day 14 - 15/11/20 : I am become tiktok, the destroyer of worlds

I had some cute lil philosophical idea for today's blog but my brain goes vrrrrt so I'm gonna start again on something else.

I saw a few people repost an interview from David Bowie who predicts the massive impact of the internet in 1999 so I'm gonna base today's blog off of just that - the cultural impact of the internet.

Far moved from the days of MSN and Bebo, with the internet we've been handed the keys to the liberation and/or demise of humanity. That's probably very dramatic for someone that can't go a day without saying badonkers cause he see funny e-girl on tiktok say it but I feel with every decade that goes by in this century, it'll become more and more true.

When the internet was first invented, it was intended to be an unregulated, non-state controlled market. Similar to things like freedom of press and freedom of speech, by cutting its ties to any overruling body or monopoly, it acts as another safeguard to rights. The best example I can think of to demonstrate this is hacktivist groups like Anonymous. Although they're a bit of a meme now, the fact that a de-centralised unassociated group of people, brought together only by a similar ethos can actually come together and organise via the internet and create tremors within spheres of power should be a symbol of its value as a method of scrutiny.

What we've seen especially over these past few years though are the negative side effects of operating the internet like a free-for-all. As Sean talked about in his blog, this is fake news and the onslaught of misinformation. Before I begin, let's not pretend as if misinformation is a new thing. Every cunt dictator in history worth their salt had enough resources to push their own propaganda. The key difference with the internet is how it removes these financial barriers and operates as the frontier of new news. If I really wanted to, right now I could buy some cheap domain, start a fictional news site and post heinous shite about Thomas McKeown and inject some hysteria into the public sphere at little to no cost to myself. For all Tom knows, this is just a single random troll, but it does reach the point where'd he have to address a horde of bots all posting about how an acclaimed Oxford student hurls Lebkuchen at innocent children at hopes they have a deathly cinnamon allergy. From there, the recycling of news material and a click-based algorithm takes care of the rest. While the internet would be one of the last bastions of power for people against an oppressive state, allowing them free reign to express their own ideas, organise and collaborate, the flipside of this is that some of those people can be dicks. All of this is against the backdrop of, as I mentioned, a click-based algorithm. Algorithm's can be hugely useful in streamlining processes and creating a unique digital profile that enhances your experience whenever you go online. It can also be easily abused. Continuing on with my example above, if I were to send out this horde of bots to post this very real newspiece about Thomas, the heatmap of mentions will attract real users like honey to flies. Now you have a proxy layer of real users posting and relaying this bogus story like a game of chinese whispers. As this goes on, it can be picked up by genuine news sites and becomes harder to trace it back to the original poisoned well. The real power of the internet is how it metasizes societal conflicts and bombard the recipient if thats the desired effect.

This all sounds vewwy scawwy which it is and probably should be but like literally everything, there's two sides to the coin. At this point, ditching the internet isn't even part of the equation, so as it and similar advancing technologies become adapted into more and more parts of your life (which it will), it's probably best to view it as a way of complementing your current life, rather than acting as a substitute for it.

It's coming up to midnight and I apologise cause even I know today was pretty weak. Regardless, thank you reading this far and I hope you can donate to our fundraiser as we're only $90 off of our next goal !!