The internet has made it possible for people around the globe to easily pass information back and forth among one another. This is taken for granted these days, but it is truly a revolutionary event. Since the dawn of civilization information spread no faster than a man could run. In the 19th century the train made this process a tiny bit faster then cars and planes made it even faster in the 20th century, but the internet puts all of us, if we choose, together in real time.
While this feels like a miraculous development for the curious and productive, it may also be a curse we are struggling to understand. The internet puts the smart, curious, and productive people together, but it also puts crazy people together. That nutty woman in the suburbs who thinks she is a psychic can now join up with other women who also think they are psychics. They can form a “community” online where they encourage and reinforce their delusions.
The apparent rise in the number of pedophiles is made possible by the ease with which these people can now associate. In the analog days, these people could not easily collaborate with one another. Those cursed this maladaptation could not easily access this material and there was high risk in trying to obtain it. The internet made it easy for these people to work together to produce and disseminate this stuff. The curious now find this material after a few clicks of a mouse.
Recency bias is the tendency to overemphasize the importance of recent experiences or the latest information when trying to understand current events. The news seems to be full of pedophiles lately, so we think it is a growing problem. The Left coming out in favor of pedophilia now certainly adds to the sense that it is a growing issue, so we have to adjust for that possibility. On the other hand, the number of cases is growing at the same time the Left is celebrating it.
In other words, when it comes to child abuse, the internet is making it easier for the pedophiles to meet one another, thus increasing the phenomenon, but the internet is also making us more aware of it. This increased awareness is made possible by people aware of this trend easily communicating the particulars. The same forces that allow the pedophiles to collaborate in their activity allows normal people to become aware of it and organized to oppose it.
Counterintuitively, the internet is tribalizing society. In the analog days, the pedophiles were a small and manageable problem. These were individuals forced to work in isolation and therefore caused the minimum of harm. Normal people could trust that the odds and the police would protect them, so they saw no need to know much about this issue or work with others to guard against it. The internet brought these people together and they formed two warring camps.
Obviously, the pedophile issue is an extreme example, but relevant due to corporate America embracing the child molesters over their customers. The same tribalizing forces unleashed by the internet are most likely at play here. The beautiful people who make corporate policy now see the Dirt People everywhere. Whenever they go online, they are confronted by Trump voters, heterosexuals, white people and all the other demons their “community” says are evil.
A part of what makes internet tribalization work is that it allows people with a minority view to interact with others holding the same view. This reinforces the belief, but also gives them the sense they are a growing community and therefore their minority view will soon be the majority view. When disconfirmation appears, these people can trust that their online pals will find a way to cope with it and thus provide them a way to not only explain it but reinforce group solidarity.
A good example of this is the recent events in the Ukraine. As events have gone against Ukraine in the war, online communities create pleasing alternative realties where their side is on the march. This guy spends all day everyday explaining to the likeminded why bad news is actually good news. This guy spends his days creating an alternative reality for the likeminded. These online communities operate like the UFO cult at the center of this famous study in the 1950’s
T. S. Eliot famously wrote “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” To some degree all of us are susceptible to escapism. We want some result, and we look for information that suggests it is happening. Some people, of course, go the other way and fear some result and look for information showing their worst fears are happening. It is two sides of the same coin and all of us are prone to it. Some people are more prone than others as belief operates on a scale like all human traits.
In the analog age, the limits placed on the flow of information left the believer in isolation unless he could physically connect with others. Joining a cult took effort, which is why so few people joined them. In the digital age, the internet is full of cults catering to every conceivable belief. Not only can you connect with thousands who hold your same hopes and fears, you can get instant confirmation that you are the good guy, and the rest of the world is the bad guy.
Of course, the internet is making us more aware of this reality. In the analog days we would have no idea that the Jewish guy across the street had a seething hatred for white people, but in this age we just look at his Twitter profile. Not knowing he hates you made it possible to not hate him. Knowing that he wants you dead makes it impossible to not hate him back. The more we know the more aware we are of the dangers that are lurking around every corner.
Since the dawn of the computer age, people have worried that the machines would become aware and then set about killing off humanity. The truth is, that process has already begun, except the machines are not doing the killing. Instead, they are holding up a mirror to society and letting us see ourselves. We do not like what we see, so we will find others who agree with us that we must kill off those other guys. It is not Artificial Intelligence that will get us, but Artificial Familiarity.
