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🕑 Added 2023-11-17 04:09:20 +0000 UTCThe German tale of Faust is one of the most significant in helping us understand the world we live in today. Faust, a scholar, is unsatisfied with his achievements. His search for knowledge had thus far proven fruitless. All his life work. His mastery of human knowledge is futile. He summons the demon Mephistopheles , with whom he trades his soul for earthly fulfillment. He gains all the power, wealth fame and knowledge of the world in payment for eternal damnation. This is where we get the term Faustian bargain. One where you trade your very soul for knowledge. Wealth. Power. Many musicians have been accused of trading their souls for worldly acclaim and musical ability. Paganini. Robert Johnson. Bob Dylan. Other names etc. back this up. They go down to the crossroads to make a deal with the devil. The crossroads are a symbolic space. A… liminal space. Where the veil between worlds is at it’s weakest. It’s also where decisions are made regarding what road one goes down. The choices made here are irreversible.
It's clear what road we’ve chosen to go down. The allure of the internet is obvious. On the surface, it’s one of the most miraculous pieces of modern technology. Imagine telling somebody 100 years ago that anybody could call virtually anybody else on the world at any time, using a tiny device you can carry in your pocket. You could also use this same device to access all the collected information of all humanity at any time, for a fairly inexpensive price. You can access virtually any book written. Any film. Any song. And these things called games, which are like movies you can play. This device can connect you to jobs, communities, events. Basically anything you could dream of. Or anything you could have nightmares about.
The internet was a Faustian bargain. It had such obvious material benefits. Knowledge, pleasure, entertainment. All the earthly pleasures you could imagine. But it’s had untold effects we are still reeling from now, and likely will be for many decades. Many effects which will remain hidden until decades from now. Many which aren’t readily apparent.
The internet began, as many destructive technologies did, as a military experiment. To distribute packets over a switched network. It was to allow the remote transfer of data. This was basically the stage, starting in 1969, where the technology was being developed. We got file transfer, remote access, email over the following decades. It was, by it’s nature, limited. Because it was for research and development. Government applications. A computer took up a whole room. It required extensive technical knowledge to operate. The modern internet was more of a development, rather than an invention. Throughout the 70s and 80s, it opened up to commercial and academic uses. It became broadly publicly accessible in the late 80s through early 90s. But it still took decades to penetrate the globe. A process that is still ongoing. It’d still be fair to call the 90s the early days of the internet. And in these early days, it was a niche product. The infamous eternal September occurred in 1993, when ISPs opened the floodgates of usenet to the unwashed masses, and all previous gatekeeping became impossible to maintain. The cultural standards inevitably declined. The eternal summer was called eternal for a reason. It’s still ongoing. Every year it seems bigger and bigger.
Naturally, there was a certain kind of person drawn to this early internet. Neckbeards. Hardcore, dedicated neckbeards. Before the term even existed. People who loved the machine more than deodorant, or hygiene. Early on, you used the internet for a very niche purpose. For hobbies that very few people you knew in real life took part in. And it was typically on sites dedicated to that specific niche. And this really included every niche. From tabletop games, to fishing, to specific genres of music. They were all their own site. You really could find anything. Which of course has a downside. It extends to perhaps more unsavoury things, like obscure pornography, or gore. The internet was niche. It was not mainstream. Of course it was still widely available, in first world countries, in the 90s through 2000s. It was even marketed towards kids. But it did not creep into every single persons life. A novelty perhaps. Useful for business. But it was still treated with suspicion. There existed a kind of hesitancy towards buying things online. Thing like Paypal were created, at least in part, to convince the public that online shopping was safe. It was dodgy placing your credit card into random websites. Online dating was for losers. It was considered to be for the socially maladjusted, who couldn’t manage it in real life so they need a screen for protection. Many of these perceptions were extremely common and lasted well into the last decade.
There existed, in the past, a certain ethos among programmers, hackers, engineers and tech people known as the hacker ethic. It has a political dimension but it was never tied to any specific political movement. It was like an ethical guide to how technology ought to be used. An unspoken agreement. It was a mindset that pushed people above and beyond to do things for the public good. It focused most chiefly on the idea of freedom of information. The 1984 book ‘Hackers’, by Steven Levy described this early culture of open and accessible information. Information ought to be shared. Free for the good of all. It is from this ethic that we get passion for free and open source software. Although the ethic really started to decline as early as the late 70’s into the 80’s where copyright and monopolies started to erode the free and open software environment, some remnant of it remained. Even to today, there are people who sincerely maintain and preserve these ideas. This is the primordial ooze from which Linux and various open source communities derive. It’s the same line of thinking, at the very least, from which free software licenses like GPL and BSD emerged. John Carmack quoted the book for inspiring him to make Doom open source. Richard Stallman, found of the free software foundation and gnu stated “The hacker ethic refers to the feelings of right and wrong, to the ethical ideas this community of people had—that knowledge should be shared with other people who can benefit from it, and that important resources should be utilized rather than wasted”.
This mindset was the default on the early internet. At least among the users. The people with a voice in these early days maintained this ethic, at least with regards to freedom of information. At least, it was much more present as a proportion of internet users when compared to today. Which makes sense given that the internet is, ultimately, a tool for the propagation of information. The belief that the internet should be an open, dynamic, fast moving and innovative environment, containing literally all information to ever have existed. And that included hosting even the worst elements of humanity. It was about freedom of speech, and freedom of information. It was also the belief that sharing this technology with the world would bring people closer together. That learning about others and talking to them directly would destroy prejudice and improve the world. The early internet was the wild west.
