Having seen firsthand multiple times how much the obstruction to renewable rollout is laughable ‘local’…
Having seen firsthand multiple times how much the obstruction to renewable rollout is laughable ‘local’ objections from people drenched in social media bullshit, I increasingly recognise very little of the Australia I grew up in. /1
Social media is mostly American in origin, and carries a set of deep social beliefs that the platforms implement, about society emerging from the bottom up, with ‘the people’ aggregating all of their opinions into some democratic outcome. /2
The platforms are literal Trojan Horses, driving these underlying assumptions deep into other cultures. The explosion of paranoia and conspiracies, the constant mobilisation of incoherent hysteria. Locals opposing solar farms because the panels will be too shiny. /3
Communities who have lived for decades in the shadow of hideous coal-fired plants spewing filth into the air they breathe now appalled because pumped hydro plants proposed to replace them are unsightly?! It goes on and on. It’s not just that these platforms spread bullshit. /4
Much more damaging is that they encourage people to have ideas about things they’ve never had ideas about before in their life. Things they used to TRUST others to do for them. That’s what representative democracy is, a delegation of most things to other people, through trust. /5
As a kid I remember people felt genuine affection for places like the CSIRO, and innovations that emerged from it into our societies. Now the pathological distrust of all institutions that has characterised much modern US history is pumped into our society every day, here. /6
Through social media platforms. We’re allowing the dissolution of our society, from the inside out. That may sound strong, but if you’ve worked at the front-lines of where these platforms are at war with basic Australian governance, it’s actually an understatement. /7
It’s genuinely frightening to see the fraying of Australian democracy, accelerating every day, through these platforms and their impact on our historical institutions. My hobby horse, societies are social. The engine of social relationships is trust. Platforms destroy it. /8
It’s in their DNA to do that. Representative democracy has *never* been the aggregation of millions of individual views. It’s been the election of a tiny handful of people to represent us, to do the work of government, aided and assisted by thousands of skilled officials. /9
Like all social arrangements, it’s an ‘economy’ of trust. Of trusting people not just to govern us, but to do our science, build our technologies, forecast our weather, manage our natural emergencies, etc. etc. Freeing us up to live our lives in other ways. /10
Social media weaponises the destruction of this entire system. It thrives on assaults on trust. That’s what all the conspiracy theories are. What all the celebrity Covid minimisers do, when they bypass centuries of public health expertise and experience. Trust us, and we’ll…/11
…monetise your likes. It’s this war on trust that really defines the danger and damage these platforms represent. When a society decouples its information and communication systems from all existing hierarchies of trust (its institutions), it’s committing suicide. /end