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Resistance and revolution happened before the internet. People have become lazy and complacent, and want their resistance served up over the wire. Thats not how
by K0balt 11d ago
Resistance and revolution happened before the internet. People have become lazy and complacent, and want their resistance served up over the wire. Thats not how real resistance happens, but it does make people feel like they are doing something, sucking up their energy while the biggest impact is TikTok memes, the modern version of the sternly worded letter.
This is exactly where the power structures want the struggle to be , online, with no real consequences that matter.
The best thing that could happen to the internet and society would be that it would be absolutely illegal to post anything inciting resistance or change of any kind on the internet.
Then, the resistance would go back to being real people in real rooms, secrets and whispers and actual plots to effect change in society for a more equitable and prosperous human future.
Because that’s how real change takes place. The powerful don’t try to make change by posting on instagram. (Advertisement and PR of course, but it’s not the organizational nexus) they gather in conference rooms, talk in person, and have social gatherings where they decide your future.
When they do use the internet to coordinate, it’s not in public forums, it’s encrypted communications, targeted and limited in scope.
The internet is useful, of course, and encrypted communication in private groups, even darkweb resources. But thinking you can use the official structure of the internet (public domain infrastructure, dns, walled gardens) as a primary means of subverting the dominant paradigm is foolish at best, suicidally counterproductive on the normative.
The internet was once subversive in and of itself. It no longer is. Now you’re just wearing signs at the mall.
The revolution thrives underground, not out in the open.
- mitxela 10d ago[dead]
- mitxela 10d agoA caveat: people would have to be talking to each other to talk about resistance to each other. They don't. Underground resistance forms out of existing "underground" social networks - social clubs, friends, people who know each other through any means. There's no longer any underground socialising at scale. We use the internet for it, where talk of resistance is strictly banned. Even when you talk offline it's monitored. If you talk in the vicinity of an LG TV, it's converting your speech to text and uploading it to their servers, ostensibly for AI training.
- K0balt 10d agoExactly. Why is it people don’t talk to each other? Why do they choose to have all of their discussions on the world’s largest and most powerful surveillance instrument? It’s actually not that hard to go to places where phones, cameras, and internet access is banned or heavily discouraged, and guess what? It’s just people talking to each other, like we did up until the mid 90s. Just providing a technology free context is enough to get people to talk to each other. I am a huge technology freak, but I can’t reasonably deny what I see, and that is that communications technology, in its present form, has been a terrible disaster for human communication because it made it effortless. As it turns out, making it effortless also made people not value it at an interpersonal level, and to lessen the value of all of the cultural machinery that hinges on communication ( and the effort of it) as a central pivot. Every step that makes communication more instantaneous and effortless undermines the value of character, honesty, and accountability. Follow this and you can see how this has brought us to where we are today, step by step, starting with the telegraph.
- mitxela 10d agoNudge theory. It's only got to be 1% more convenient than the alternative (and it's more than that), and you don't notice what you are giving up until it's too late.