This was the era of internet innovation. The dot com boom occurred because of the novelty of an online only business. High on the rush of novel technologies, many companies, enticed by the minimal overhead and huge new market, started their web ventures. It was only in 2000 that the bubble burst. This bubble only occurred in the first place because the internet was an exciting new technology and it seemed like you could start an online business in virtually anything. Of course, the bubble bursting brought all of this crashing down. But the web certainly didn’t die. In the early internet, there was a website for everything. Every profession had it’s own dedicated forum. Every game, film, subculture. There were many different ways people communicated, forums, imageboards, chatrooms. There were art pieces and online stores for all kinds of things. There was a site for virtually any niche.
It was this environment that created our modern regulations for the internet. It’s the backdrop for the creation of modern laws regarding the use of the internet. The digital millennium copyright act, or DMCA, was effective beginning in 1998. It described how copyright was to be applied on the internet. It criminalised the circumventing of DRM and other such copyright related issues. The critics of the DMCA often focus on aspects such as the freedom to use software. How monopolies negatively affect this and how it affects preservation of software. There is also the issue of fair use. You’ll likely have heard complaints surrounding this on Youtube, given how common false copyright strikes are on this platform. There was also section 230, enacted as part of the communications decency act of 1996. The act was ruled unconstitutional in 1997 but section 230 remains. It’s largely regarded as responsible for allowing the internet to exist as it is. Put simply, it made it so that websites were not liable for content posted by their users. It basically defines websites not as publishers of their users content, but as ‘platforms’. Places to host content by other parties. Their users. The exact words are as follows. “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” These protections were necessary to foster a fast moving, innovative business environment. To allow such a level of liability would’ve stifled competition and would’ve made many modern websites, particularly sites like Youtube and social medias, non viable. Imagine if Youtube were liable for everything posted on it.
Social media sites emerged with the new millennium. Myspace was founded in 2003. A place for you to add people as friends. It was focused less on a topic or niche, and more on building a ‘web’ of social connections. At least somewhat, It did try to have some music focus going. But this was just a glimpse of what was to come. Facebook was founded in 2004. Originally a place to rank the attractiveness of female classmates, it broadened to be a social network, available to university students, and eventually the general public. Facebook did not place itself into a box like Myspace did. It recognized that this type of website was about connecting people. It let people use their real names. Connect it to their real life persona. This is when you can say the internet started to creep into peoples real lives. Facebook got ahead specifically because it was tied to the real world. It’s where you message your friends, create events and let others know what you’re doing. Youtube was founded in 2005, In the early days it was limited. Low resolution, videos limited to ten minutes. Bodies were certainly hitting the floor. The quality of videos was quite poor. Only the most annoying and loud dominated in this era. Just imagine what a child would do to irritate his parents. But this era did introduce the idea of going internet viral. There was no money tied to it at this point. But the concept of being viewed by millions of people all around the world at no cost, To ‘broadcast yourself’, was alluring. Youtube was acquired by tech giant Google in 2006 and it introduced monetization in 2008. Meaning you could now make money off these viral videos. Imagine being one of the losers who does thatfor money instead of getting a real job.
Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone in 2007. It came into being out of his genius ability to tell other people what to do. The big bang theory launched in 2007 and made ‘nerd culture’ mainstream. Bazinga. What once was obscure was rapidly becoming mainstream. Netflix, a company founded in 1997 to deliver dvds to people, started it’s online streaming in 2007. Suddenly, a world of entertainment was available to anyone, at any time, basically anywhere. During the decade that would follow, many workplaces went online, meaning the only way to apply was through the internet. You would no longer apply over the phone or in person. The internet became essential to even being employed.
Over the 16 years since 2007, The internet has only continued to grow and proliferate. The internet is now in more places in the world than it isn’t. The internet now belongs to the ‘normies’. A few large corporations control the vast majority of internet traffic. At least in the west. [https://www.semrush.com/blog/most-visited-websites/ show that some websites are owned by same company e.g. Google owns Youtube. Facebook owns instagram] Countries like China and Russia have their own, somewhat closed off, ecosystems. [show examples like VK, Weibo etc.] Because these countries recognize the importance of all that data not being in the hands of a few American corporations. Of not placing the algorithms for content discovery in the hands of these American corporations.
The hacker ethic still exists today in some capacity. But it’s obscure. The corporations won. It’s rare for open source projects to be on par with proprietary ones. DRM is more widespread and intrusive than ever. Many games for example ask for kernel level access and people just accept it. And they accept it because they have no reason not to. It is only really the people who are into technology. The tech savvy. The folks who proliferated the hacker ethic, who understand the dangers of this level of corporate control over our technology. Millions of internet users do all their internet use from apple devices. From phones. By design, these devices do not have the user interact with the hardware at anything besides the highest level. The most simplistic. Iphones are intentionally shut off and give as little control as possible to the user. They want you to interact with as little of the machine as possible. This is what makes them user friendly. They work the way they do because of decades of user research. People, at least normal people, do not want to interact with a machine. They want a preset experience. One that is entirely designed and curated for them. I honestly don’t know how apple marketing fucking works. How do people fall for this shit. I mean just look at this manual that compares Mac users to martin Luther king jr and Gandhi.
