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- Dec 23, 2024
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- #1
We've had it all wrong this whole time. What we are experiencing now -- all this discordant sociopolitical chaos -- is not the result of division, but of friction.
The internet has largely changed in two major ways: (1) it's become an increasingly important conduit through which society acts, which is fine, and (2) it's been increasingly consolidated by a handful of mega corporations into really big spaces that expect everyone from all walks of life to get along with each other, which is a gross misunderstanding of human nature and brings only pandemonium.
Throughout all of human history, people have lived their lives in little pockets. In tribes.
This is because coagulating into social clumps based on the specific parameters that the citizens have in common, be they physical characteristics, philosophical correlations, behavioral traits, local proximity or some combination of those or others, is and has always been an innate mode of human survival.
When thrust into a pocket people don't feel they belong in by force, or when pockets are forced to merge with each other, people who would've already disliked each other a bit become suddenly radicalized against each other.
You thought putting conservatives and liberals in the same room as each other would end with them hugging and holding hands? Lol. Lmao. No. They are already diametrically opposed to one another; forcing them to interact will only make them hate each other even more with few exceptions.
That's where culture shock comes from. It's natural for cultures to oppose one another, and in a fight against nature, nature always wins.
With that said, social pockets must also always remain possible to join and leave voluntarily; otherwise those pockets begin to each themselves and descend into bloodbaths. Once you've purged all those who clearly don't "belong," you begin to question who of the remainders also don't belong.
We are in turmoil because every day we are being forced to interact with people that we absolutely hate and cannot get away from in the name of fairness. YouTube's algorithm, for example, recommends conservative discourse to people who don't typically resonate with it, and it recommends left wing political continent to conservatives as well.
All social media networks do this, because that's what's fair, at least in theory. The only result is a sharp increase in polarization and radicalization, which leads to social unrest and eventual collapse of uninterrupted.
When placed into societies comprised of small echo chambers that citizens can freely join, leave, create and moderate, that unrest tends to nullify. Widespread conflict is still inevitable -- war is endemic to the human condition -- but the breaking down of insulation accelerates this unnecessarily.
If we want any chance of returning to a minimally polarizing society that is still capable of peaceful integration, we must focus on breaking down the internet to what it once was: countless tiny, insulated social pockets instead of big spaces that force everyone to get along. We need to bring back niche forums. Gaming forums, autism forums, gay furry porn forums, Christian conservative forums, niche hobbyist forums, neo-nazi forums, literature forums, personal blogs, MySpace pages, slow paced transfer of information. You name it, there's a niche forum for it.
YouTube can still exist, but not as one big community or a professional career. It must instead serve as more of a utility, just a way for people to upload and share videos with members of their shared pockets as a necessity.
Of course, we can't go too far in the direction of exclusion because that's how you end up with ethnostates, apartheids, slavery and lynchings, but what we now know from experience is that forcing huge populations into one big unified camp will never work either. It will only result in race wars, tension and collapse. We need to strike a balance, and we came closest to that balance in the era that lasted from the 70s to the early 2010s. A balance between integration and insulation.
People need to be given the chance to occasionally interact with exotic pockets at will but also curate their own customary social spaces to which they can retreat.
The internet has largely changed in two major ways: (1) it's become an increasingly important conduit through which society acts, which is fine, and (2) it's been increasingly consolidated by a handful of mega corporations into really big spaces that expect everyone from all walks of life to get along with each other, which is a gross misunderstanding of human nature and brings only pandemonium.
Throughout all of human history, people have lived their lives in little pockets. In tribes.
This is because coagulating into social clumps based on the specific parameters that the citizens have in common, be they physical characteristics, philosophical correlations, behavioral traits, local proximity or some combination of those or others, is and has always been an innate mode of human survival.
When thrust into a pocket people don't feel they belong in by force, or when pockets are forced to merge with each other, people who would've already disliked each other a bit become suddenly radicalized against each other.
You thought putting conservatives and liberals in the same room as each other would end with them hugging and holding hands? Lol. Lmao. No. They are already diametrically opposed to one another; forcing them to interact will only make them hate each other even more with few exceptions.
That's where culture shock comes from. It's natural for cultures to oppose one another, and in a fight against nature, nature always wins.
With that said, social pockets must also always remain possible to join and leave voluntarily; otherwise those pockets begin to each themselves and descend into bloodbaths. Once you've purged all those who clearly don't "belong," you begin to question who of the remainders also don't belong.
We are in turmoil because every day we are being forced to interact with people that we absolutely hate and cannot get away from in the name of fairness. YouTube's algorithm, for example, recommends conservative discourse to people who don't typically resonate with it, and it recommends left wing political continent to conservatives as well.
All social media networks do this, because that's what's fair, at least in theory. The only result is a sharp increase in polarization and radicalization, which leads to social unrest and eventual collapse of uninterrupted.
When placed into societies comprised of small echo chambers that citizens can freely join, leave, create and moderate, that unrest tends to nullify. Widespread conflict is still inevitable -- war is endemic to the human condition -- but the breaking down of insulation accelerates this unnecessarily.
If we want any chance of returning to a minimally polarizing society that is still capable of peaceful integration, we must focus on breaking down the internet to what it once was: countless tiny, insulated social pockets instead of big spaces that force everyone to get along. We need to bring back niche forums. Gaming forums, autism forums, gay furry porn forums, Christian conservative forums, niche hobbyist forums, neo-nazi forums, literature forums, personal blogs, MySpace pages, slow paced transfer of information. You name it, there's a niche forum for it.
YouTube can still exist, but not as one big community or a professional career. It must instead serve as more of a utility, just a way for people to upload and share videos with members of their shared pockets as a necessity.
Of course, we can't go too far in the direction of exclusion because that's how you end up with ethnostates, apartheids, slavery and lynchings, but what we now know from experience is that forcing huge populations into one big unified camp will never work either. It will only result in race wars, tension and collapse. We need to strike a balance, and we came closest to that balance in the era that lasted from the 70s to the early 2010s. A balance between integration and insulation.
People need to be given the chance to occasionally interact with exotic pockets at will but also curate their own customary social spaces to which they can retreat.
