The internet wants to be fragmented

I think this might be structurally related to our political ideology of liberal democracy.

We assume that bad takes die out or are overcome by good takes in the marketplace of ideas. Therefore, the ‘magnitude’ of a bad take should intuitively be close to 0, and the magnitude of a good take should be positive and nonzero.

Allowing negative scores permits bad takes to become large in magnitude. Allowing or disallowing downvotes is basically just scaling the distribution of magnitude of takes since bad takes will sit closer to zero than good takes in general, even if they cannot be downvoted.

Being the same person online as offline destroyed everything great about the internet. When you were an asshole you got banned from the website, and then you had to trim some of your sharp edges off so you didn't get banned from the next one. These days being an asshole results in either you aurrou ding yourself entirely with other assholes or getting your real life ruined by losing your job or even being arrested in some countries. There's no more opportunity to learn and grow. You either get it right the first try or you keep your online discourse rated PG so you don't cross the wrong people.

Everything is so serious now. We couldn't even go back if we wanted to, because ignoring and banning xXWeedLuvurXx for calling you the n-word and moving on is a lot tougher when his name is John Smith and he works in accounting.

One of the most frightening bits of social science/philosophy I heard came from Slavoj Zizek, because it's about harbingers of big change.

I have tried in vain to find a written reference. It's buried within some of his often tediously tangential talks - but I would love to know if any former Yugoslavians can attest to the truth or falsity of it.

Zizek said that the former Yugoslavia was a tense but stable amalgam for decades in which good humour and brutally free speech - including "edgy but acceptable" racism - was permitted and even celebrated.

Sometime before the 90s that changed, and a chilling taciturnity overcame the nation. The "politically correct" atmosphere was a lead up to civil war.

It's possible Zizek completely misreads cause and effect. But I always take his point to be - as elementary psychoanalysis - that when people stop talking about how they really feel, it's the start of a road to trouble; jaw jaw jaw being better than war, war, war. The culture of faux "offence" created by Social media had definitely done the same to online discourse.

> The entire problem lies with the twisted motives of social media

Exactly! I myself do not identify with "we take the internet wherever we go, and its little colored icons are always beckoning, telling us to abandon whoever we’re talking to or whatever we’re working on and check the latest posts."

This is due to a few things. First, having long established pattern of using desktop computers / laptops, revealing "smart" phones as frustratingly limited devices. I can tap out maybe 5wpm on a mobile device, perhaps 10-20wpm if it has swipe input. Yet on a familiar keyboard, I can do upwards of 120-140wpm. That's an order of magnitude difference, with the qualitative difference of being able to type at the speed I am thinking.

This means when I'm using a mobile device, I'm only using it begrudgingly because I'm away from a real computer and need to solve a problem. If I'm hanging out with friends and someone else texts me, basically the last thing I want to do is take my phone out of my pocket, focus on a tiny screen, and start plodding along tapping out characters. This behavior descends from having mobile computing devices much earlier than most people (laptop and palm pilot around Y2k), when it was not socially accepted to ignore the people you're with and play with your device.

The second is that for a long time I used a phone running Lineage/microG, with only software from F-droid. Free software is designed with its main goal of helping the user accomplish their own goals, rather than the perverse incentive of proprietary web/apps that treat the user as a subject to be sucked in for as long as possible ("engagement"). If I take my phone out of my pocket to use the calendar or calculator or whatever, it's not like I then want to continue scrolling through my calendar or dividing numbers. If I take my phone out to show someone some photos, that is a real-world social activity. Both are limited stimulation based on tasks that can be finished, rather than the endless drip-drip of social media.

Sadly I stopped using that phone due to the early 4G shutdown in the US, and I have yet to find a good device to replace it. I've been using a throwaway "full take" Android that the carrier sent me for free, but my usage patterns have basically stayed the same. When I'm home, I generally leave that phone near the door since I have no use for it until I go out again.

Of course it's easy for me to say this - the difficult part is how to kick one's own addiction to the always-on proprietary software hellhole. I'd propose a large part of this is segmenting your usage across different physical devices - despite the universality of computation, having one or two devices that encompass all of simple tasks like checking the weather, employment, personal productivity, creativity, active relaxation, and passive relaxation is an anti-pattern. It simply blurs the lines too much.

Get at least one new device, ideally running only Free software, but at the bare minimum you need to not install any of the corporate willpower-destroying apps. You can still keep your "trash" device with all those apps you can't imagine living without, but silence the notifications and leave it on a desk/coffee table/etc. Only check on it occasionally, like daily or when you're relaxing at night or when you need to accomplish a specific task on one of the corporate dopamine apps.

The internet is vast. But if your attention is fully absorbed between twitter and substack (like the author is), you feel trapped, because, well, you are.

Maybe try to venture out of your internet comfort zone. It's not all spam out there, nor is it worthless because it was not recommended by someone cool. Just don't be lazy