🎵 Grandpa Got Radicalized by an Online Echo Chamber 🎶
(To the tune of: Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer) Musings on: Optimism, Moore's Law, Stockholm Syndrome, Feudalism, Homoerotic Urges, etc.
Welcome to Ep. 4 of our “Headless Biker” series.
In the previous post (linked here),
we were talking about how that old found-footage of people doing things like defending drunk-driving could serve as more than just a stick to beat our forebears with. (Not that it can’t be that, too.)
Here’s one of those clips in question, for reference:
I’d been wondering aloud whether this sort of footage might actually be more relevant to our own lives than we’d like to think; it gives us a peek into the future, showing us just how ignorant/boneheaded we’ll come to look/sound in a few years. And this might inspire us to examine our own entrenched positions - or at least remind us not to get too dogmatic in our defense of them.
So that’s one side of the coin; the Cautionary Tale side. But it’s not all doom and gloom. Now, I don’t know any of those specific pro-DUI/anti-seatbelt car-owners from the videos personally, so they may not have changed their opinions/habits over time, but the stats tell us that they probably did: 90% of folks now wear their ‘belts today (compared to, like, 15% as recently as the 1980s), and this trends upward every year. So, these sorts of videos should also be taken as inspiration: they teach us how quickly things can change; things like social norms, public sentiment, and political will. (Again, look how confident that all of them were that they were on the right side of history.) These are all pretty powerful sentiments when it comes to social change - and ones that are extra important in a world where it’s easy to be overwhelmed, and to fall into defeatism/nihilism. These videos remind us that “Nobody cares until everyone does,” a phenomenon summed up well by this video (if you can disregard the abrasive audio):
The slightly ironic thing is that it does take a certain degree of [healthy] cynicism, in that you have to accept that a significant percentage of people (far more than we might realize/hope/prefer) fall into the “bulk” of the behavioral bell-curve. As much as we’d all like to think of ourselves as trend-setters, Free-Thinkers, and definitely-not-sheeple, the truth is that most of us are the people sitting on the hill in the video above. Even if we want to dance, we won’t join in unless/until it’s socially acceptable. This holds true in general life: the average person doesn’t have the time/interest to be informed - let alone to form their own distinct, nuanced opinion on - whatever your given cause/movement may be.
. . . on that note, make sure you’re subscribed. Everyone else is, so you’re missing out!!
Anyway, this means (and this is where the cynicism comes in, even if it’s just under the heading of: “Work smarter, not harder”) that the “cares” in “Nobody cares until everyone does” doesn’t have to mean actually cares, then, but rather: “is willing to be seen appearing to care.” This sounds like semantics, but it’s an important distinction, the upshot being that it’s usually not worth trying to get people to actually give a shit, or to be comprehensively informed about whatever it is you desperately want them to be. (Not at first, at least.) That’s very noble, but it’d take a ton of resources - if it were even possible. People are simply too resistant to change - especially if it seems like it’ll be socially risky, or will require any real activation energy . . . and that’s whether the status quo helps them or not.
All of this, by the way, is stuff that people with far less noble aspirations than you and I (and with far greater resources) have been fully aware of for a good while now. They know that if you really want to make things happen, you’re better off following the Golden Rule (as far as getting what you want): Ask for forgiveness, not permission. As in, if you want to implement something/or not for your own benefit, just do it. Deal with the consequences later. Wanna send troops to Iraq? Do it. Or charge people more for whatever subscription service you offer? Do it. Wanna sell their data in the process? Do it! They’ll put up a stink, but they’ll get over it eventually. They might even come to take your side! (Is it Stockholm Syndrome? Or something else?)We see this everywhere. Just look at how you still get working-class people defending Musk, et al., or even stuff like the $7.25 federal minimum wage in the US (the equivalent of about 5 gbp today. . . but at times it’s dropped to the equivalent of as low as 3.50!). It’s been the same since 2009, despite massive rises in inflation, house prices, gas prices, and the general cost of living. Those numbers/rates, though, like the “too big to fail” Wall St. banks [and their massive bailout packages], aren’t decided/managed/controlled by any elected officials/governing body. . . and yet look what happens: invariably, we acquiesce. In general, there are no ongoing, large-scale protests (for Iraq, I guess, but by the time we pulled everyone out of the region, the damage had been done), no bipartisan political movements, no collective action, etc. We grumble, but invariably knuckle down and keep moving, blaming each other, or immigrants, or some other nebulous force to blow off steam as/when needed.
Another perfect example: look at what Zuckerberg, Bezos, Apple, et al., did during the internet boom in the early 2000s. They went hog wild, playing god with all sorts of behaviorally manipulative algorithms/software and shiny, sweatshop-made devices, taking advantage of an American legal/political system that was (and still is) completely unequipped to manage this exponential rise in complexity and interconnectedness. Sure, our buddy Zuck gets called into senate hearings and fined a few million every couple of years, but so what? The damage is done. He’s made his billions, and has become arguably one of the most politically/socially influential people of all time. He sets the tune, and the government, along with billions of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp-consumers, march to it. Was any permission requested? No, of course not. And yet, we forgive. If, back in the mid-2000s, he would have gone around explaining the multifarious intentions of Facebook and the sociocultural and political implications of his actions (if he could have even known them), people would have tuned out, or expressed their disinterest.
In fairness, maybe he did try to get permission - but has anyone read more than a line and a half of any Terms and Conditions page, ever? Not I. But this only proves the point: he knew, and is showing us, that people will sacrifice pretty much everything - their privacy, attention, money, dignity - for absolutely nothing more than the ever-elusive reassurance that they’re not “missing out.” Once we were hooked, it didn’t matter if the downsides became public knowledge.
