1- There are kids everywhere
Back when I used the internet in the mid-2000’s, there were designated spaces for kids and adults. In the adult spaces, there was an understanding that kids didn’t belong. If the kids made their voices heard, they were anonymous so no one could tell. Now thanks to social media, that barrier has been erased, and that erasure has been normalized. Now we have kids openly dominating groups and spaces specifically designed for adults, and the new cynicism (I’ll go into this soon) exploits that to create a weird infantilized version of adult media designed to attract kids while pretending to appeal to adults. The openness with which kids express themselves everywhere now makes being online such an uncomfortable experience for an adult trying to enjoy his adult interests or have his own space with other adults in an adult way. We have to constantly navigate how to talk around other people’s neglected children. Children shouldn’t be allowed to use the internet openly or without constant supervision, and they should definitely not be part of any discussion and ecosystem that’s adult oriented.
2- The New Cynicism
Everything is self promotion. Everything is an attempt to make money. If something isn’t making money, its not worth anything. If something does make money, that makes it worth something. Everything everywhere and everyone everywhere exists to be exploited for personal gain. Everyone is that annoying guy on the street corner selling you tapes. Except that annoying guy at least had the restraint to stay in the street corner. Now you can’t breathe, turn any corner, read a single word without obnoxious self promotion and greed flashing its ugly genitals in your face. LIKE FAVOURITE AND SUBSCRIBE! Authenticity is dead.
3- Social media, advertiser appeasement and self-censorship
Social media is the lowest low of the internet. It has no intrinsic value, but pretends that it does because it puts up numbers. Judging by social media’s logic, massacres have incredible value. Anyway, besides killing anonymity (by making every website linkedIn), turning the internet into a formulaic shithole, and reducing the standards and overall intelligence of all beings, social media is also guilty of reducing the quality of everything on the internet (for everyone). You see, people’s over-reliance on social media means that the standards set by social media sites become internet-wide, since making something that doesn’t fly on one social media site means less clicks, less money, less happy advertisers, and less of your work being recommended to others. And social media sites copy each other. This, combined with social media’s knowing exploitation of its underage userbase (the new cynicism), means that everything now has to cater to neither adults nor children. And people have to censor how they speak and express themselves because they don’t want to alienate any age, advertiser, or demographic. Which is impossible. This turns all language and expression into a single gray mush that says and does nothing. Adult stuff is not fully adult, and kid stuff is not fully kid-friendly. Nothing is nothing. Everything is nothing. Of course, all sensible people have to do is abandon ship and make whatever they want, but the numbers are too alluring, even if the numbers are made up of mostly children you wouldn’t want watching your stuff anyway, or are, if we’re honest, entirely fake.
______
Leave a Reply