We live under a natural oligopoly of thoughts.
The accelerated social evolution — much thanks to the internet — has sped up the clumping-together for schools of thought. The gaseous nebulae in our universe have finally fallen into each other and compressed themselves into stars. Each completed with its own solar system, whose orbiters bound by gravity, and the energy to escape the orbits astronomically high.
To opine outside of these established bound systems — be it traditional media like newspapers and TV stations or the new kingmakers of social media platforms — is to speak into a deep dark void.
The strawmen of “fake news” ignores the inherent plasticity of truth. For there is already enough wiggle room within truth, within the practically infinite information space to produce the finite number of articles that fit the finite imagination of pre-determined narratives — narratives for the oligarchs to divvy up and monetarize their corner of the market.
More on that for another time.
Free speech is not fair speech
Free market capitalism is not fair because a leveled playing field with pre-existing inequality is not fair. A fight between a heavyweight boxer and a baby is not fair, even when the same rules apply to everyone.
Along the same vein, free speech is also not fair. The oligarchy of publications and platforms naturally leads to an oligarchy of ideologies and schools of thought. The two-party political system has become so consolidated in the US that it is practically impossible for a third party to enter the game this late. Likewise for thoughts outside of the two dimensional spectrum.
There is a late stage in capitalism and there is a late stage in information and ideologies.
You can disagree with the Democrats, you can disagree with the Republicans, but if you disagree with both? It’ll be like talking during a bar brawl — either nobody would hear you, or the music will scratch to a halt, and you’re all of a sudden the enemy of everyone.
What about social media?
I prefer to not provide content for social media platforms to proliferate. I don’t post or comment on any platform. Although I do lurk on these platforms, and I do make YouTube videos occasionally.
But another reason why I don’t post on social media, is because I believe that the medium is part of the message. Social media platforms are soapboxes. They are stages, and thoughts become performances, and performances need to be tailored for the audience. You may not post the same thing you posted on Facebook on LinkedIn. I want to have a place where I can write down my thoughts without thinking about who my audience may be.
“The monologue is his preferred mode of discourse.”
This is a quote from the 1983 film Videodrome.
I do prefer another mode of discourse as well — private conversations, any other mode of communication I consider a performance, and therefore is susceptible to being not entirely genuine.
To paraphrase the late Mitch Hedberg: You can say whatever you want in the woods, because nobody can hear it.
Although the woods we live in has already been overgrown with towering trees, and the undergrowth shaded and inhabitable to saplings, one can still grow something on the forest floor. Your garden may never grow to compete with the tall trees and never to the point where it can sustain itself, but you can still have something, maybe some mushrooms or something, something small. And in this case, I think being small is the point. It provides something that was previously missing, that existing before the trees have grown too tall and the canopy too dense. And I think we all miss those days, when personal blogs flourished before the time of the giants.
I still want people to see my writings, but I want people to see them like finding a book in the library. You don’t have the urge to comment on a book. The absence of the option to converse changes the mind of the writer and the reader. This is my second point about how “the medium is the message.”
So, that’s why I have a blog, in 2022.
Tl;dr I don’t want an editorial board or a large audience to influence my thoughts.
