works of wanderlust

Tag: online culture

  • on online

    It’s December and for me that means it is “blog every day month” an effort for which I have long since concocted a list of blog-able reflective topics called my December-ish posts each of which should do little more than offer a leaping off point for some rambling writing to fill up my daily blogging quota.

    Today that topic is…

    What is your perspective on the culture of 2025?

    Can I write what I really want to write here without getting put on a list somewhere that prevents me from crossing borders? Hmm…

    I mean, you’re online. You’re almost certainly reading this on a screen, in a web browser, through a magic wire that connects you all those other people out there in the world. Online. Participating. Consuming. Having an opinion about things, huh?

    This question is basically a punch line this year. What’s the culture of the world in 2025? Um… yeah, about that.

    If you are reading this and you know me you are probably well aware that while I still poke and prod at the various social media platforms, I have reduced my participation there—all of theres—to about five percent of what it was even a year ago… which itself is a fraction of it was, say, five years ago. I haven’t done this because I’ve become some sort of technophobe or whatever, but for a reason of culture. Online culture is dark and f-ed up beyond explanation these days. It hurts to go online. Literally hurts. I have palpitations and gurgling stomach acid in my throat. This isn’t because I’m triggered or offended, but rather because I’m beyond saddened by the raw evil that has spawned in those spaces, and then almost moreso, the meta-evil that embraces it and fans it and blurts out with joyous laughter at the pain of strangers. If you are a person who think this is some kind of exaggeration then look at the medium you are reading these words upon because it’s probably not a screen and you’re probably not online. 

    Simply put, the culture of 2025, or at least the culture that has dominated and blasted and consumed our attentions is shit.  And it’s not clear it is on track to improve next year. Hold on.

  • monster blue fame

    Despite my protests about the fluxable nature of social media, I have been posting on Bluesky.

    That site, for now, seems like the developers have set out to build the anti-twitter twitter, and that appeals to me enough to participate. Again, just for now. But for now maybe creeping closer to and end because this weekend they rolled out verification. Blue checkmarks. A kind of quasi-fame bestowed from upon high by invisible criteria and processes.

    I don’t like it.

    Yet another popularity contest for which the rules are vague and unpredictable.

    Yet another bit of nigh unobtainable digital swag the rest of us cannot but hope to acquire to validate our own opinions and voices. To elevate our own perspectives above the fray once in a rare while. 

    But that said I don’t have a better or an alternative answer. Do we let algorithms decide who is heard? Or do we let corporate moderation decide who is heard? Or is it that popularity remains with the masses, even though the masses are turning out to be as many bad actors or sock-puppets as there are real authentic humans.

    That never-satiable quest for fame seems to me to be one of the harbingers of the slide of truth and reality into the abyss within our societies lately. Celebrities writing op-eds. TV hosts filling important government jobs. Influencers deciding if your product or idea or service is worthy enough to exist.

    There was a time when having two hundred followers would have been enough for anyone.

    Today, if you don’t have at least a thousand times that you are practically no one.

    What have we created?

    To be honest, fame frightens me. I don’t know how I would handle a thousand followers, let alone ten or a hundred times that many. I don’t know how I would sleep dealing with the inevitable onslaught of contrary illogical collisions that would create. Part of me is happy with a few people occasionally stumbling on my posts or my blogs, getting a little chuckle or insight, and moving on. Being internet famous would almost certainly shake me to my core.