Learned helplessness is the behavior exhibited by a subject after enduring repeated aversive stimuli beyond their control.

Noema Magazine recently published an essay titled We Need To Rewild The Internet, by Maria Farrell and Robin Berjon.

The complex web of human interactions that thrived on the internet’s initial technological diversity is now corralled into globe-spanning data-extraction engines making huge fortunes for a tiny few.

Our online spaces are not ecosystems, though tech firms love that word. They’re plantations; highly concentrated and controlled environments, closer kin to the industrial farming of the cattle feedlot or battery chicken farms that madden the creatures trapped within.

I recommend giving it a read.

The data-extraction engines they're talking about are Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and the like. If you've been on some of the major social media platforms, maybe you can relate to the whole maddened-creature-trapped-within thing.

Within the depths of the data-extraction engine, you'll find people modifying their behavior in anticipation of what they think the owners of the platform want. Avoid posting links so that the algorithm doesn't de-boost your posts. Use certain words to slip past the algorithm. Modify your artwork so that it can't be collected by AI.

That's all fugazi! It's obeying in advance.

I feel there's a general consensus within my community that these platforms suck. I feel there's a general desire to have something better.

I don't see many people changing their behavior in response to how they feel, however. It feels like learned helplessness.

Rewild instead.

you can do it

If you know how to read and write, that is an incredible thing. Don't take it for granted.

For thousands and thousands and thousands of years, there was only the spoken word. If you wanted to know what was going on o'er yonder, you'd have to get the news from a skald, a griot, or ma and pa. All great people, surely. It would be severely limiting, though.

And then came writing! Suddenly you could scratch something onto a piece of birch bark, and someone you'd never even seen in your life could read it and understand what you were saying. Engrave it onto a tablet and that person could be someone living thousands of years in the future.

Sometime after Akkadian cuneiform fell out of fashion and before the present day, the internet was invented. Suddenly you didn't need to engrave your writing onto clay tablets anymore, you could type it up on a computer. If you are reading my blog, you probably have a computer or computer-like device. If you are a technology "power-user," you probably even have a keyboard.

People went to a lot of trouble to read and write due to its immense value. Schools were built! People had their fingers chopped off! What are you reading? What are you writing?

you can do it freely

Writing is free. Free as in "speech" and free as in "beer."

People act like they don't have free speech. You had free speech even before the idea of free speech was developed. It's inalienable. It really is! You can't be alienated from your own speech! Even after you're long dead, your clay tablets will still be around.

You can certainly behave as though you were alienated from your own speech. People do it all the time. You don't have to pretend!

So why pretend? Why do we modify our speech ahead of time? Why do we engrave our modified speeches onto clay tablets owned by the likes of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg? I'm sure some people have real good reasons, like "we want to maximize exposure to our media brand, and posting on X and Threads is part of that strategy." Do you have a reason like that?

you can probably do it better than most other people

I work security. I sit at a desk for 12 hours a day, waiting for something to happen. Nothing happens, usually.

In order to reclaim my time, I try do other things. Read my novels, doodle. Lately I've been reading the news. Your local library can probably provide you access to all sorts of digital news sources.

I've amassed a pretty sizeable bookmarks, organized into various sub-folders. Newspapers, digital magazines, blogs, archives, galleries, whatever. It's my curated collection of websites that I can thumb through whenever I want, which is quite often.

All of this to say: a lot of it is dogshit! I spend a lot of time reading the New York Times, for example (for free from the library, I won't give these people my money. Relax.) God bless 'em, sometimes the writers over there produce something good. But a lot of it is just shit. Make-work for nepotism hires. Coal for a political machine's furnace. We can all do better than this. If not now, then just with a little practice.

and again, you can do it freely

And I would try to let them know it was dogshit! I would post comments under the articles. Half the time, they didn't get past the moderators. I'd write letters to the editor! Most editors would not publish.

When I couldn't get my fix, I started posting comments on Reddit. I'd share articles on NextDoor just to feel something.

I get why people would go nuts on social media. How can anybody be bombarded by all the contradictory messages our society is sending us and not end up having something to say? I think a lot of us end up with having more to say than the pre-provided text box can allow, though.

Bluesky is a good start. It's a solid microblogging platform. It's decentralized, meaning it can never be owned by Elon Musk or some sort of Elon-Musk-adjacent type. It's still microblogging, though. Which is fine, but you need variety in your diet.

If you made the move from Twitter to Bluesky, or Cohost, or Mastodon, or whatever, that's fantastic. It means that on some level, you're discerning. Keep discerning. Be even more discerning.

I want to encourage you to write and make art freely, without modification based on the expectation of censorship. If you can't find a suitable platform, you'll have to make your own. That advice applies both online and offline.

some links

Mataroa, this is the blogging platform I'm currently using. I like it because it's simple, ad-free, and it makes it easy to export and re-direct if you decide to move to your own hosted website (which I intend to do in due time). Look into the creator's design philosophy.

We Need To Rewild The Internet at Noema Magazine, I linked it up there and I'll link it down here too. It's a good article! It's long and it gets technical, but the opening section is the most evocative I feel.

Social Housing Backers Declare Victory in I-137 Signature-Gathering Campaign at The Urbanist. If you're a fellow Seattleite, here's an issue I feel you should be informed about before the election.