In the past, there was a baseline level of knowledge you needed to use a computer. Before windows was popular, you had to know how to use the command line. Even on windows, you had to understand how a file system works. I know so many people have already ranted about the articles on young people not understanding how files and folders work, But seriously, zoomers don’t know how file systems work. In university.
There’s a common assumption that younger generations are ‘tech native’. That kids often have to solve their parents technical problems. That youth have to teach their parents to use technology. It’s weird to consider that there might be a world where parents are going to have to answer their kids annoying, inane technical questions. Telling them to turn off their internet and turn it on again.
It makes sense that reducing levels of tech savviness among younger generations is going to have negative consequences. People will be less discerning. More likely to give their data to huge corporations in exchange for ease of use. One position I hate regarding this is the defeatists. The people who say “Well they already harvest your data on x services, so why bother with these other security measures? Why do you care about giving this anti-cheat kernal level access on your PC?”. And yeah, it is hard to not have any of your data online nowadays. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still resist. Don’t give them more data than is necessary. You should still do as much as you can to avoid intrusions on your privacy. Turn off location on your phone when you’re not using it. Try to use alternatives to spyware software when you can. Turn off all the spyware settings on your devices. It might mean you have to compromise. You might have to use social media because everybody else is. You need it to talk to friends. But that doesn’t mean to give up. That’s exactly what they want.
This reduction in technical knowledge in an increasingly technologically reliant society is also going to lead to the downfall of civilization. But that’s for another time.
We gave ‘da NORMIES’ access to the web, where you can say host and do anything and they ruined it in 10 years. We could have access to all the books, games, movies and shows we could ever want for free. Uncensored. And instead we opted for a suite of a million subscription services with a limited range. Censor and remove things so that nobody gets to watch things you don’t like. Demand more time consuming, lower effort slop from studios to drown out any creativity in the space. When given a device that is so powerful nerds in the past would’ve creamed themselves by touching it, it’s used to take pictures of oneself to share with others for fake internet validation. Gravitate towards the most dull social media sites where innovation is punished, and where the content is so short and easily consumable that it’s impossible to communicate anything meaningful or worthwhile. High quality work is so often drowned out. It’s easier to consume 10 1 minute videos to bait you or shock you or affirm your beliefs than it is to consume 1 10 minute video that might introduce you to a new idea or make you question what you believe. And that’s how far we’ve fallen because even ten minutes really isn’t a long amount of time at all. When given all the worlds knowledge, we’ve chosen to create algorithms that only deliver us a fraction of what there is to know. The closer it is to our own experience and perspective the better. We thought this tech would open people up to new perspectives. Instead it’s only made the general public more myopic than perhaps ever before in history. It only exists to reflect peoples egos back at them. That’s literally how we engage with the internet. And it’s that type of design that drives the most user engagement. The internet has not broadened horizons. We say that to get a proper understanding of something you need to leave the internet and engage with it in the real world.
One thing that’s been apparent since the flood of the masses onto the internet, has been the centralization. There are no longer niche communities. Everything is centered around a few large social media companies who dominate the vast majority of traffic. Reddit has a community for everything. What would’ve been an independent forum with it’s own management and admin staff is now a subreddit, subject to the rules of Reddit and it’s moderation team. It’s all centralized. All of these communities are under the whim of some of the most pathetic people in our society. Reddit mods. Where you have to abide by a stupid list of arbitrary rules made by a fat loser to take part in a community. Everything is also tied to a persona. A social credit system. Why did this happen? This centralization. Perhaps it’s some psychological thing. Perhaps it just ‘feels’ easier to stay on the same site than it does to go between a bunch of sites to discuss different topics. All video content is consumed through Youtube or Tiktok. ‘alt-tech’ is making a valiant effort. But people are going to go where the audience is. These sites are entrenched. Google owns search results. You could search for something elsewhere. But you’re meant to ‘Google it’. Twitter owns it’s own ‘thing’. Basically short form rage bait posts. Mental garbage essentially. I’m sorry but nobody is going to go to your Mastodon. Nobody cares about your honey or hive or tribal or bluesky or any of that shit. Big tech is entrenched. It’s settled. They’re too big to fail. Nobody is going to come along and disrupt it. People look back at Myspace as an example of a social media falling off hugely. But I highly doubt that’s going to happen again. Things have changed far too much.
Given the current market and environment, any innovation that significantly overturns big tech is highly unlikely. It’s hard for new companies to go up against the giants. It’s virtually impossible, no matter how competitive they are. The websites of the internet, collectively, act as a kind of corpus, without any part of the body. Ideas are filtered from Twitter to Instagram to Facebook before being excreted at Reddit. The culture, the memes, the terminology all go through a lifecycle. And each station is an essential part of this lifecycle. Sites like 4chan are controversial. But 4chan has survived so many attempts to deplatform it. Delist it. Wipe it clean from the internet. Because of the disgusting things you can see by just opening up the site. Because 4chan is an essential organ of the internet. So much of the language, memes, culture and iconography of the internet originates there. It’s the spawning ground for all the culture that is then filtered through the rest of the internet. As entirely cringeworthy as it is to say, 4chan is like the shadow, or the repressed id of the collective unconscious of the internet. The thing you hate acknowledging but can’t get enough of. That you start to absorb and project. I think top dogs in big tech implicitly understand this at some level. They exist in an ecosystem, and though they would never publicly admit such a thing, and can plausibly deny any connection to the site, they recognize that they stand to benefit from it’s existence. And it’s why, despite their being several campaigns over the years to take the site down, as happens with any controversial site, There has never been a decisive move to strike the website from the internet. In the body analogy, Reddit would be the asshole, btw.
