Good Is Out, Evil Is in ♞

Traits traditionally coded as “right” or “left” or “good” or “progress” are now being thrown together in strange mixtures based on subcultural affiliations often gestated online.

• Brands and platforms emerge that propose a new economic model for creatives, a clear codex of what is good and bad within their system, a moral compass, such as Metalabel or Subvert.

• Crypto goes deeper into the Right-coded direction of Bitcoinmaxxies, memecoin grifters and anti-government types. While Ethereum, the more pro-social / governance e

Social media incentivized more extreme views at the same time that China began to develop an entirely different internet that, unlike the Western internet, was built on the values expressed by the state.

What is happening now in the US (the soft power of Silicon Valley teaming up with the hard power of President Trump) does not herald a new world order on its own. It’s the West following suit into a new fragmented world order that the rest of the world has already been moving towards years before by architecting its infrastructure around cultural a

to the Dark Forest of the internet; off mainline socials where their speech and behavior was broadcast to anyone and into small niche communities on invite-only forums, p2p networks, and group chats.

The censorship and state control of media the West once alarmingly criticized China and other countries for, is now strikingly similar to their own strategy but with different values - China’s internet being more Orwellian and the West’s being more Huxleyian.

Similar projects online and off followed suit as countries like India, Singapore, and EU began to make rules concerning how data was shared, what apps were allowed in their territory, and demanding that online infrastructure at least partially reflected the value of the state.

As these online spaces become the predominant place where younger generations get their media, the big tent information of the clearnet, of mass media, of consensus middle gets hollowed out.