This blogpost also exists as a vlog on YouTube.
Since the internet has become less and less free (as in freedom), I think that most normies would be content with a less free internet and just a corporate internet framework. Some may be creative and create accounts to make videos, create artwork or post pictures, but little to none would try to host their own website. They’d rather be on platforms where there’s a heavy amount of restrictions to what you may do. And besides, the creative people aren’t the majority of internet users.
So, in this blog, I’ve thought of breaking down our consumer-based internet, which most people nowadays use, in about 5 categories.
1. Consumption
In this category, people wouldn’t be crying if parts of their internet were to be blocked off behind a firewall of some kind, since they would most likely not even notice. They’d be pretty happy just to have their corporate-controlled part of the internet. May it be things like YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Netflix, Amazon, Ebay, etc.. They would most likely not even notice if parts of the internet were to be blocked off from them, since they’d only consume their daily media consumption from one of these platforms or waste their money on another. In a way, that part of the internet replaced the entire internet for them.
2. Messaging
It’s not uncommon a big part of the world’s population to have WhatsApp installed on their phone, even though they know it’s owned by Meta (formerly known as Facebook). Everyone is aware of the privacy risks connected with Meta, yet they don’t really care that much about privacy. Some of them though have been scared enough to become aware of the privacy risks connected with using WhatsApp and see what’s “more-private”, so those have installed Telegram on their phone, not realizing that it’s pretty much worse or atleast on the same levels as WhatsApp. While most-likely still having WhatsApp installed on their phone will every permission to scan it. And yet those don’t even know anything about Signal or maybe Threema (which is a forced meme). If they don’t use WhatsApp and are boomers, then they probably use something like unencrypted SMS, or better yet, they FaceTime their contacts. While the zoomer-equivalent would be to use Discord or Steam.
3. Research
As said before, what applies to consumption also applies here. People don’t even try to bother looking somewhere else if it is for informing themselves, they’d rather stay in a hive-mind and avoid sticking out. Most likely because it’s the easier route instead of trying to form your own opinion based on different ones. Yet, if they do however try to research something, maybe about current events, or just for example technical problems, they’d use Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo for the smug-“privacy” nerds. They then get served articles from popular sites like Wikipedia, government controlled news outlets or articles which were AI generated, filled with advertisements and have ~5 lines of information if any. I doubt anyone researching how to change their own brake pads would like a history lesson on the different kinds of materials used in brake pads. Though atleast on rare occasions, you do come across valuable articles which were (probably) made by an actual human, but those usually don’t even appear at the first site of the search engine, meaning about 90% (guessed) won’t see it since they don’t even view the second page. Besides, nowadays these human-made sites probably get scanned by botnets and then fed into the AI, which generates those articles.
4. Cloud Devices
Ofcourse, everyone nowadays has a phone to consume media and a good chunk of people don’t even own a computer of any kind. Besides, some people have bought into the IOT trend, buying things like smart fridges or home assistants or even smart TVs with proprietary code which most likely call back home atleast every 5 minutes. While not only being constantly connected to the internet, they can listen to your voice directly “unless you turn the microphone off with a button press”. I personally don’t buy it and for obvious reasons you shouldn’t either. People should generally expect environments where there’s phones or any kind of IOT devices around to be compromised, since they could easily be calling back home and spy on you with a few lines of code.
5. Pornography
This category in part also applies to consumption, but I’ve thought that I should separate pornography from it. Even if nowadays everyone seems to notice the very suggestive or outright pornographic nature of social media platforms. Think of Instagram’s or TikTok’s content on a phone from a teenager. Not only would you expect them to see questionable media, they outright serve it to you in heaps if you just stare at it for a longer than usual time. The same applies to YouTube. Some might think now that having the ability to view content like porn on their favorite coomer-site or even on social media equals to free will, while I believe that is not the case. Most if not all realize that porn is not good for you and especially not for your psyche. It abuses your lust and libido and in turn just makes you sterile and deforms your view on women or men. While everyone has now normalized watching porn, even a few centuries ago it was neither easily available nor popular to view it. So why view it now?
Now of course this doesn’t apply to the entire human population, but seeing that it applies to atleast the biggest part of internet users, it should be worrisome atleast. No one stops and asks themselves if they are really in control of their desires or if they let themselves get led on by digital women.
In Conclusion
If you see yourself inside of one or more of these categories, I’d suggest you to try and reduce your internet consumption in general to get your psyche together. You could start by replacing your daily consumption of TikTok content with a walk outside or if you have a bigger attention span then I’d suggest to read a book. Start enjoying real life instead of having to rely on quick dopamine rushes before it is too late. Enjoy life for what it really is, not what the internet tells you to what it should be. For everything on the internet is fake and only reality is real. Enjoy reality’s bleakness and you will find beauty in it.