There is also the fact that any social media is equally, if not more guilty, in hosting illegal, violent, racist, exploitative and extreme content. It’s just that the algorithm masks all that from the average user. It creates the echo chamber, where the average user is never, or very rarely, exposed to the unsavoury things their fellow users share. The page 1 of 4chan is like if you could read the mind of everyone on a train carriage. Content is promoted to the user based on their interests. On 4chan, content is promoted purely based on the reactions it gets. The replies to the thread. This means that the content that you see is purely what generates the most reactions, positive or negative. It isn’t remotely true that the website is some kind of free speech haven, or unmoderated. Content is removed off the site constantly by it’s moderators.
Control of the web is centralized. Web services are dominated by three companies. Realistically two. In the past, most companies would host their own web services on their own web servers. But then big tech companies thought the ‘cloud’ would be a brilliant idea. And it was. It made them a lot of money. It allows a company to save a lot of money in overhead by purchasing their web services from Amazon or Microsoft. All that server space. All that processing power. Available on demand. It became a requirement, considering it was so much cheaper than the alternatives. The current internet basically runs on these web services, especially for things that are complex, difficult or intensive.
As for web hosting specifically, there are a few major players. Yes, there are options and many service providers do not want to dictate what is and isn’t available. But It’s not uncommon for deplatforming attempts to target web hosting companies to take down a certain site.
A lot of controversial websites that are emblematic of the old internet are no longer with us due to the increasing consolidation of the web, and deplatforming, both legal and corporate. Liveleak is one such controversial example. If you don’t know, this was a site that hosted a lot of controversial videos, most often gore, including war videos, industrial accidents and executions. I cannot say that many, or even most, of the uses for this site were done with pure intent. For some users, it was their way of seeing terrible things happen, some quenching a sick appetite in doing so. But there is undoubtedly the journalistic element to the site. It hosted many politically controversial videos that would’ve otherwise been banned. During the war on terror, it hosted many videos that provided an extremely raw, genuine look behind the scenes at what was happening. Unmasking the jingoism of the time. It’s one thing to say that such things shouldn’t be seen by children and most adults. But it’s another to say that nobody should be allowed to see such things at all. And who has the right to decide? Who is qualified to determine what adults shouldn’t be allowed to see. Another similarly controversial site is Kiwifarms. It has been subject to numerous targeted deplatforming campaigns, getting kicked off services like cloudflare, being delisted from Google. Kiwifarms is essentially a drama website, a forum which focuses on ‘lolcows’, people with an internet presence who are meticulously documented by the users of kiwifarms, usually for the sake of entertainment. Or ‘lols’. hence, ‘lolcows’, as they are figures often being milked for ‘lols’. Now the site is most controversial for it’s links to harassment and doxing, that is, collecting info about peoples lives. Now I certainly can’t defend every aspect of this site or how it’s used. I can’t condone the behaviours of it’s userbase. It isn’t what I would do or what I would allow a community I was in charge of to do. But many of these deplatforming campaigns, which claim to be altruistically about ‘banishing online hate’ very often have ulterior motives. Many of the calls to deplatform the site have been lead by people who have incredibly comprising information regarding their gross misdeeds on the website. For example, if you scam your fans for money, claiming it’s for your safety after a harassment campaign, but then use that money to buy cocaine, you might not want people to know that, so you may want to lead a campaign against the site, saying it’s because they’re harassing you. In truth, the site has undoubtedly brought to light some depraved things that some very bad people have done and it’s one of the only places to record this. My point ultimately being that this attitude is emblematic of the old internet. If the site were to disappear there may be less total harassment on the internet (unlikely, in my opinion). But something would be lost.
Another site that has been a victim of the corporate internet, the censored internet, has been the internet archive. This one is a lot less controversial. In every aspect except legally. The internet archive is exactly what it describes itself as: a library of digital content, used to preserve internet history much like a regular archive may preserve literary history. You may know it for the wayback machine, which stores snapshots of websites over many years. This website, by it’s nature, gets into all sorts of copyright related legal issues. For example, they lost a recent court case brought on by 4 book publishers. This means they can no longer scan books and lend them out like a library does. Internet archive is a site which fights basically daily to stay up. And I think it’s doubtlessly doing good for society.
