Music

I mean, yes, but

Shady marketing and propaganda aren’t new, of course, but what is new is that the entire infrastructure of public conversation has been quietly captured by both.

I don't think I agree that the entire infrastructure has been captured, but I do think we're at a new stage in the neverending conflict between observation and persuasion

Instead we just get political psyops, for some reason.

You're a cynical shit!

For real though, I'm probably an overly optimistic shit, but I think your second analogy is closer to the truth, but even still a bit short of it. You're right about hidden crevices becoming havens, but life doesn't just survive in those havens, it mutates and evolves. Inevitably it grows out of those havens, and usually it gets eaten by some predator at that point, but sometimes that can make a predator really sick, maybe even kill it. And the forest overall can start to change again. So really I don't think the Internet is a forest as much as it's one big organism, and we can be the viruses.

To torture another metaphor, give a million monkeys typewriters and I think it's inevitable you'll get monkey Woody Guthrie and there will be a monkey revolt, because creating any kind of art and thinking artistically rejects the premise of objective valuation that capitalist logic has as a necessary premise. Art does not have inherent value like a tool or other made objects do, and it continually resists and undermines its own abstracted commodification in its pursuit of novelty/originality/authenticity. Disney tries to copy paste a Star Wars plot and only succeeds in setting a pile of money on fire, but people will be talking about Sinners for years even though nobody knew they wanted a Jim Crow horror film until it was a thing.

The fact that throughout human history and all sorts of different social conditions the impulse to make silly useless valueless art rises up again and again tells me this social structure of capitalism is built on quicksand.

Too bad Lemmy is basically dead too. Maybe it’s time to go live in the woods.

I was out with the family just as the first nice weather was hitting where i am this year. There was a small group of well dressed guys hanging out in the middle of the parking lot. Playing one of their car stereos at a load but reasonable level, in this large shopping center. My mother gave a scoffing remark, something like, "nothing better to do." I had to stop her and acknowledge that we literally have no third space anymore. This was much better than street racing or making tik tok video's in Walmart. We both had a moment of sad realization. Places to just exist and interact with others without a condition of pay has evaporated. After our meal i thought of going over and joining them. Unfortunately i had prior engagements.

There's real internets and there's bullshit internets

I worry that lemmy isn’t safe anymore. Some people here lack nuance to a degree that makes their realness unbelievable.