for word? My mom was never in the health care profession to attend a seminar like this, but it sounded as if she and this dude had the some of same source material. The second was the Affordable Care Act became legal between 2008-2016.
The second thing came from a co-worker who came to the USA from Asia to work on tech stuff. In a previous job the colleague had worked on the smart card back in the 1990s, and no longer worked there because "it freaked out the american public," so the company started laying people off. (remember that smart card application I mentioned earlier) The colleague said this concept was well embraced in asia, but american's had some funny notion of privacy and religious superstitions that prevented this card from becoming popular.(the colleague is buddhist by the way)
But that was in the 1990s. As much as I believed the bible as a kid, I always wondered what fool would willing give up their control to a government Revelation described. I figured it would take an army and a whole lot of torture.
But now there's facebook, vines, instagram, snapchat, etc. where people (notably younger folks) who are standing in line practically to give away every shred of privacy and personal control they possess, and actually ridicule the "old folks" who stuff private, don't want socialism, don't want governments controlling everything they do specifically because they know governments DO NOT know best. It's very convenient, so much so that even people in the 50s and upward use these mediums to get data about their friends and relatives without bothering with the old outdated methods of telephones, paper and stamps, or, aghast, taking their dusty behinds over to said person's house and saying hello in person.
And oh, did I mention Snowden?? (That Net movie, and the other 10 afterwards that described similar versions was real after all, go figure)
Sadly, I have my answer now. I never thought a "borg" takeover would be so easy.
So to answer how did I feel about all this?
1) kiddy scared aware, but confident in God
2) Aware, but figured I had at least 1/2 century before I'd really need to act.
3) Shocked and disturbed at the progress of control
4) Shocked and annoyed at the ease of said control
5) Painfully reminded that God was right along, and taking steps to be as less entrenched as possible.