The current environment is not the same as it was when the laws governing the internet were written. The DMCA and section 230 were written during the time of an emerging market. Before social media was a thing. It was made for a competitive market. Where there were many different entities vying for marketshare. Any company could pull ahead. A brand new company could take over the web with their brand new idea in a matter of months. Anything could happen. Nothing was certain. Section 230 recognises websites as ‘platforms’ rather than publishers. This was done to preserve innovation. [https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2021-title47/pdf/USCODE-2021-title47-chap5-subchapII-partI-sec230.pdf Would even be good to highlight ‘maximise user control over what information is received’]. They are not liable for content posted on their sites. The issue, though, is that they behave like publishers. Sites like Youtube have an extensive list of rules you need to abide by to even have your content posted on the website. They can take down virtually any video or channel on a whim, according to their own policies and preferences. They act like a publisher, making editorial changes to the content posted to their site. But they are not liable like a publisher would be. They rely on the labour of others, who produce content in a genre, ‘web video’, which they have an effective monopoly on. Classically, we talk about media control. The dangers of having a highly conentrated press who only repeat one line of thinking from a highly biased position. If you control the papers you have a strong degree of influence. Social media is like if a small number of corporations owned all of the newsagents, newsstands, where people get their news from. Who decided what papers could even be shown. And these newsagents were the only place where you could discuss this news you see. Now of course, you can get news outside of social media. But for a huge proportion of people, they don’t. You can discuss news with people you know in real life, but using social media allows you to reach so many more people.
And the decisions of these sites are arbitrary. Some people trust big tech to have a kind of fair standard for the kind of content they host, promote and conversely, demonetize and delete. But I can’t find myself agreeing with that sentiment. I think I see too many examples to the contrary. Like one of the Reddit moderators, Spez, editing comments, in the backend, that disagreed with him and made fun of him. Just a little thought exercise. Listen to some of these big tech people. Then listen to the userbase of their sites. You’ll almost see the sites, at least in part, reflecting their creators. This is especially so for Twitter. They’re kind of like these maniacs who reprogram the human condition in their image. Look how the psychology of the average twittercel changed before and after Musks takeover.
And that’s the crux of it. The current big tech lineup essential controls the culture. Everybody watches youtube. In fact, I may go out on a daring assumption and suggest that YOU, yes YOU, the viewer, watch Youtube. This is the part where I go from how we destroyed the internet, to how the internet destroyed us. A massive proportion of our society talks to their loved ones through the internet. Meet their friends, their love, their coworkers through the web. It is almost impossible to get around today without the internet. It locks you out of most jobs. And sorry to get all political but, it decides who wins elections. People were saying Obamas use of the internet helped him win back in 2008. Since then the internet has only pushed even further. It is now truly global, as was originally promised. It covers [ 60 percent of the worlds population uses the internet https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.ZS?end=2022&start=1960&view=chart]. In 2008, 74% of Americans accessed the internet. Now, it’s over 90%. [https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.ZS?locations=US crazy that it actually dipped after the global financial crisis]. You might even be an internet user yourself. And I say Americans because ultimately that is what is relevant. These are American companies. Section 230 is US law. This small number of American corporations basically control the worlds news supply. At least the online world. You can say that people shouldn’t be getting their news from Twitter or Facebook. But it’s an unfortunate fact that, well, people DO get their news from Twitter and Facebook. I’d even go so far as to say that removing a candidate from social media constitutes election interference. It automatically locks the candidate off from a huge portion of the voting public.
Broadly, there’s an idea that the internet would make people smarter. A key aspect of modernism is the idea of progress. There is a spirit of progress, some perfect state that the world is continuously driving towards. After all, all the knowledge of the world in the hands of anyone to access at any time. Thanks to the propagation of information, thanks to the internet and global communication, we know better what is true and what is false. Haha. “[the world before the internet] was probably full of cognitive dissonance. There’s nothing outside the internet that’s worth it to me”. Now, the internet is certainly good at propagating information. Here’s the issue: not all of that information is true. I think basically everyone acknowledges this. Fairly widespread studies have shown that misinformation does indeed spread faster than real information. [https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aap9559#tab-contributors] In part because sensational things, especially things that confirm somebodies preexisting beliefs, are more likely to provoke an emotional response and get shared. It’s important to note that this spread of misinfo is not unique to any political faction. It’s a universal. Now of course, many big tech companies have taken measures to combat misinformation. I think the majority of these measures have been effective in combatting misinformation, and have actually been harmful in unintended ways. Again, big tech companies control who has access the audience. Anybody can come along and make their own site. But none will ever be able to reach the giant audience. When we rely on American tech companies to police peoples thoughts for us, they’re never going to be unbiased. There is no objective oberserver. The ‘fact-checkers’, the moderators enforcing the content guidelines. They’re all inevitably going to be biased, and doubtlessly have blind spots to misinformation that supports their existing beliefs and values. I will say, Twitters current community notes is one of the best implementations I’ve seen of it. It requires approval from people of opposing political identities before a note is applied to an Xeet. And they’re required to actually address the claims in writing and provide sources supporting the claims made in the note. They’re so much better than the boilerplate disclaimers that bots apply on posts on other social media sites. Community notes has resulted in many of the best moments (cannons are lethal) and are one of the greatest features ever introduced to social media. They should be mandatory on every social media site.
