burnout world / evil is in

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

Ideologies exploded into a million niche subcultures

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

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

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.

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.

Going dark is one strategy of the savvy and privileged.