Good Is Out, Evil Is in ♞

X has turned into a bullhorn for “anti-woke” sentiments used to boost Musk’s political messaging, Meta has abandoned its fact checking in deference to possible Trump retribution against the Zuckerberg empire; Starlink, TikTok, and Nvidia/TSCM are becoming geopolitical bargaining chips in nativist industrial trade wars; Network States are gaining po

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.

people are increasingly not interested in speaking to one another unless they already know they have a strong sense of commonality or they can access something totally new.

the mainnet turns into a slop of “for anyone” consumer trends and long Twitter battles with bots, but the place where culture actually happens is hidden and so fragmented that it can’t help but create strong divergences between people.

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.

At the same time the mechanisms, media, and institutions that previously were charged with creating some kind of consensus amongst society began dissolving.

What’s clear is that people are fed up with the infrastructure we have and will do anything to break free from it.

But as the dream of inevitable progress by doing good failed to materialize in most of the world, the political tenor has decidedly shifted away from the 20th century heydays of liberalism, inclusive globalism, and cosmopolitan network culture toward a balkanization of the political and cultural map.