Why the Internet is Making Our Societies Self-Destruct

[Nevilledog]

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❤️ Umair
@umairh
"The rise of the swarm has become a serious threat to our stability. Swarm behaviour defines the terms of everything from politics to culture now — extremists and fanatics who are able to act collectively, radicalise others, and share resources."

eand.co
Why the Internet is Making Our Societies Self-Destruct
The Swarm and the Hive, or Why the Internet is Killing Everything it Touches
8:32 AM · Feb 9, 2022

https://eand.co/the-internet-has-become-poisonous-7f8de38a45fc

*snip*

The three things the internet is doing. It’s enabling collective action — but by the fanatics, extremists, and lunatics amongst us. It’s radicalizing more of us into fanaticism, extremism, lunacy. And it’s enabling resource sharing among the new radicalised and coordinated fanatics.

Let me elucidate what I mean. Imagine that 10% of us — before the internet — were fanatics and extremists, of whatever kind, supremacists, anti-vaxxers, bigots, and so forth. Not a big deal. Society can and did handle that, because that relatively tiny number of people was fragmented and atomized. One in this city, one in that one, another one here. Maybe they’d come together once a year — no big deal, really. No collective action was really possible. No resource sharing was really possible. And further radicalisation didn’t tend to happen.

Then along came the internet. Or at least the corporate internet. And now what happens? That 10% of lunatics, fanatics, and extremists can suddenly take collective action. They can get together every day and plan their occupations and campaigns of harassment and intimidation and outright violence like Jan 6th and whatnot. Suddenly, the lunatics have power.

And much worse than that. They can spread their message. Now they can further radicalise formerly mainstream people, “normies,” into their extremism and fanaticism. It’s especially seductive in times like these, where stability is a distant memory, and life is precarious and insecure. They can spread their message with a vengeance — remember, they’re fanatics, and we’re not.

*snip*

[calimary]

1. Scary stuff.

[Celerity]

2. Swarm behaviour

a staple

[zaj]

3. This is ridiculous. Nothing about the internet is different today...

... than during 2016 or even during the Arab Spring.

The US media is just now, 5-6 years too late, waking up to the reality that Donald Trump was a violent, criminal, narcissist mafia boss. And the GOP elected leaders and voters were exactly the same... violent, criminal, narcissist,mafia boss, authoritarian followers.

And that democracy is fragile. We were screwed the moment the GOP collapsed into support for Trump in 2016.

It's not the internet's fault.

It's people being terrible and others letting them be terrible for YEARS.

/RANT

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. No. Quantitative changes can become qualitative when they cross unknown thresholds

1. The internet was a factor in the 2016 debacle.

2. The internet today is bigger and more active and more people have smart phones and more people use them more and the tone has gotten more strident.

3. There is a greater degree of "outrage for profit and gain" operating now than before.

4. More automated "algorithms" for channeling attention. This greater degree is out of direct control of site operators.

5. tRumpism has enabled lots of maggots to crawl out of the rotting flesh of the GOP.

Obviously it is not the internet's fault, but rather the use of the internet by producers and consumers. To quibble that "it's not the internet's fault" is to misdirect attention.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. Thesis has a point, but they oversell it. Does NOT "kill everything it touches". Crap statement

Writer writes "Internet is Killing Everything it Touches" ...

... wait for it ...

... on the internet. The internet that benefits the write by publishing the thesis widely.

Is the writer dead yet?
Is the writer's writing dead yet?
Is eand.co site dead yet?

There is an important point in the excerpt that I have been thinking of myself for a while, but the writer shits on their own message.