Stuff on the Brain Vol.1: Hyperbole, Homogeneity, and the Death of the Funinternet

Let's start with something light:

the dead internet has been subsumed by corpo algorithms.

Too dark?

A bit lighter, perhaps:

YouTube shows me the same fifty videos over and over.

Big deal. Why don't I cry about it?

Well, don't threaten me with a good time!

But it's not just about creators' engagement suddenly suffering from a media platform's "new" algorithm or the audience suffering from the narrowing tunnel of content. What's most worrisome is the lack of discourse about the multi-pronged attack happening to what we see and think about. Most of us are acutely aware of the echo chamber in which we experience the world. Certainly, this happened to some degree in every generation, whether it be the small town in which you grew up or the church you were dragged to, or the Hearst-owned newspaper you had no idea was owned by a magnate that would have used your bones to build upon if given the right cost/profit ratio. We've always been subject to propaganda, snake oil, and greed. The world can be a cruel place, and the cruelest of us have a mighty advantage (see above, a magnate using your ground bones as ce-ment). However, one of the great advantages of those who might gaslight others used to be how cloistered everyone was - the exposure to new ideas (ideas that might break a person out of their own mind-jail) was often hard to come by. So, when information became so easily accessible at the turn of the last century, it seemed we'd be rid of the cells that kept our expanding consciousnesses apart. Freedom! At least, that's what MTV in the 90s prognosticated. But instead, something much more insidious was being built under our nose: an internet built for wealthy corporations to track our movements, and sell to us at every single opportunity.

The end. Your welcome, and please rest easy now that I've explained how the internet works.

For a moment, though - forget the selling of your data (they'd REALLY love it if you forgot that). Instead, let's focus on a side-effect of corporations choosing what to shove into your eyeballs: the growing homogeneity of culture and art. To be clear - I recognize that our compliance in this unchecked dystopian adscape is probably the more devastating problem. But the loss of specificity in art, the dwindling individual perspectives of artists, and the same-ness of mediums caused by the constant regurgitation of our own cultural tail, Ouroboros-Style,

Ouroboros-style

is truly disheartening. As our Google searches come up with the same pages over and over again, as we are fed the same general-audience schlock, and as we are continually inundated with targeted advertising - our ability to discern simply...diminishes. Everything cannot be about competition. The hyperbole bred out of everything needing to be the "best" or the "top ten" is nonsensical and annoying. Convenience, as wonderful as it can be, is overrated. Through the challenges of making ones own choices in the ever-present sea of human interest without the "help" of the algorithm bullseye on our back, we develop a deeper fondness for our curated interests. There is something intrinsically positive about needing to sift through a junk-pile for that special something.

So, where do we go? What do we do? Is it all over? Maybe. There are a lot of reasons to think this cultural decline is potentially a species-level decline. But, in the case that it is not, we need to reclaim a way to communally elevate the art and communication of the individual again. It's not about returning to some time or place in history in which it was better. We're all better off not throwing literal shit out of windows into cobblestone streets. The whole point of moving forward and evolving (if you believe in that sort of thing) is take from what we've learned and make cumulative, nuanced improvements. And I think divesting from the algorithms might be our last, greatest chance at survival.

Our "great" history - throwing shit into the streets.