Spouse was able to snag one of the US flags from the inauguration's field of flags display. He was tired but he went and got one for me anyway. It's a nice little souvenir from the inauguration nobody got to attend. I think I'll make a display with some other things from our time here.

This is a red letter week because spouse got his first vaccine shot. I have been so careful because I didn't want to catch the virus, pass it to him and have it wreck his lungs. He has to keep a certain level of physical fitness necessary to get the new job. It's been so very very important to keep him healthy. I may not have a chance to get the vaccine for a while, but it's such a relief to get him covered. There's downsides to working for the government (somedays I wish spouse just wanted to be a teacher or something) but at least I can say they have really tried to take care of their people during the pandemic. Spouse got the Pfizer vaccine and reports his arm is sore but that's it.

Post-inauguration, the internet is doing its thing, regurgitating recent events and making patchwork content snipped from various opinions and reactions. Strike while the iron is hot to make an impression and get your clicks. Building up some anxiety momentum for the next vague disaster. This year has certainly changed how I perceive the Internet (capital I, Big Corp Internet). It makes me feel like an old person. I was sold an idea of the internet 20 years ago and I see now it was a mistake to assume it would keep serving the same purpose. A person's mental wear starts showing when they can't adapt to the passage of time. Older generations are the butt of jokes because they feel entitled to keep the same mental routines that worked 30+ years ago. They can't adapt, because they want to keep that feeling of having Figured It Out. The rest of us can point and laugh but we're not immune. Our time will come.

> Grandpa Simpson: I used to be with it, but then they changed what "it" was. Now, what I'm with isn't it, and what's "it" seems weird and scary to me.

(This sums up my feelings regarding snapchat.)

I mean, who wouldn't want to hold on to the "it" that made them feel savvy and in control? Who wouldn't resent getting pushed off that pedestal?

I've had a false sense of security because I assumed the Internet's purpose was to serve up quality information and ways for people to connect and communicate (and porn, sure). That's what I was sold - maybe that's what the packaging still says. I never thought that would change. Now it seems the primary purpose of the Internet has shifted to generating and weaponizing persuasion and influence. Not to honestly contribute and discuss information, but to feed and grow an audience that spreads content, whatever it might be, with few or any moral qualifiers. The audience has become the ends that justify the means. Trump instinctively knows that, I think, and it is disheartening to see how effective the strategy was, and how it's being picked up in different places. Throw a lot of chum in the water and the fish will be too busy swarming to have a thought for what they're gobbling, because in a few hours when the truth cops catch up, there will be a fresh chum wave and the old one won't matter. Damage is done. Opinions adopted and passed on.

The Internet has become a creature that generates and runs on reactions. It is a battlefield of sorts - not of netrunners like cyberpunk envisioned, or "digital soldiers" like Qanon pushes - a proving ground of what is most efficient at stimulating an emotional response. Any interaction, clicks, thumbs up or thumbs down, comments, page views, it all means the same thing. There are no "digital soldiers", just outrage gold mines. Cults, fanaticism and pseudo religions aren't bugs in this landscape, they are features that encourage obsessive interaction. Poor access to mental health care means few sandbags to slow the floodwaters.

It's funny because for a long while I have been stuck trying to work out why I haven't wanted to participate digitally like I used to. I had some of the picture but I couldn't work out what it meant. Is it me - have I developed a mental disfunction? I've been approaching the problem like there's a bad variable in the equation to be solved, like the problem is either me or the Internet. Hundreds of millions of people enjoy the Internet and it is a richer, more informative, more entertaining and more accessible experience than ever before. Occam's razor and all, the "problem" is much more likely to be on my end. But if there's no "problem", if my progress as a person and the Internet's evolution are simply at cross purposes for the moment, then I guess I can stop trying to fix and worry over what isn't broken.

Like an individual's developmental cycle from infant to child to adult to elder, sometimes it's possible to see glimpses of the same maturing cycles reflected on a larger scale in cultures and nations. Like gears turning within gears, generations rise and fall within the bubble of prosperity and education available to them. Perhaps the Internet is no different. We just haven't had the time to experience the arc of its maturing cycle yet. We've seen it as a basic construct of information and now it's exploring instincts and emotion, searching out our weaknesses. The groups who power it are blind to anything but their individual actions and goals, but the motion of the whole is beyond whatever specific causes that generate the stimulus. Like an embryonic collective consciousness, working out the path to the next step. I'm reminded of a gif of slime mold "hunting".

slime mold

Even now, the persistence of the small internet, social media's loss of favor, the heightened concern over privacy and free speech, the prevalence of bots and bad actors looking to encourage real world instability, the precarious struggle of anonymity - we are watching the process.

