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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024

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I think the information age is what hypercharged it. Kojima_was_right.tiff

"Everyone withdraws into their own small gated community, afraid of a larger forum. They stay inside their little ponds, leaking whatever "truth" suits them into the growing cesspool of society at large."

"The different cardinal truths neither clash nor mesh. No one is invalidated, but nobody is right."

Thanks to the internet, people found out for the first time what others really talk like, think about, and do, and the conclusion was that this is intolerable. It's trivially easy to find the lizardman's constant online. Here's a guy who believes we should have sex with toasters. Here's a woman who thinks that left-handed people are instruments of the devil. Here's an engineer who doesn't believe in melting points. Here's a teenager who thinks everyone who isn't him should die, etc. And people are wireheading this, mainlining it, sipping this crackhead energy direct from the source. A million howling voices screaming to be heard...

...and what follows is curation. You have to do it in order to remain sane in 2024, if you are connected to the internet in any way at all. You have to pick and choose. People build their own bubbles.

Within the bubble, everyone outside looks fucking crazy or evil or both. Gas 'em all, shoot em, whatever. If they were worthwhile, they'd already be in the bubble, where the Good People are. If you were Good, you'd be in the bubble, which means you're not Good if you're outside it. Of course, the alternative explanation for this phenomenon is that you are simply bad at curation and you can't tell, or your bubble has become sufficiently isolated that you've actually managed to push away reality.

We can hang reality, it's alright.