The only real person left on the internet
The internet is all fake.
This past weekend I put up a thread in my Night's Gate group talking about this. It's called the Dead Internet Theory.
There was a time in living memory when you could use the internet for cool, interesting, weird, and even useful things.
I like being able to find and read most any book and most any research article ever published, without traveling to archives scattered all over the planet... or shelling out hundreds or thousands of bucks for that rare item.
I enjoy having limitless access to music in every genre and style I could imagine, and many that I couldn't have only a few years ago.
Everything else is a write-off.
Google's search results get worse every year. More ads, more SEO-optimized garbage. The days of stumbling into the new and interesting are long behind us.
F*cebook and the bird site are psychotic episodes generated by the bots which are 90% of accounts there.
You can't even be sure you're interacting with real people.
Nitflux... I don't even watch TV. Okay, I like Cobra Kai. But that's it.
I miss walking into music shops and rifling through racks of CDs and tapes. I miss real book stores.
All gone now.
Instead we've got phones surgically wired into our optic nerves, channeling an endless river of filth into our brains.
Call me elitist if you want. I feel no shame for having standards and expectations for myself.
I don't walk through life with the identity of a mass consumer.
Here's a secret for you:
There is no such thing as progress that is 100% good.
No matter how much it looks like a gain, every change comes with a price tag.
No technology is a neutral instrument. What we build, builds us back.
This being the reason I'm so insistent on email and my own private group.
I don't believe that public social media has been a net positive. I think it's brought us to the edge of self-destruction and mass psychosis, thanks to its reach and influence.
But I do believe that the internet -- NOT Big Tech -- is one of the best things that ever happened as far as being able to meet and communicate with other people.
We've had that warped by a decade of howling demons shouting at us.
Those of us with our mental faculties intact are sick of it.
Quite so.
If you want a quiet space without the howling demons... and where I'll drop you a gems of soothing Southern-drawled wisdom... swing by Night's Gate.
And tell a friend, if you know of any real non-bot humans left online.
Be good & take it easy.
Matt Perryman