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“Since the dawn of the computer age, people have worried that the machines would become aware and then set about killing off humanity. The truth is, that process has already begun, except the machines are not doing the killing”
What if that is the methodology that AI is already using to remove pesky humans? There’s a whole new cult/conspiracy theory in that thought
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This is backwards. It would be more correct to say that pre-internet modernity introduced an anomalous age of artificial anonymity. The internet has rebalanced the scales; it has effectively reintroduced us to the society of the medieval village, where everybody knew each other’s business.
The pedos, homos, and other freaks always existed. It’s just that in the medieval village, they were quickly dealt with by dagger and noose. The best thing about the modern age (one of the only good things about it), is that familiarity will force us to head back in that direction.
When the whole village knows each other, everybody has to lay all their cards on the table. Weakness and ugliness can’t be camouflaged, so individual and family honor becomes much more important and transgressors are punished swiftly. We live in a brief interregnum where people are as yet in denial about this bracing and sobering reality, so they tolerate the pedos and freaks lest they lift the tent flap on the accumulated weaknesses of our whole geriatric, effeminized society.
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Spectacular poast as usual Z.
But I would argue: We already have the weapons to combat Artificial Familiarity. Just as in real life in the big city…there are areas you don’t go into and actively avoid because the locals and natives suck. You don’t go to a D&D tourney because it’ll be full a pastey faced propeller heads and poindexters. Ya don’t go down to hang on MLK Ave with the joggers. When these guys expose themselves you keep your distance but you keep a sharp eye on them too. If one DOES pop up in your airspace…it’s the same as if you’re dealing with that shitlibbed aunt that drinks wine but the box: you ignore them, find somewhere else to be, or have some sport with them. I’m still chuckling about that jew flipping out about the elves and hobbits… “That the nigga that stole Aragorn’s sword?” HAR HAR HAR! 😂👍 (That was probly one of you bums here that did that!).
My familiarity is 100% deliberate and premeditated. 100 years ago my millennial daughter came home a gay militant SJW and none of us understood the why’s and how’s of it. Back then the terms like “SJW”, “red pill”, “virtue signalling” hadn’t even been invented yet, much less categorized and cataloged as they are now. I did a deep dive and I found obscure voices of others that were at the cutting edge of it though. Simultaneously I was in the gay community spaces on-line. I wanted to see how these people related to each other, what drove them, and how they saw the world. They had no idea I was even there among them. I became friends with a trucker from Tennessee, and a colonel in the military who had feral gay children and were struggling to figure them out too. We compared notes, and worked together… and they saved my sanity.
Artificial Familiarity is a double edged sword and cuts both ways. The Dissident must be mindful of that…as it will work to his advantage IF he applies it.
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Access to information leads to inflation of the useful/pro-social info as well as the bad groomy kind. In light of this post I was trying to think of a great quotation by, I think Anthony Powell, something to the effect of “Important discussion is brief but there’s never enough time to argue adequately over a cassock or a surplice”— about 15 minutes of trying to source this, I gave up (did find a good one by LBJ to the Greek ambassador on Wikiquote). Not only are search engines, within a remarkably short historical span, now totally useless, but I have developed false photographic memories of having studied a subject when in reality I only read a blog post citing someone else’s disquisition on said subject’s not getting the correct amount of publicity or not enough or some third phase of controversy between those. It’s like when you read so many movie reviews that your brain fills in the rest of what happened in the flick which you never got around to watching (Mad Magazine syndrome).
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“ask him about the cemeteries, Dean”..(an LBJ quote when a foreign leader demanded US remove their soldiers from his country, I believe it was France or Belgium)
You omitted the Telegraph in the history. That was a real game changer.
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the pro-ukrainian people are remarkably mindless. absolutely useless for learning anything real about the conflict. i wonder what made them latch onto ukraine like a life preserver to a drowning man? maybe it’s the same impulse that makes a person take in a stray animal. in any event it will be amusing to watch them furiously cope as ukraine collapses under the weight of the russian operations. zelensky avoiding the place should give them a clue…
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