The other knowledge issue with social media is the imbalance. I’m sure the internet has made a number of people much smarter than they would’ve been before. So much access to so much valuable information and it’s so easy. But I think the number of people this actually applies to is slim. I think very few people are actually maximizing their potential in terms of building knowledge on the internet. That’s not how most people use the internet. The internet is so full of information, but very little of it is actually meaningful. And so much of it is entertainment. There are more distractions than ever before, and I think that simplistic entertainment comprises a much larger proportion of information available to an average user. There are so many distractions available now to the average user, that I think in some ways people may be becoming even less educated. While a few use the internet to it’s maximum potential, most, I’d argue, are actually learning less than they otherwise would’ve. They’re using algorithms that place them in their own world. They’re less likely to come across information that doesn’t conform to their existing beliefs. This imbalance will affect society in the future. The internet is destroying attention spans. This hurts peoples ability to focus and retain information. Short form content is easier to consume. Content with more visuals, which move faster, are more compelling, inherently. It’s harder to use the internet without being distracted because so much research has gone into distracting you. This knowledge imbalance will be an important aspect of future class divide.
It's also a small number of people who are concerned with data privacy. I think everyone knows that big tech takes our data. A lot of it. People, largely, are against this data collection and do tend to value their privacy. But more than ever, people seem willing to allow these intrusions into your life. This collection of private data. It’s not so much that people don’t recognize the issue with modern surveillance. It’s that we’re numb to it. Studies have revealed that the average person finds it hard to avoid surveillance in public. Everybody is walking around with a phone in their pocket and can record at any time. In the past, moments of your life could live on only in memory, now they can be recorded and live forever. I don’t think this is good for societal trust. In the past, the office cubicle was seen as a sign of oppression, conformity. Think the Matrix, Office Space. Of course, the open office is widespread. What has actually changed though? You still have to do the same work, in the same conditions. Now, you have no privacy, you have coworkers looking over your shoulder, who you’re being compared to in every moment. I think there is a lack of privacy in todays world, and the internet, I think, is no small part of that. It has acclimated people to constant observation.
Ironically, despite having less privacy than ever before, people are more closed off. Less forthcoming with one another regarding information. The internet has destroyed socialization. This is an oft discussed topic. The number of people who report being alone has risen dramatically. The number of people who report no close friends. Not speaking to friends on a regular basis. I think this is part of a much larger trend of social atomization that has been unfolding over many decades now, but it has really come to ahead recently. Atomization, simple understood, is feeling alone, even when you’re surrounded by people. In chemistry, atomization is a process that involves breaking the bonds in a substance. This image is reflected in the idea of atomization that appears in literature. Failure to forms bonds with those around you. It has been exacerbated by recent events, such as the complete societal shutdown over the covid pandemic. And of course the advent of social media. The decline of many social institutions has contributed as well. Religious institutions, clubs, societies. But of course this video focuses on the internet. Which has been no small part of this trend. The terrible thing about internet socialization is that it offers just enough of the real thing. You’re still talking to people. Discussing things. Your interests, your ideas. But it simply does not offer the same level of depth as can be gained by communicating with a real person. Of course the data shows that people register speaking online and talking in person differently. You experience them differently. Emotionally, there is so much more you gain from having real friends. And that’s not to mention people having a parasocial relationship with their favourite e-celeb. That is, feeling a connection to an online figure as if they were a friend. Of course, celebrity worship has always existed, but the internet has only allowed these problems to be inflamed as the nature of social media content creation means that creators, youtubers and such, are very specialized. Very much in a niche, which in many situations you see now allows them to have an unhealthy, strong, emotional bond with their audience.
The thing about this online socialization is that it is a fictional world that provides just enough to it’s users that they feel dependent, attached, unable to remove themselves from it. But does not provide the depth of experience that a real life relationship with another person provides. The online one is easier, and people will tend to the point of least resistance. The easiest option. And even then, if you try to escape that pit yourself, it’s how everybody else lives as well. Everybody else uses social media to some extent. Especially for people below a certain age, there isn’t really much of a ‘phone-free’, ‘internet-free’ world, certainly not like there used to be. In the past, people spoke in person because they had to speak in person. If you wanted to do anything, you had to leave the house. Nowadays you see stories of people who are afraid to even order food in person. Who pay a tip to ubereats to get food delivered to their door without even having to leave the house and speak to another human. You can say it’s pathetic. Perhaps it is. But I think any group of humans, from any time in history, would’ve ended up the same under these conditions. I can’t say that it’s entirely negative. [https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2015/08/06/teens-technology-and-friendships/]. Many people nowadays do have an experience of meeting people online who they go on to build a real life bond with later.
Also, everybody can join a community for any niche interest. But maybe some interests, like, I dunno, liking little kids, shouldn’t have a dedicated community. People fall into echo chambers which are damaging to themselves and others. The further they fall in, the more difficult it is to leave. To entertain an idea outside the purview of what they believe. And everybody is susceptible to this. Yes, even you. As the old parable goes, in the past you could say you want to fuck toasters, and you’d be told you’re an idiot. Now, If you want to fuck toasters, you can go online, to the toaster fuckers community and get a bunch of people together. Talking about how hot it is to fuck toasters.
