Information Age? Yeah, no.
@JMN
DISCLAIMER: [<--Yes, this is also a joke.]
This is meant to be an IMPARTIAL CRITIQUE, framed as a SATIRICAL/JADED "hot-take" based on my observations of online social behaviours across ALL walks of life.
BTW, if you block me after reading this you are just proving my point...
GLHF & chill TF out people.
TLDR:
-Online social burnout is real problem.
-Free speech is treated like a zero-sum game.
-Most "opinions" nowadays are recycled echo-chamber bullshit; WGAF really?
-"Good faith" epistemological conversations are rarely agreed to or interpreted as such.
-People are afraid of their world-view being undermined via a bad faith argument.
-Negative reactions cost time/energy, so blocking/disengaging is often the healthiest short-term move, in an effort to avoid a negative-sum end scenario.
"The only winning move is not to play." - line from 1983 movie, WarGames.
BREAD & CIRCUSES
Welcome to the 21st Century; the theatre of perpetual offense, where every minor grievance is staged as a moral emergency and nuance is politely escorted offstage.
We live in an era that promises educational rivers of crystal clear clarity, yet delivers an incessant deluge of brackish, toxic sludge that would turn any environmental lawyer into a slobbering hound and sounds like a direct-to-Netflix "Erin Brockovich" sequel.
For pennies on the dollar you get: more sources, more signals, and exponentially more reasons to be outraged before your morning coffee has had its way with you...
The result is a culture that confuses volume with virtue and virality with veracity.
People like to think they're raging against the machine, then check the metrics on whether or not their latest hot-take has gotten enough virtual traction and been monetized hard enough to justify their most recent online purchase or bad decision.
Also, there’s a particularly tragic comedy in watching someone craft a manifesto of conviction and then quietly erase it when a single commenter points out a contradiction or if it doesn't stroke their ego enough.
The performance of righteousness has become a spectator sport scored by likes and retweets, not by proper argument or irrefutable evidence.
Courage, it turns out, is often conditional on the absence of inconvenient facts.
Let’s not pretend all of this is trivial; calling out genuine harm matters.
But noble impulses get mangled when filtered through platforms that reward outrage and then punish nuance. Conversations that might have been slow, awkward, and productive instead become short, loud, and performative.
Free speech is reframed as a zero-sum pie: if you get a slice, someone else must be denied one, must be oppressed, must be unheard.
Fear of reprisal is its natural enemy; an insidious neurotoxin snaking its way throughout the shadows of society, coiling around people's minds and halting the tongues of those that would speak the true-true.
[That's a "Cloud Atlas" reference, for those playing at home.]
Practicality beats principle more often than we like to admit, so if defending your position online requires a PhD in patience and a tolerance for bad faith, sometimes the sanest option is to step away. Block, mute, disengage.
Some may call it craven or cutting your losses, but let's be honest, outrage is flooding the proverbial markets while mental stability is selling at a fucking premium.
The Elegant Irony:
The "Information Age" gave us unprecedented access to facts and arguments, and we used it to perfect the art of not listening. We have more ways to be heard than ever, and fewer reasons to hear one another.
Humanity built a machine to spread knowledge, hoping it will foster understanding. Instead, we turned it into a thought-dampening megaphone, pointing it at those deemed "other", drowning out the truth with noise until we are so desensitised and too exhausted to fight back, we would rather just escape reality...
Is this THE END? I fucking hope not...
Thank you for taking the time to read this dreadful drivel.
Personally, I'm sick and tired of the fact that old world tribalism is being weaponised to cause more division in a time when we can understand each other better than ever...
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Comments (43)
"Practicality beats principle more often than we like to admit, so if defending your position online requires a PhD in patience and a tolerance for bad faith, sometimes the sanest option is to step away. Block, mute, disengage." We agree with this statement, JMN. At this point, we don't expect to change anyone's minds. We know how echo chambers work, and we know people only ever change their minds because of real, lived experiences--for example, a number of MAGA are finally turning against Trump as they realize he lied about bringing down food and gas prices, and because he started a needless war in the middle east, not because they saw some clever progressive meme on social media. Also, the reason we block people is not to stifle their speech. We have NEVER reported a political post that we disagree with, and we never will. No, the reason we block people is because we don't like them anymore and we don't want to hear from them anymore. That's it, seriously. Until Republicans end American democracy as we know it, it’s our right to ignore people we don’t like. Final thought: We created our Progressive-themed clan not to change minds; as stated above, we know people have to change their own minds. Rather, we created our clan mostly just to see who our true friends and allies are, the kindred spirits who feel, as we do, that Progressive policies offer a much brighter future than Conservative policies. In other words, it’s just a place for people to say, “We agree, and we got your back.” That’s it, really.
Interesting post. I don't see it as all that satirical; it strikes me as rather realistic.(I had to edit this because I accidentally wrote it in Spanish)😄
Gracias hombre! But don't worry—I don't mind writing to you in English; that way, I get to practice.
Hahaha, we do what we can.
Hi, I tried to understand your comment😅—is this what you meant? “Never mind. What I’m trying to say is that the way this situation works really says a lot. I was commenting on the Information Age article, because this is a topic I’ve been thinking about my whole life. We live in a society that often grows at the expense of others—a kind of cannibalizing environment. Slavery, in many forms, has never truly been addressed among the general population, and because of that, we still experience versions of it today. Sensationalism, distortion, and omission seem to dominate the information we receive. It becomes a vicious cycle. Whether it’s radio, TV, phones, or anything in between, we keep seeing the same ideas recycled. Over time, we realize that opposing sides can’t coexist peacefully in certain circumstances, and forced outcomes create lasting consequences. All of our institutions show that we’re stuck—there’s no real continuity or progress. The information we have, and what’s happening around us, makes that clear and always will.”
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