Until a few decades ago, the gap in political/tech literacy between the average person and the people at the bleeding edge of the metaphorical Wild West (of tech/innovation, etc.) has been somewhat manageable: The “innovators,” “mavericks,” and “disruptors” pushed the boundaries into the unknown (i.e., a legal/ethical gray area), and made a killing along the way, but the lovable old local cops always caught up a couple of years later, slightly out of breath, to deliver the slap(s) on the relevant wrist(s). The cycle continued on like this for centuries, driving society forward™. A little bit of lag between the bleeding edge and the trailing gen. pop. was fine. Hard-workin’, god-fearin’ folks could at least see/understand the gist of the Wild West, even if they didn’t want any part of it.
But what happens when one guy in this footrace (that’s gone on for tens of thousands of years) stumbles upon a motorbike, or even just a segway [and uses it to consolidate his lead to the point where it’s completely insurmountable]?
There’s a theory called Moore’s Law which says that technology (microchips, etc.) double in capability every two years, while reducing in price/size. This might be a good thing, if it weren’t for the fact that nothing else has kept pace. For example, it’s said that, if vehicles had advanced at the same pace, they’d cost nothing more than a few pennies, they’d be able to go 1,000,000 miles an hour, and get 1,000,000 miles to the gallon. Alas, not only have the other material aspects of our lives failed to keep pace, but our general understanding of things has, too. We have no understanding whatsoever of most of the stuff we use, consume, and ingest on a day-to-day basis How many people actually understand how a lightbulb or a toilet works, let alone wifi, Or their computer’s motherboard? We’re increasingly alienated from almost all aspects of our lived experience.
Point being: the gap in resources/knowledge between social classes/between those on the cutting edge and those who weren’t was microscopic compared to what it is today. If this were a boxing match, the ref would’ve stopped the fight.
The power dynamic between these elites and the rest of society has become closer to something from the pre-industrial, or even feudal age. Our tech billionaires have more power and influence (by far) than our elected officials, yet have had to pass no sort of test/evaluation neither of their mental states, nor of their intentions for themselves or society, nor anything else. And yet there’s nothing we can do about this, other than hope they decide, on some ego-/drug-fueled flight of fancy, to divert us from our headlong course towards climate collapse.
It’s worth mentioning that the risk of the general, working public banding together to reject change is especially low, by the way, in a culture built on the back of puritanical values like work ethic/hyper-individualism; one in which both our problems/sins/shortcomings – poverty, mental health, climate change, etc. – and the responsibility for resolving them (and therefore getting to heaven) lay at the feet of the individual. . . but I’m sure this is just a coincidence!
We may need to confront the fact that the high-minded ideas we have about “government” - or governance, or autonomy, or the ability of the average person to make well-informed decisions in pursuit of their own “rational self-interest,” might be a little outdated. The fact that we aren’t capable of navigating/resisting these immensely complex issues we face, nor the immensely powerful forces working against us. All of the conditions necessary to do so - time, disposable income, creativity, civic pride, faith in institutions, general optimism - have all been systematically neutered. (While the opposite: greed, hyper-individualism, etc., have been incentivized.) We’ll need an organized, collaborative effort.
Besides, the “Don’t Tread on Me”/“Give Me Liberty or Give me Death” stuff doesn’t have as much rhetorical bite when it’s being shared and discussed on websites that are harvesting data from us around the clock, and that wouldn’t host any material that genuinely threatened their bottom line. How can we begin to talk about what a “Nanny State,” or “[Big] Government,” or “The Market” should look like if we don’t even know what it actually is?
Defending the sanctity of “The Marketplace of Ideas” was fine when we were talking about a town of, like, two dozen agrarians, max - and when their ideas/inventions/etc. weren’t capable of affecting billions of people. . . numbers we literally can’t even comprehend. The relationship between Actors used to be linear, quantifiable, and pretty much analogous: I give you one (1) cow, you give me a bushel of apples (125, roughly), or your daughter (11, nearly 12), and that was it. Nice doing business with you, cousin; until next time. But this is no longer the case. Things like “derivatives” and “futures” and 129-page Terms and Conditions Agreements are intentionally designed to be impenetrable for the average citizen - even though our lives are shaped by this stuff.
Wait. . . Maybe that was the cyclist’s message! A Lament for Yesteryear! For the “Good Ol’ Days,” back when things were simple and pure and good. For a time when you could see where your money was going; where you felt like things were in your hands, for better or worse. His use of the “guillotine,” that time-honored tool, was no accident. The medium was the message. This was implicit rejection of the modern world and its trappings, where things are outsourced, automated, over-complicated.
Perhaps he’d been radicalized on some bodybuilding/beefcake forum; having decided he couldn’t spend one more second in this dystopian, Low-T hellscape, he’d set out to make a martyr of himself.
He’d become one of those Red Pill guys who fetishized the Ancient World. You know who I’m talking about; the ones who say stuff like: “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times.” The Reject Modernity, Embrace Masculinity™ guys. . .
Definitely no homo-erotic undertones here! (It tickles me that these folks always seem to idolize Patrick Bateman from American Psycho as some sort of paragon of stoicism/pro-capitalist “grindset” work ethic, or whatever. If they aren’t being ironic, that is, which I don’t think they are.)
But we mustn’t laugh at our biker friend; this could have been any of us. You never know what these internet echo chambers will do to someone. (I’ve lost more family/close friends to the 🐺 Furry Community 🐾 than I care to count.)
Anyway, I pulled some strings, and actually managed to get my hands on the portrait our [apparently freshly-waxed] biker had taken at a local agency moments before he set off on his Last Ride (destination: Eternal Glory) . . .
