I’m generally chill with keffals but god damn unless you’re about to drop the next fucking Epstein-level scandal, which I doubt, dial it back. you’re not the next Lenin just because you’re dropping Google Docs.
You get this vibe from, like, microparties too. when they post like they are ushering in the revolution or commanding significant power when they don’t exist outside of Cleveland and are the product of 3 consecutive splinters. We get to grandiose-post when we have material power, but we don’t have material power, so it just comes off as… well, sad.
Sorta like in Disco Elysium’s endgame when
the deserter’s just refusing to move on and adapt to the present conditions, living vicariously through his past achievements and pretending he’s still fighting the good fight but in the present he’s just executing on his petty grudges and calling it politic.
It’s… what, pathetic? Pitiful? I don’t know the right word for it. It’s sad and it spiritually hurts when I read shit like this and remind myself how unreality this stuff is even though I’m not the one making myself out to do this as a public figure.
the internet, parasocial relationships, and their consequences
I have a growing part of me that believes the internet is an inherent net negative for most situations and needs to be decimated. Not in a reactionary “this thing makes me upset and therefore needs to not exist” way. Like I think there are forces that come with removing social barriers between physical communities that are as disastrous socially as everyone suddenly being able to hear each others’ uncensored thoughts would be. It’s an amount of information that is too much to process and too difficult to curate productively.
Or potentially a lighter version of this idea: even if the internet could be positive in a socialist society, under capitalism it’s as healthy and productive for the working class as cigarettes are. It’s an indulgence which can be used opportunistically, but otherwise recuperates revolutionary on a scale never before seen in human history
It was initially fine until every website linked to and from the same five megacorporations, allowing their algorithms to shoebox you with all the most extreme opinions that will keep you engaged and therefore exposed more frequently to advertising.
:this:
I mean, I wouldn't call the old internet fine but it was better
What you think of as "the internet" is realy the omnipresence of Google and all the social media sites. If you could take direct control of Google and completely change the algorithm you would completely change the access to actual useful information along with making people realize right wing ideology is not as popular as it seems.
And on the other side you would solve most of it by removing some of the shittier sites like FB, Reddit, 4chan etc while severely changing how others like Twitter works.
China is a working somewhat successful example of this, obviously Chinese netizens have their own brainworms but the premise is still valid.
The internet is by far a net positive to humanity imo. The fundamental problem as I said is that "the internet" became just Google and social media sites.
this is cool and good though
The Internet is fine if it's used as a repository of human knowledge. It's by and large terrible if used for socialization. Take Youtube for example. Youtube is at its best and most useful when you're searching for "how to do X" whether it's how to bake a cake, how to take apart a rifle, or how to get rid of weeds. Youtube is at its worst and most detrimental to society when the videos are about drama bullshit or diving into the vapid lives of Youtubers attempting to form a parasocial relationship with their marks.
Remember that you're talking about a website owned by a massive international corporation that is not optimizing its design for pro-sociality. What equivalent websites would look like if it was deliberately designed not to drive ad revenue but to help society is hard to say from where we are.
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