numb3r_5ev3n

...or as I like to call it, the Dork Enlightenment.

There have been some articles floating around about the so-called "Dark Enlightenment," but probably not nearly as much as there should be, seeing as how it's the philosophy behind Elon Musk's takeover of America; along with other Oligarchs he is aligned with like Peter Thiel.

( In a nutshell: it's the belief that the rich white men running Big Tech right now are superior to everyone else and have become Feudal Overlords. )

1. I went ahead and locked all my posts from before 2016. I was going back down memory lane through my archives a few nights ago. And realized that I was a completely different person back then, and my attitudes about a lot of things have evolved since then. There has been a lot of "who is this person, I don't really recognize this person that I used to be." But I don't want to delete it.

I remember the people back in the day who would relocate and recreate their LJ almost every year ("new journal, new me!") That never made sense to me, but when you have literally 20 years of blog posts (omfg) it makes sense that maybe I'm not the same person anymore, and stuff from over a decade ago doesn't reflect me now.

2. I used to just blog about anything and everything that came into my head, and I really don't feel comfortable doing that anymore. Maybe to the opposite extreme that I used to. Like, "my head is a super uncomfortable place to be, and I don't feel like I should be inflicting that on other people."

3. I was lamenting the passage of Web 1.0 and inferring that maybe this Facebook thing wasn't all it was cracked up to be as far back as 2009, lol.

4. For a few years, I was subscribed to a service that posted my tweets directly to my LJ, as if that was the same thing as blogging. A bunch of context-free lines of text and links that went dead before long. Actually, I should probably go back and delete those.

I wish I could go back to 2009 and tell people that Facebook and Twitter would literally help to bring about the downfall of society. Because, ( what is this shit? What in the actual fuck? )

It occurred to me the other day that once praxis of internet use switched from being about networking in relative anonymity to being about "influencing" and "engagement" and "exposure," things really started to go off the rails. But somehow, platforms that have kept to the way things used to be seem to have more actual influence on culture. I mean, here's Elon Musk I mean, Adrian Dittman (or someone professing to be him) sucking up to excuse me, "keking" up to his "frens" on 4chan. Cringe.

Also: wow, the total capitulation of the mainstream media outlets to fascism sure is depressing, isn't it?

Nobody should be shocked. The idea that the NYT or Wapo or CNN were ever anti-Trump was a kayfabe. They were desperate to have him back, because he's good for their bottom line, and that's all they care about.

Welcome to the darkest timeline.