Gen-Z will Probably Succumb to Mind Control
Unfortunately, the CIA’s (public) attempts at developing mind control were a success and we’re starting to recognize it’s fruits now. Every day, more and more content online is generated by large language models controlled by the most deplorable people in American (and Chinese) society. We’ve already seen how powerful of propaganda machines these things are. TikTok, X, Instagram have all become personalized propaganda machines not only meant to control your mind but meanwhile gripping your attention so hard you think you love it.
This is going to functionally destroy social media as we know it, and Gen-Z is massively unready. We Gen-Z were born with social media, it became our reference point for everything cultural. It’s our version of the TV, the osteria, the town square, etc. If the internet were to suddenly disappear, Gen-Z would be useless. Gen-Z is unable to organize without social media, we’re not even able to imagine having any sort of large scale cultural discourse without social media.
What, then, happens once social media (our only cultural reference point) is intercepted by millions and billions of non-human “users” controlling and carefully curating our social tides?
Gen-Z is left with one of two choices:
- Succumb to mind control; allow the broligarchs all the power they crave in forming our opinions and conditioning our reality.
- Lose our only cultural reference point; leave behind the internet before it’s post-human demise, hoping to return to something better.
What we need to do large scale is beyond me. To me this seems to be a problem built upon another problem. Nothing on the internet is actually real or important in any meaningful sense. If people didn’t have the attitudes and habits they have formed around the internet there wouldn’t be any of these problems in the first place and generative AI would have little ability to condition anything.
The only thing we can do as individuals is eliminate the internet as a central part of our life. If you can’t keep in touch without social media they are not your friends. If you can’t work without social media then it’s not a real job. Most people just want keep social media as a ’necessary evil’ in their life because they think that the internet is somehow equivalent to–or an adequate shadow of– reality. None of it is real and this delusion only gonna get worse if people don’t realize that.
Apart from brute force abstinence (important), if we really want to preserve the beneficial parts of the internet we need a revival of the artisan/hobbyist internet.
We need an anti-clanker, people’s internet. Maybe I’m just a strong technological reactionary but the only way I see any parts of the internet surviving this is through a return to the self-hosted personal site and a large-scale rejection of an internet centered lifestyle. That obviously spells minimalism and anti-consumerism, which is clearly very popular with the technocratic overlords behind this mess. But, that’s kind of the point.
In all honesty, I am very doomeristic about all this. I don’t see a real, large-scale rejection of intrusive smart technology happening anytime soon. And let’s be real–nobody’s expecting any global superpowers to lead a march towards digital minimalism. These changes take place on the individual and cultural level.