#20: Ultradumb Beam
Recently, not for the first time, someone pointed out that our current president beams his thoughts and opinions into our collective minds on a daily basis, almost literally. The average Twitter user, a savvy information consumer, sees the internet, and Twitter in particular, as the antidote to all the cumbersome propaganda that was transmitted to past generations via old world media like television and talk radio. Now, many of us don’t even own TVs anymore. We’ve seized the means of production and begun curating our own information. Right?
We've seemingly returned to more primal forms of thought control, whether we recognize it or not. The internet is retribalizing us, McLuhan would say. Emily Dreyfuss makes the compelling case that Facebook has become "too big to delete." It's an essential part of life for countless people who might otherwise choose to log off permanently, a natural monopoly our antitrust laws are too antiquated to hack apart. Facebook tries to be everything to everyone and usually succeeds, but the good always arrives bundled with the bad. Come for the superficial contact with cousins and high school friends; stay for the trolls, hate speech, and solipsistic tailoring of information based on individual past behavior. Dreyfuss's argument of course, extends far beyond Facebook. The whole internet, including Twitter, is too big to delete or even ignore.
1984 led us to believe that state propaganda would be involuntary and heavy-handed. Instead, it manifests itself as an army of meme-worms that burrow into our brains and consume them from the inside, a privilege we clamor for. Yes, we have the freedom to tune it all out, but we might as well be forced to pay attention.
Reads:
I'm So Excited to Precision-Cook My Meat While Also Attacking Website Around the World.
Owen Hatherley: In defense of the high rise.
Until next time,
Drew