This social issue has extended to dating as well. Again, criticism of dating apps is widespread. It has been covered broadly. And it largely extends from the previous issue of social atomization. People struggling to form relationships, with all it’s various causes and effects, extends very much into the domain of romantic relationships. There’s probably a lot more to say on this that would warrant it’s own video. Countless men can relay to you the experience of using online dating. For the vast majority, it’s a wasteland. And women typically don’t have a very good time on it either. It’s shown to have negative mental health effects all around. It commodifies romance. It makes you feel like a product. Because, essentially, you are. It tries to push you to pay at every turn. And yet, we still use them. They’re more popular than ever before. In 1995, the most common way for couples to meet was through friends. Online dating only comprised 2% of couples. Remember, online dating was considered a thing for losers. Now, it’s the most common way for couples to meet. Think about that, It's a method that so many of us report to be a generally terrible experience. That we know has negative mental health effects. And yet it’s THE primary method for meeting nowadays. Perhaps, people wouldn’t be doing it at the same rate if they felt they had a reasonable choice. This is not good for future generations. This is not good for the current generation. This quote from a Stanford article published in 2019 really gets me:
https://news.stanford.edu/2019/08/21/online-dating-popular-way-u-s-couples-meet/
We also see how social media content affects a degree of social control in how it has changed language. Social media trends affect the broader culture, obviously. And corporations can control and manipulate social media trends, with a level of control unprecedented by any form of media before in history. A good example of this is how we refer to controversial terms through an extra soft, ‘pc’ lens. You no longer refer to suicide, it’s called ‘unaliving’ or ‘game-ending’. Here’s a rule, you don’t get to discuss suicide in any serious capacity if you can’t even refer to it without using baby talk. These terms emerge because of the policy of social media giants. Youtubers, Tiktoker etc. will get demonetized, or their videos taken down if they touch anything controversial. There are other terms, like sexual assault, which becomes simply ‘SA’. Or pornography being referred to as ‘pron’. Here’s the thing, these topics need to be discussed. At some level we cannot just ignore serious issues entirely. But if we do discuss them, it shouldn’t have to be through the lens of some coded baby talk language. We need to be able to refer to the issues directly. When we talk about this social control, it’s also important to touch upon what might be most polarizing to discuss. That is the political effect of social media.
Obviously, it’s been bad. There’s a meme going around about how the young generation z, zoomas are constantly adopting a new identity. Specifically a new political identity. One which changes with the weather because of course it does. Kids don’t know anything. But I’m sure your brand new radical, world changing, rock solid beliefs built upon a solid rock, unlike the poorly conceived political identity you were certain about 5 minutes ago.
The closest thing to an antagonist in the works of Plato are the ‘sophists’. Like Protagoras for example. To quote Plato, a sophist is he who “presides over the art which makes men eloquent”. But the sophists were not concerned with the nature of truth. Their primary focus was rhetoric. Being able to speak well and be convincing, rather than genuine rigor, an honest and charitable search for the truth. The term is used in the modern day in a similar manner. Why might someone be this way? Perhaps they hold strongly to an ideology, and are convinced that it is their duty to propagate it by any means necessary. In this case debate and rhetoric. A less charitable view is that you can make money doing it.
It goes without saying that the internet lends itself so naturally to this character type. Again, it’s nothing new, sophists have existed for thousands of years. But, we see here a pattern. The internet is like a mirror, exacerbating some of the worst tendencies of humanity. There is an ever changing political zeitgeist on the internet which changes to something entirely different every couple of years. At least on English speaking social media. The new atheism trend is an obvious example from around 2010. In the middle of the last decade, we saw a trend you could characterize as ‘alt right’ or ‘anti sjw’. Around 2020 we really witnessed the concentration of the ‘woke’ or ‘breadtube’ trend. Here's what they always have in common. They’re always a frenzy. The people who make the most provocative statements always rise to the top. The people who are invested the deepest act as though they are in an existential battle for the future of the world. And they reward rhetoric. People who engage in these trends, regardless of the time, it seems, want simple, Intellectual McDonalds. They want scathing takedowns of their perceived enemies. Intellectual destruction. Anybody who isn’t on your side is the enemy. It’s only natural that the people engaged in whatever community it is at any given time hyperfixate on ‘debates’. Because it’s seen as a kind of intellectual proving ground. And a live debate can greatly reward rhetoric. If a point sounds convincing enough. And it’s said confidently enough. It becomes the truth. Not to mention, most of these people aren’t ever going to actually read any literature on the topic they’re obsessed over. They want to feel smart by being better than others, not put in actual work. Sophistry is ultimately about the appearance of intelligence.
Look at the new atheist era. Back then it was known as a Hitchslap. Where Christopher Hitchens would DESTROY his theist opponents with facts and logic. But when you observe some of the most popular arguments from this era, it’s a little less convincing. For a movement that prided itself on logic and rationality, it really was driven by pure emotion. For example: “since it is inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are wrong”. Variations of this argument have been repeated countless time. For example, in Rickey Gervais’ show where he wins an argument with himself in the shower, represented by him destroying this fake person he created with facts and logic. It’s presented as something like: ‘there are thousands of gods you don’t believe in, I just believe in one less than you’. This is argument is very weak, though. Think about it, ‘there are many different competing theories to explain dark matter. They can’t all be right, so therefore they must all be wrong’. That just doesn’t logically follow. The existence of competing claims has no bearing on the truth of a claim you’re making. Alternatively, 1+1 does not equal one, 1+1 does not equal 3. Therefore 1+1 does not have an answer. This has been recognised before, the fallacy of objections. The existence of objections to an idea does not affect the validity of that idea.
