So, Mr. Jared, How long will it be before Substack and every other platform relied on by the "Opposition" becomes unusable due to economic pressure (e.g. being 'bought'), censorship, or simply being overrun by screaming, unfettered maga trolls and bots?
I'm only on BlueSky now. That's my only social media. I deleted my X and Meta accounts. It's hard, because I'm a disabled senior and don't get out as much as I'd like. I've cut back on following the news quite a bit. Like JRay, I'm wondering when they'll come after sites like this one. I think it's inevitable. Fascists don't tolerate anyone criticizing them. This is 1984 on steroids.
It’s always been clear who Zuck was. Go back and revisit the movie The Social Network and that will tell you all you need to know. I think we now find ourselves in absolutely uncharted waters, and there are sharks aplenty. And there aren’t many who are looking out for those of us on the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder. All I can hope for is that I can survive the next four years and hope and pray a better world will ultimately come along.
Jared, thank you for your clarity and insight during such a time of turbulence and upheaval. I am finding it invaluable, especially the way you put it in historical context. We need your voice!!! Thank you!
Had an inkling so I did some searching and it appears that as the capitalism parasite (as Jared aptly puts it) jumps from the US to BRICS et al, Meta is hitching a ride. Turns out India has the most Facebook and Instagram users, far above the US, and Brazil has the most Threads users. And although China bans Meta's social media platforms internally, it is a significantly lucrative advertiser on them, plus it made up 10% of Meta's sales in 2023 after having had no presence there for over a decade. (Waiting on the inevitable make-nice reconciliation with Russia.) Zuck and the other tech oligarchs now have continents full of eager customers who are happy to fill any void if we leave, with the added bonus of fewer or no pesky democracy regulations and other constraints to interfere especially as they race to attain their ultimate goal of worldwide AI dominance. As for us and how we communicate, a new underground it is.
First, the oligarchs poisoned our external environments, the water, the land, and the air. Now, they have found ways to poison our intellects. Eat them.
"You do not need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing." Bob Dylan.
"It was a reading of the wind. It was the revealing of who Zuckerberg actually is." Jared Yates Sexton.
Spot on, again Jared. Make people follow the propaganda while stealing their wallet.
The tobacco industry put filters on cigarettes to make them "safer" while creating and selling propaganda about tobacco "safety" as they spiked their smokes with nicotine.
My thoughts about the weather and George Carlin predicting the weather:
Some late thoughts on the tech oligarchy after learning about their places together on the effing dais at the coronation... Despite *our* rightful focus on the current technology that brought them their grotesque wealth, control, and power, *their* focus is on the vastly more powerful technology which is, per Sam Altman's claims, only 3500 days away, and which if they get their way and though barely detectable today, will infiltrate, overtake, and transform not just businesses but whole economies, governments, cultures, the world order, everything -- AI superintelligence.
And because they've been playing this longer game, I agree that rather than them bending the knee to Trump, who they've made their court jester (does their data have something on him?), they are leaping at an opportunity they thought they'd have to wait to seize more incrementally, less out in the open, and farther down the line, to strip away all controls and have a technological Wild West over superintelligence's development and deployment that they will reign over and that will make social media's rollout and impact seem like two cans tied together with string.
While it's true that Thielists and other followers of Curtis Yarvin (see: Vance as placeholder and proxy) do espouse some pretty wild ideologies, I don't think that most of the tech oligarchical class really cares all that much what becomes of societal order as long as it assists and in no way interferes with their plans for a world domination that's much bigger than just technological. Like their thinking is, "Go ahead, minions of the world, do fascism, do totalitarianism, do democracy, do socialism, do abundance communism, whatever, just make it stable enough and subservient to our global superintelligence-driven overlordship."
Right now, I think they're tickled by the current outrage and boycotts over social media that for them creates a better distraction than their very best obfuscations (lies, basically) over what they're really up to.
So, Mr. Jared, How long will it be before Substack and every other platform relied on by the "Opposition" becomes unusable due to economic pressure (e.g. being 'bought'), censorship, or simply being overrun by screaming, unfettered maga trolls and bots?
