The Nepalese government tried to regulate and restrict social media. ‘The people’ burned down the parliament…

The Nepalese government tried to regulate and restrict social media. ‘The people’ burned down the parliament in response, and took selfies for their feeds. When are we going to give up the idiot Left, Right and -ism stuff? These are massive social and cultural shifts. /1 https://t.co/Vslc174z7v

Social media is not a communications platform. It’s a substitute for society itself. A social and cultural space we’re now living inside. Its business model of ‘connecting’ everybody independently of existing hierarchies of experience and expertise is destroying societies. /2

This isn’t just the usual historical churn of replacing some status hierarchies with others, in sometimes healthy ways of removing dead wood. Social media targets ALL structure. Anybody who ‘wins’ through it is quickly demolished by other winners. A revolution without end. /3

It’s a libertarian attack weapon, mostly out of the US. Parachuted into every society on Earth, to cause the sort of catastrophic damage to basic social operating systems we’re seeing in the US now. The libertarians are stupid enough to see this as a win, for them. /4

But they’ll be swept away on the tide of trending violence and chaos too. Like all populism, there’s nothing to moderate the status battles. It’s the technology of social media that is the enemy here. Its belief system is bullshit. /5

That some fictitious ‘people’ will self-organise into a healthy and prosperous and peaceful society, if you can just strip away ‘elite’ institutions apparently oppressing them. Sociality is violence. Battles for social status. Social media unleashes pure sociality. /6

Which means it’s burning whole nations to the ground now. With impunity. Look at the breathtaking arrogance of the platform owners, when confronted by existing institutions. They know they run the world now. When Trump was banned from Twitter, he set up his own platform. /7

He was telling us directly the source of his power. But it will swallow him whole as well. Nothing can survive permanent revolution. Incidentally, an interesting twist in the current Nepalese situation, to bolster another argument I make here. /8

The social stability of Nepal has been collapsing since 2008. What did they do in 2008? They abolished their monarchy. You might think that’s a great thing, our countercultural DNA always applauds that sort of smashing. /9

But a King of some kind will be back. King and court is the dominant social model for all societies, throughout history. Trump is the US’ wannabe King right now. Without a court, so he’s unlikely to last long. /10

But this iconoclastic smashing of existing institutions always leads to some form of populist resurgence behind some new King-like figure. Who might get called something else, but it’ll be a king in everything except name. /11

And in the case of Nepal, it’s not even taking long for this to happen. All societies run on status, regulated by status hierarchies. A SOCIAL mechanism. You can smash existing status hierarchies. People will replace them with others. /end https://t.co/wVvXNIzSq3 https://t.co/vCc3ZTa8GL