Becoming popular during this time was about becoming rhetorically fierce. The people who rose to the top were those who could best create the appearance of intelligence. While being able to deeply emotionally affect people. Confidence is extremely important as well. Remember, the con in ‘con-man’ means confidence.
There was another format that was popular around the time which was referred to as street epistemology, which would basically take the form of asking people on the street what they believe, and then why they believe it. Surprise, surprise, the average joe has no idea why they believe the things they believe.
The following trend was the ‘anti-ajw’ trend. And this format was carried over under new names. A popular type of video you’d see was the ‘blue haired college sjw getting triggered by facts and logic’. Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder were among the most prominent figures to rise to popularity in this time. You’ll notice again, the targeting of the uninformed who would act as fodder. For some cheap gotcha ownage video that would reinforce the viewers pre-existing beliefs and provide nothing new. Because, broadly, these movements weren’t about learning. Ben Shapiro is, yet again, somebody who gets by on creating the appearance of intelligence. On being rhetorically very sharp. Focusing solely on the debate. Of course, he had his famous moments like the “just sell their houses and move” when asked about peoples houses going under water due to climate change.
The woke trend carries most of the same hallmarks. Endless fodder. Complete slop which is basically all about taking down the chuds and the alt right. I think those inane Twitter posts that always get like a hundred thousand likes is a perfect example. Old twitter (circa 2020) was in and of itself the perfect encapsulation of this. The website was basically dedicated to these short, pithy, thought terminated chud-takedowns that would always get like 100k likes. There was the same ‘spot the idiot’ style of content. ‘all gas no brakes’ is a good example. Cherry pick some moron who can’t defend his beliefs, propagate everywhere and use it as representative of everybody who believes that. It’s worth noting that this format preceded the internet, and still very much occurs today. ‘the debate’ is also held in high regard and being rhetorically fierce was valued above all. Above being academically rigorous. There wasn’t any figure from this era that achieve the success and broad cultural penetration of some of the previous figures I’ve mentioned. Perhaps Hasan, but I don’t think he’s capable of even the appearance of intelligence.
Another thing that all these trends had in common is that, while people acted very seriously about them, this content was all ultimately treated as entertainment. This is the issue that is most unique to the internet. Political debates become mindless entertainment. Mindless slop for consumption. Debates should be boring. And they are not always the best form of dialectic. Of establishing the truth out of two conflicting ideas. Most internet debates, really, are counterproductive. They make you stupider. My advice would be to avoid this bullshit. If you want mindless entertainment, don’t do politics. If you want politics, don’t be in it for mindless entertainment.
With the advent of each of these trends, there would always be some people, youtubers/ecelebs in particular moving from the one fad to the next. No matter how much it conflicted with their previous views. Of course it was a completely natural development in their understanding. It just so happened that their intellectual development conveniently aligned with what was popular in the zeitgeist at the time. Now, it’s perfectly normal to change. I think your views should evolve with time. If they aren’t, it means you aren’t coming across new information. But for a view to make a rapid shift to the complete opposite direction, lining up with whatever the algorithm is feeding you at any given point. Some may have had a change of mind. Some may be adjusting their public views in an effort to maintain relevance and make money. Many just adopt the newest craze because it’s popular. The algorithm brain. The people who just absorb whatever personality the algorithm feeds them. Y’know, let’s listen to molchat doma and plastic love while talking about biblically accurate angels, walkable cities and analogue horror. This is harmless when it comes to the media you consume. It’s not so great when it applies to political beliefs. A few years ago the algorithm was receruiting people to the ‘alt-right’. But then of course they discovered to online figures to challenge their beliefs. So you become a radical socialist. It just so happened to coincide with the algorithm changing. To me, saying you ‘escaped the alt right rabbit hole’ just to embrace another extreme fringe position isn’t a sign of intellectual strength. To me it’s a self report that you will consume whatever ideas the algorithm feeds you. The amazing atheist is a hilarious example. He was a ranting atheist. Then a proud gamergate anti-sjw. And now he’s trying to be a breadtuber. The only way he’s been consistent is how consistently terrible he is as a person.
Politics has always been touchy. It’s always been very hot blooded and inherently divisive. The internet has not improved it. It has only further exacerbated extremes. It essentially pits people against each other.
Final rant:
The issue we see with the internet, broadly, is that it amplified problems that humanity already faced. Culturally, when we explore the ways in which technological development may harm us, we conceive of it as some outside force. With a mind of it’s own. Terminator is a classic example, a computer which gains sentience and turns against humanity. But in reality, the worst developments are those that make it easier to turn against ourselves. To self destruct.
You see we are going to be more reliant on this technology as the years go by. It will only grow more complex as our ravenous demand for more keeps marching on. Complexity will beget incredible new things. Certainly. But it will also need to be maintained, and the overhead for maintaining this system which is increasing both in size and in complexity will grow rapidly over time. It will only become more and more difficult to maintain. The number of people capable of maintaining it will dwindle. All the while it will continue to transform our society in brand new unexpected ways. So much knowledge will be under the control of so few entities. Our history will live on the pages of Wikipedia and whatever Google decides. So much has been lost already. And we stand to lose more. The entire internet was a faustian bargain. We stood to gain so much. But only time will reveal just how much has been lost. It’s possible too, that that which we do have will be taken from us. And we will be left with nothing.
