Every major digital scenius to date formed on captured infrastructure. Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, crypto Twitter. The pattern repeats: a scene forms, generates cultural and cognitive surplus, the platform extracts it, then enforces legibility through metrics, feeds, and incentives. Thinkability collapses into optimization. The scene disperses or... See more

Crucially, these systems provided temporal insulation. New ideas were protected from immediate suppression or premature assimilation long enough to circulate, stabilize, and eventually become mundane. That protective function allows heretical thought to survive long enough to become common sense.