Monday, March 5, 2018

Alt Media and Social Media Passivity

In my own life, I notice that many of the social habits I've developed over time are bad ones. They make sense within the day-to-day world I live in: with my full time job, commute, various bills to pay, etc... However, I'm living in a way that's not necessarily in accord with how I'd like to live. I think this is the case for countless millions of people in the western world. This might be true for most people throughout all of human history. It might be part and parcel of being a living animal on this world.

Alt media and social media provide a parallel ghost universe where these ideals can be shaped and the limitations of animal-man world can be shed. The ghost existence can start to seem real, especially because their are other ghost people there to share them with.

The ghost world, though, has very little immediate impact on day-to-day reality, except to possibly breed some paralysis and maybe even unhappiness. Quite a lot of social media political theoretical discussion centers on what the mainstream calls "conspiracies". The pejorative sense in which the "conspiracy" label is used makes sense, not because there are not people conspiring, but rather because it subtly demotivates and passifies the person who knows about "the conspiracy" or who knows how "the system" works.