The Dead State of the Internet I

The internet nowdays is so fucking sad and braindead—where could we go now?

10/21/2024

How to disappear completely

Some months ago I finally took the plunge and deleted all my social media accounts. It was a really hard decision since I knew that for many people I would ontologically cease to exist, and I’d probably miss the “interesting” content I used to consume on them. I’ve never been a person that needs the attention of as many people as possible, so I didn’t expect that much of a downside, but the media I used to find “inspiring” (obviously curated by myself and not the algorithm) would be something hard to find again since stupid people tend to centralize everything in social media nowdays, which most of the time is behind some kind of paywall (either $ or your data). Digital coffin.

After some time, I must admit I’m completely oblivious to whatever is happening in the mainstream sphere of digital society—thankfully, I have always given a shit about it since nowadays it is more than obvious that Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle is a complete and sad reality. But, at the same time, this sense of freedom of thought and action does feel invigorating—it is kind of an awakening after being trapped in such a horrible chamber of illusion and brainwashing… Non-existence never felt so good.

There’s a book I’m intrigued to read called How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency written by Akiko Busch. I’m sharing it here in case you’re interested in reading it too.

Social media is venom that poisons everyone—in fact the whole Internet is already contaminated

Even though I feel a beautiful quality of liberation, I started to notice how the market dynamics of social media have affected absolutely every corner of the internet and, therefore, “real life”. For example, Instagram is a platform that is so popular that it is almost impossible to find a person that doesn’t have an account, which one could say “So?”. The issue I find here is that people now live their lifes, think and act as if they were on social media. This behavior is more noticable in the younger generations called “Zoomers”, but it is not exclusive to them. In fact, “Millenials” and “Gen Xers” are not far from this behavior either… Is this their fault? I believe not. Now all the damned Internet works as a social media platform, and this will shape people’s perception of the world.

Just like Marshall McLuhan said:

We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.

Of course this is more than obvious and is a topic well researched by people like Geert Lovink, Ekaitz Cancela, and many more. Nowadays you don´t need to have a PhD to know it—what I´m trying to point out is that we are indeed living in a politicized, confrontational, kind of “gamificated” society that is not, in my particular view, healthy at all: “Likes! Likes! Likes! Upvotes! Views! Go viral!”. The majority of people ignore this fact—actually, they rejoice! Like coprophiliacs, they eat & dance between digital shit! Thinking this is “human nature”, which of course is not—we are being sabotaged and this post-modern society dismisses it as “the way it is, what could we do?”.

Social media services are absolute venom and atrophy people’s attention and perception of the world beyond sanity.

Is there no escapatory?

I believe the internet is worsening with each day, as I pointed out already, making people complete brainwrecks & incapable of rational thinking and feeling. That’s why, at least for me, the only solution is to completely destroy all your social media profiles.

Recently I went to a philosophical talk about the dangers of social media and there were people that, sadly, defended the “reality” of their profiles as “theirselves”. “Reality” by itself is a quite deep topic, which I prefer to see through the Buddhist lens, but to avoid digressing too much, saying your Instagram profile is “the real you” is quite ignorant—people are shaped by digital market interests…

There’s this study I found quite interesting about the term “Profilicity” coined by Hans Georg-Moeller which explains how people now perceive others in quite a hyper-hyperreal way.

Apathy & indifference are modern day diseases which many people seem to carry with pride, which is exactly the function of an ideology: When it is taken for granted—“the way life simply is”.