It would be easy to say "the Internet was good XX years ago, and now it's bad because of bad things and bad people." I guess that's roughly how I've been feeling in general, plus with a good dose of the ageless classic, everyone's favorite: "what's wrong with me". But that's old people calcified brain talking.

Some time earlier (months? last year?) I had a dream that was like a Cthulhu/Indiana Jones crossover. I was assisting a brilliant genius professor with his research (if you've played the Cthulhu RPG, you know where this goes). Puzzles kept leading to other puzzles, more codes, ancient languages, more hidden meanings, more dashing off to retrieve some artifact that revealed hints of an unknown menace. It was a damn good dream and I was enjoying the adventure until there was a moment of clarity where the fog cleared and I understood that the professor was mad. The answer he was obsessively researching would never materialize, because he himself would never be satisfied. He was addicted to the hunt for answers, so the answers themselves were an impediment. The blind spot lay within his mind, not in the information. The professor pleaded with me to continue to follow him down the rabbit hole, literally at the mouth of this dark sewer lit with greenish light that he thought would lead to an ancient crypt, seeking just one more piece of information he swore would explain everything. But it was like pulling the curtain back on the Wizard of Oz. Once seen, the insanity could not be unseen, and the mystery lost its shine and became tedious. I woke up disappointed, and a bit shook, because it really felt like I was privy to a glimpse of genius. I would have followed it almost anywhere. Like looking at an optical illusion - is the professor brilliant and the world endangered, or is the world safe and the professor dangerously mad? Whichever version you prefer is true. How deeply you choose to believe that truth is the measure of your own susceptibility to madness.

I guess I've come to see the current Internet like that. It is a purposeful insanity. It will not make sense because its current modus operandi is to seek out and amplify outrage for the persuasion and influence of an audience. Looking for sanity in an insane system is doomed from the start. That's all. Like Global Thermonuclear War, the only winning move is not to play.

I've been telling spouse for a solid year that we're living in a golden age of dark humor. The sophistication of meme culture, the ability for a joke to catch fire and spread through multiple internet channels and become all the more ridiculously funny, the elaborate webs of references - this, too, is purposeful and fits in the machine. Humor is a defense mechanism. When bad things happen, humor is part of absorbing and processing the impact. Humor builds rapport in a like-minded group. Humor attracts and perpetuates influence. The Joker is an iconic supervillain because the contrast between his funny/criminally insane and Batman's serious/justice obsessed character is delicious. So is it any wonder that a huge chunk of internet culture has existed from the beginning "for the lulz"?

Bad news: the Internet is mad by current design.

Good news: the Internet is hilarious.

So I guess that's a hamfisted sum-up of what I've learned watching the Internet over the past year leading up to the inauguration. I've wasted a bunch of time binging compulsively on all sorts of weird angles. Trying to find the logic, I suppose. Trying to guess the road ahead. Looking at fragments of information like sacrificial entrails on an altar. Drowning in the churn of urgent "breaking news".

Now what? Well, personally, I'm gonna to pull back from the Internet and put my energy into analog, real world activities. Tactile stuff. Take walks. Meatspace interaction, whenever that comes back. Get cozier on the small internet while limiting what I give the Big Internet. Trying to direct the momentum of the Internet using the Internet alone seems at best futile, at worst counter purpose. For me, anyway, as an uneducated rube. Bad things are going to happen in the world, things that seem very important, and I am going to have to stick to what action I can take in my immediate community. Maybe nothing. Maybe I just feel helpless for a while.

The Internet is Going Through Some Things. Maybe in a few years it will work itself past this stage. This doesn't mean it is Bad, it just means the Internet and I are going separate ways.

It's not you, Internet. It's me. Lots of people love you just as you are. You're super funny! Maybe we can be friends again down the road, once you've figured out what to do about your cultist problem.

Articles I found interesting but am too lazy to work in a direct reference:

Redpill the "Parler Refugees"

A Game Desiger's Analysis of Qanon