Inspired by the post about the hieroglyphs the one dude hoped would last forever.

People always talk about future historians being confused at memes and old forums, but surely a lot of catastrophic events could just wipe out the internet wholesale, right? If something REALLY COOL posadist-nuke like a giant meteor wiped out everybody, what if aliens came along and were deeply confused that our culture seems to end randomly in the mid 2010s, subsumed by an internet whose only remaining shreds are references in big scientific studies?

The history textbooks on our dumb asses would surely read “and the humans all talked into screens and used “hyper links” to share information and opinions. Very little is known about this obscure human ritual as no evidence can be found of its existence beyond scattered references in ancient texts contemporary to its existence.”

Thinkin bout the impermanence of the internet rn

    • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      15·
      6 个月前

      There’s a phrase that’s been living inside my head lately, a brain parasite, some burrowing larva covered in thorns and barbs of words.

      Nice to see RFK Jr on Substack!!!

      Nihilism is so eyerolling and juvenile Idk. Like

      Meet The Edgy Influencers Making Holocaust Denial Hip Again. Are we in trouble? Maybe, but even trouble is ending.

      Oh yeah must be nice being a cishet neurotypical white guy in suburban america, fucking idiot. Nobody else has the safety to do nihilism, really. Of course you have the privilege not to give a fuck about fascism.

      It even seems to be killing off sex, replacing it with more cheap, synthetic ersatz. Our most basic biological drives simply wither in its cold blue light.

      wut Oh no, not this guy again! Shinzo Abe motherfucker!!!

      All those pouty nineteen-year-old lowercase nymphets, so fluent in their borrowed boredom, flatly reciting don’t just choke me i want someone to cut off my entire head.

      Idk man sounds kinda based? Don’t kinkshame bro.

      And it’s true that the internet has changed some things: mostly, it’s helped break apart the cohesive working-class communities that produce a strong left, and turned them into vague swarms of monads.

      Yeah, guy?

      This article sucks soz, dude is pure cringe. He’s not even entirely wrong about the death of stuff on the internet, the thrust of the article isn’t bad just a techbro ass…

      It’s Uber for dogs! It’s Uber for dogshit! It’s picking up a fresh, creamy pile of dogshit with your bare hands—on your phone!

      However this kinda fucks lmao.

        • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
          6·
          6 个月前

          Prolly one of those slightly inexplicable communists who wants socialism but has personal values to the right of the soviet russian government

          • sadchip [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
            3·
            6 个月前

            Eh, I guess I’ll defend him a bit because I do read him pretty often.

            He’s definitely got a Marxist kernel in his writings. If you go back and look at his older stuff it’s pretty on-brand ML internet blogging. That being said, he’s by no means a “good communist” in any sense, but i don’t think he’s trying to be. I think a few years ago he made a shift towards a literary approach, where the arguments he explicitly makes in an essay may not necessarily be what the actual intention of the piece is, and he will often turn what you think is a cut-and-dry op-ed about some recent event into a totally hallucinatory retelling from some events from the middle ages. The point he’s making is often entirely unclear, and honestly i kinda vibe with that sometimes.

            Here, though, i think he’s making some pretty clear arguments (though the whole “the internet is literally going to end” may not actually be one of them). A big part of what he’s saying about the internet is that what you find on it just doesn’t fucking mean anything. His bit about the Holocaust isn’t about an actual existing increase of Holocaust denial, which may be occurring, but rather about bullshit articles that claim that there is without any actual basis in reality. It’s just people making shit up for clicks. This isn’t new, it’s always been a part of the internet, but it’s reaching a point where the signal-to-noise ratio is converging on zero, where everything is all meaningless slop which is making our lives worse.

            The internet has enabled us to live, for the first time, entirely apart from other people. It replaces everything good in life with a low-resolution simulation. A handful of sugar instead of a meal: addictive but empty, just enough to keep you alive. It even seems to be killing off sex, replacing it with more cheap, synthetic ersatz. Our most basic biological drives simply wither in its cold blue light. People will cheerfully admit that the internet has destroyed their attention spans, but what it’s really done away with is your ability to think. Usually, when I’m doing something boring but necessary—the washing up, or walking to the post office—I’ll constantly interrupt myself; there’s a little Joycean warbling from the back of my brain. ‘Boredom is the dream bird that broods the egg of experience.’ But when I’m listlessly killing time on the internet, there is nothing. The mind does not wander. I am not there. That rectangular hole spews out war crimes and cutesy comedies and affirmations and porn, all of it mixed together into one general-purpose informational goo, and I remain in its trance, the lifeless scroll, twitching against the screen until the sky goes dark and I’m one day closer to the end. You lose hours to—what? An endless slideshow of barely interesting images and actively unpleasant text. Oh, cool—more memes! You know it’s all very boring, brooding nothing, but the internet addicts you to your own boredom. I’ve tried heroin: this is worse. More numb, more blank, more nowhere. A portable suicide booth; a device for turning off your entire existence. Death is no longer waiting for you at the far end of life. It eats away at your short span from the inside out.

            Say he’s wrong.

            • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
              5·
              6 个月前

              Quoting myself:

              This article sucks soz, dude is pure cringe. He’s not even entirely wrong about the death of stuff on the internet, the thrust of the article isn’t bad just a techbro ass…

              I’m not holding his feet to some NOT A GOOD COMMUNIST fire, and I don’t even disagree with the “pretty clear arguments” he makes, his social politics are fuckin unbearable though. “Holocaust denial people? Eh, everything ends” is borderline verbatim what he says, whatever you might read into it. His goofy scaremongering about women posting kink stuff or people NOT HAVING SEX CUZ COMPUTER (classic bullshit comments have been removed from hexbear for) among other things, tells me what I know about this guy. All stuff I said in my direct reply to you.

              I read the article.

              • sadchip [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
                2·
                6 个月前

                This is an argument against nihilism that’s emerged online. It’s not “Holocaust denial people? eh, everything ends,” it’s “the internet trivializes genocide denial by treating it as a silly social trend instead of a real existing tendency, effectively reducing it to noise that nobody will pay attention to.”

                His goofy scaremongering about women posting kink stuff

                I don’t see the bit about the lowercase nymphets as scaremongering. It’s about this drive for increasingly provocative content that is trying harder and harder to capture our attention and, somehow, our money. Wild and crazy kinks? Cool. Wild and crazy kinks created entirely to capture attention online, backed by the capitalist profit incentive? Kinda cringe.

                or people NOT HAVING SEX CUZ COMPUTER (classic bullshit comments have been removed from hexbear for) among other things, tells me what I know about this guy.

                Why’s this bullshit? Has there not been a loss of intimacy since phones and the internet? Cause I gotta say, I’m a pretty lonely mf’er right now and, being totally transparent out here, this would have been a much harder situation to get myself in without internet porn and reddit/YouTube bullshit. And even sample size of one and all, are you going to totally deny a causal relationship between the rise of the internet and the apparent loneliness everywhere?

                That being said, he’s British, and well uhh… oof.

            • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
              4·
              6 个月前

              It even seems to be killing off sex, replacing it with more cheap, synthetic ersatz. Our most basic biological drives simply wither in its cold blue light.

              Also lmao, as I said above what is it with people upholding Shinzo Abe thought?