And then what do we do?
Organize now. While you can. The networks have to be decentralized.
Apologies for rhetorical questions -- I don't expect answers -- but hey, if you got any . . . ;-)
I'm only on BlueSky now. That's my only social media. I deleted my X and Meta accounts. It's hard, because I'm a disabled senior and don't get out as much as I'd like. I've cut back on following the news quite a bit. Like JRay, I'm wondering when they'll come after sites like this one. I think it's inevitable. Fascists don't tolerate anyone criticizing them. This is 1984 on steroids.
Steroids, meth, and Molly. All at once.
It’s always been clear who Zuck was. Go back and revisit the movie The Social Network and that will tell you all you need to know. I think we now find ourselves in absolutely uncharted waters, and there are sharks aplenty. And there aren’t many who are looking out for those of us on the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder. All I can hope for is that I can survive the next four years and hope and pray a better world will ultimately come along.
Jared, thank you for your clarity and insight during such a time of turbulence and upheaval. I am finding it invaluable, especially the way you put it in historical context. We need your voice!!! Thank you!
Had an inkling so I did some searching and it appears that as the capitalism parasite (as Jared aptly puts it) jumps from the US to BRICS et al, Meta is hitching a ride. Turns out India has the most Facebook and Instagram users, far above the US, and Brazil has the most Threads users. And although China bans Meta's social media platforms internally, it is a significantly lucrative advertiser on them, plus it made up 10% of Meta's sales in 2023 after having had no presence there for over a decade. (Waiting on the inevitable make-nice reconciliation with Russia.) Zuck and the other tech oligarchs now have continents full of eager customers who are happy to fill any void if we leave, with the added bonus of fewer or no pesky democracy regulations and other constraints to interfere especially as they race to attain their ultimate goal of worldwide AI dominance. As for us and how we communicate, a new underground it is.
First, the oligarchs poisoned our external environments, the water, the land, and the air. Now, they have found ways to poison our intellects. Eat them.
"You do not need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing." Bob Dylan.
"It was a reading of the wind. It was the revealing of who Zuckerberg actually is." Jared Yates Sexton.
Spot on, again Jared. Make people follow the propaganda while stealing their wallet.
The tobacco industry put filters on cigarettes to make them "safer" while creating and selling propaganda about tobacco "safety" as they spiked their smokes with nicotine.
My thoughts about the weather and George Carlin predicting the weather:
https://open.substack.com/pub/rbdgeologist1/p/a-few-thoughts-from-a-geologist-69e?r=48rfsc&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Some late thoughts on the tech oligarchy after learning about their places together on the effing dais at the coronation... Despite *our* rightful focus on the current technology that brought them their grotesque wealth, control, and power, *their* focus is on the vastly more powerful technology which is, per Sam Altman's claims, only 3500 days away, and which if they get their way and though barely detectable today, will infiltrate, overtake, and transform not just businesses but whole economies, governments, cultures, the world order, everything -- AI superintelligence.
And because they've been playing this longer game, I agree that rather than them bending the knee to Trump, who they've made their court jester (does their data have something on him?), they are leaping at an opportunity they thought they'd have to wait to seize more incrementally, less out in the open, and farther down the line, to strip away all controls and have a technological Wild West over superintelligence's development and deployment that they will reign over and that will make social media's rollout and impact seem like two cans tied together with string.
While it's true that Thielists and other followers of Curtis Yarvin (see: Vance as placeholder and proxy) do espouse some pretty wild ideologies, I don't think that most of the tech oligarchical class really cares all that much what becomes of societal order as long as it assists and in no way interferes with their plans for a world domination that's much bigger than just technological. Like their thinking is, "Go ahead, minions of the world, do fascism, do totalitarianism, do democracy, do socialism, do abundance communism, whatever, just make it stable enough and subservient to our global superintelligence-driven overlordship."
Right now, I think they're tickled by the current outrage and boycotts over social media that for them creates a better distraction than their very best obfuscations (lies, basically) over what they're really up to.