Imagine a school of fish being circled by a predator. The school
changes its form and evades but once in a while one of the fish will
not be able to conform and is taken out of the gene pool.
Now imagine the same, but instead of a predator, the school itself
piles on the stray fish and rips it apart. The school has taken
the function of the predator.
Zoom back and see a bigger picture where the shool of fish is the
brain of a bigger organism. Much bigger and much more diverse.
It has several different "arms" and different focal points
distributed along its body, but the school has a central role in
what the big organism perceives.
In this analogy the school of fish are journalists being
synchronized by twitter storms. Yet, twitter does not represent
"the public". The journalists are seeing their local cluster just
like the rest of us, but they are the ones whose opinions are
broadcasted to us others. And now they are being actively mind
controlled by group pressure.
I don't really care what group comes on top. The mechanism itself
is the problem, and it makes the outcome bad no matter who is on
top. It also makes it unstable in some strange ways. Think of
chaos theory and poleshifts and such. Think of overcorrection
after overcorrection, spinning out of control altogether.
There is the possibility that one of the stray fish survives and
finds enough support to stay alive. The problem is that the
stray have a lot more pressure than the conformers. You can be a
lame conformer and survive, but you can't be lame or average
to survive as an escapee. You have to have an idea that has power
behind it. The subtle non-conformist ideas do not survive as they
are less engaging.
Is it possible to be a journalist and not be on twitter? I am
obviously not a journalist, but personally I feel like I am able to
find more useful information when I am not being distracted by social
media. I also feel like I am free to think better when I don't have
to steer my thoughts through assumed safe routes.
The sort of things I write here in gopherspace would be practically
impossible if this was one of the mainstream social medias. You may
have noticed, I don't actually know what team I am on. Usually my
thoughts are comprised of several vectors pointing towards different
directions with relative values of possibility attached to them.
This would inevitably lead to people just grabbing a vector and
running with it to claim I am one sort of despicable radical or
another.
I would say in some substantial way I am anti-radical, since the
vector cloud will allow me to absorb an impact of an actual radical
view without being pushed over. It's like I am balancing a host of
radicalities within myself so that none of them is taking over my
mind. Of course I must have bias, but I am not a thought purist.
I do wonder, though, is there going to be any avenue where this sort
of thinking is deemed useful? I am in a fortunate situation being
able to work on something that I see making the world a better place
at this moment in history, but also I see myself as very different
from the people who occupy the field I work in.
I imagine that in the future it might become harder for me to
conform. Like, if I was a freelancer again, it would be pretty hard
to justify not being on social media. What is the plan B then?
Be a starving artist? Not without social media you won't.
I see the space for human existance becoming more narrow. There
always has to be a platform between us. What a horrific power they
have.
