“The great issues of the day must be dealt with in five minutes at the most–and preferably in sixty seconds flat…The methods now being used to merchandise the political candidate as though he were a deodorant positively guarantee the electorate against ever hearing the truth about anything.” Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited
It has been quite some time since I posted anything. Comprehensive examinations and life killed my discipline. But here I am. And what a time it is. The felon was elected again, and there are major executive order smokescreens building, while billionaires position for an economic takeover through control of the media. This administration’s goal is not to throw out all the people they think don’t belong in the country. It’s not to make two genders law. It’s not to bring manufacturing back to Detroit. No. They want to completely dominate all information so they can implement their own new order. And most people are willing to let them do it. Why? Because they can’t stop looking at their phones.
Not to sound like a self-righteous asshat, but I don’t ever look at my phone. In fact, I don’t even carry it when I commute to Lansing for most of the week. This, coupled with my close interactions with young people as a teaching assistant, offers a unique opportunity for observation. The vast majority of students I teach, about seventy-five every semester, own an Apple phone and get most of their news from TikTok. About three every semester claim to have read an entire article from a magazine in the last year. At the same time, most admit to me that they do not read any of the assigned readings. And last semester most papers were obviously generated by AI. These are students who were accepted into an R1 research university and will probably one day be more powerful than me. This is terrifying.
Fascism hinged upon having corporations control the information. This information was tailored to make the individual feel empowered while identifying who threatened their own individuality. Being able to completely personalize generic experiences is a wet dream for despots. Make people feel like they are special while getting them to blindly do your bidding is the name of the game. It’s even better if you can get people who don’t agree with you to fight for your right to brainwash people. This is what is happening.
About fifteen years ago, Intel’s Genevieve Bell called for more boredom in our lives. She noticed that no one could stop looking at some sort of a screen at train terminals and bus stations. The danger of this, she argued, was that boredom leads to innovation. This is true. What is even more insidious, though, is what philosopher Matthew Crawford calls the “nudge.” “The nudge,” he writes, “is a non-coercive way to alter people’s behavior without having to persuade them of anything.” Good people rely upon TikTok for recipes and personal empowerment, yet the platform was obviously made to change how people find their information. It is insane that people use it without questioning it.
No one knows who owns TikTok. Investors from Singapore and LA met in the Cayman Islands to start the company. Really, you don’t need to know more to understand that it is shady. Now, it is owned by investors as part of a parent company. And, most terrifying, the new administration is using it to gain support by “allowing” it to keep operating. I am sorry, but that ban was bullshit. I do know that it upset people who don’t support the administration. Mission accomplished.
So, where does this lead us? I am still an elitist dickhead for looking down on people who don’t look up. Yet, I feel like I am trapped in some sort of dystopian novel. I know what would be the best way to push back against the current rise of turbo-charged neoliberalism, the confederacy of billionaires now even trying to create their own fiat money (Note: digital mining is not specie. It is not the “new gold” because it just takes more electricity and interested “miners” to make more. So, really coal is the same gold its always been). Stop using their information platforms. Start your own. Or even better, simply look up. There’s a lot going on around you.
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