The end of the year is approaching. This is the time to have some thoughts about how things unfolded. Reading my last year review of 2021 helps me to put things in perspective. I hope to maintain this tradition over a sufficiently long period of time.
Knowing where you stand is the first step towards any direction. And boy, 2022 was quite an eventful year. Let’s start this situation report, from the social media point of view, that is my angle in this substack.
History is back…with a twist
The US intelligence agencies are not always wrong. Sometimes they are right, moreover it also happens that they share (some of) what they (want the public to) know. On the 24th of february Russia initiated a large scale military push to invade Ukraine. The three letters agencies warnings were right. History was back in full force. The fate of Kyiev was uncertain for few weeks and everything was on the table. The reaction of the networkd was swift and of an unprecedented magnitude. It took the western establishment by surprise. For the first time the formal leaders were actually followers of a network swarm. Any ressemblance to the notion of “Twitter followers” is not purely coincidental. Most of the sanctions were implemented before having been voted or having followed any formal process. Big tech companies stopped to interact with Russia in the snap of a finger.
Likewise, very heavy subject were discussed on the social media landscape: the exemple of establishing or not a “no fly zone” was maybe the most important one. Such a strategic decision is not something that can be discussed lightly in a couple of tweets or under the cameras of a news broadcast. Yet it is what happened…
Ukraine has displayed master’s skill in the use of networks. The propaganda machine of the XXI is something in and of itself. A sizeable aim that it has achieved during this year is the very existence of Ukraine today. Indeed, Zelensky has used the networks in full and he has gained a sizeable support from the west through them. Without this help, Ukraine would be economically broke and couldn’t have repelled the russian assault. With the modern weaponry, and logistical support, of NATO it is another story. Both in terms of quantity and quality it turned the tide. To the credit of Ukrainian fighters, they suceeded in incorporating those new weapons very effectively and with great success at an impressive pace. The following video is a startling combination of all the preceding points:
This war is of a new kind. Just like the first world war (and secession war before) was the first post-industrial revolution full scale war. From the artillery, to the use of loitering munitions passing by the new strategic direction of the russian army (to target the electric grid in order to initiate cascade effects) every tier of the war have been impacted. It is too early to draw definitive conclusions other than: things are no longer what they used to be. Surely the most important shift since the second world war.
All-in, every time
One trend that was already going on for years appeared to me clearly during this last year. The continual war on western values is raging on for decades. Basically since the end of world war 2 we moved from a positive morality -trying to do good- towards a negative morality -do the inverse of evil. We moved from the “what would Jesus do?” to “What would Hitler do?” and do the opposite, in a few generations. On top of that add the new motto that “diversity is our strength”, a touch of total moral relativism. The result is a disparition of will (at least in the discourse). You are no longer doing things but you are reacting to bad things. More precisely it has led to a complete standardization of will.
The only permissible expression of will in our digital society has become to fight/denounce the Evil. This is why there are fascists everywhere today. It comes from two convergent ideas. The first one is that only the pure evil can be called out. The bad guys are of only one sort: they are easy to spot they are the one with the wechmacht uniform. The second one is that if you don’t fight the evil with me, it means that the only possibility is that you are evil yourself...
This archetypal narrative has been used on several fronts during 2022. The war in Ukraine of course, but the war on climate, the war against racism or the war on the virus all follow the same simplifying scheme. It appears strange to present every struggle as a war. But war is nothing else than the pure expression of will. We have moved towards a society in which the traditional way to organize life in common has been forgotten or neglected. The red (the army) and the black (the clergy) were the basic bricks of society for a reason. We are left with a very poor theoretical understanding of those things. Only a binary version is left: either everything is ok or it is total war. It is like playing a perpetual “all-in” strategy at a Poker table. This is not smart but it looks very good as long as you win hands. The downside being that one loss is also a total loss.
Twitter on the ropes
The acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk was one of the most important story of 2022. The story goes much farther than meets the eyes at a first glance. It took many months to be completed (starting the 14th of April to end on the 27th of October). It apparently started because the Babylon Bee got banned from Twitter and it bothered Elon Musk. Many things have been said, and much more are coming, about Elon Musk but one thing cannot be taken away from him: he does understand what “fuck you money” means. 44 Billion$ and a few months later it appears that Elon Musk is going to throw the towel.
There are many important points in this developping story. Let’s have a quick recap of hot topics related: 4
Legacy media is dead, and no one gives a fuck about the cadaver in the closet anymore. Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post under similar circumstances: the richest guy on earth tries to buy media influence. It appears so XX°. Legacy media is no longer the place where things happen. They are just amplifiers. Things happen online, on social media, then go to legacy media. Not the other way around.
Twitter Files would have been a killer/Pulitzer level like story in another time, say the 70s. Nowadays it has been received with the same indifference than the release of documents basically acknowledging that the CIA was involved in the assassination of a sitting US president. It almost looks like if a virus would have escaped from a research lab, killed millions of people and nobody cared. Could you believe it ?
Elon Musk tried to address the swarm directly. It doesn’t work. It is the dual of the advice “don’t apologize to the mob”. There is a hard lesson here: information flow can superficially appear to have the same properties regardless the direction it flows down to. And it is true that it is easy to have a direct contact and to address the whole world through a tweet. Thinking that you can manage this way is completely wrong. It is not because you can be heard that you will be listened to. This is not a problem of intelligence, money or power. It is more like a physical law. The swarm is not a person. You shouldn’t act as if it is one.
Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” “My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many.”
Mark 5:9
Forgotten -not even hidden- incredible 2022 stories
Maybe one of the most striking event of 2022 was the apathy and a general lack of focus of the global discussion on *any subject*. Something like a silent unraveling. Are we experiencing a societal PTSD after having gone through the covid crisis ? I don’t know how to process it right now but here are stories that were not hidden and that were barely discussed during this year.
China 0-covid policy. This is a major story. Covid is this unmasking tragedy that keeps on giving. In 2022, things were more quite on this front in the western world. But the initial apparent success of China came back with a vengeance. The Chinese population who had been spared (for what we know) for two years is taking a massive hit that is made worse by inadequate policies. I had thought that COVID would led to unrests in countries like China. I imagined they would occur by the end of 2020. It is weird to see that 2 years of experience of *what not to do* have been completely ignored. Besides it confirms everything you could imagine regarding how an authoritarian regime can turn bad in the XXI: social score, use of advanced technology to control the population at every corner etc.
The Nordstream explosions. Yeah, you remember right? Major energy infrastructures have been blown up in the middle of the Baltic sea. It happened 3 months ago and … nothing. No one ever mentions it. This “nothingness” is mind boggling in and of itself. We are talking about infrastructure of major importance. The kind of event that can start a hot war just by themselves. The fact that it occurred in the midst of the Ukrainian war make the event even more noticeable. But barely any discussion are going on this subject. It was visible for a week or two on social media “trends”, then nothing. I don’t know what to do about that. Just looking at the wikipedia page, that is more verbose on the enviromental impact than on the rest renders me speechless.
The mRNA vaccine adverse effects. From the “safe and effective” mantra of the year 2021 we have arrived at a point where the adverse affects of mRNA can’t be denied. It is not about whether or nor they exist, but how severe they are and how it could change the cost-benefit analysis. On top of that the inability of the vaccine strategy to only curb the course of the epidemics is blatant. No need to use sophisticated statistical tools. There is barely someone I personnaly know that has been vaccinated *and not caught covid* at some point in time. Yet nothing from the establishment. The most recent press briefing of the White House just delivered the gospel as if nothing happened.
WEF is implementing its agenda without having received any mandate, let alone having gone through any form of democratic approval process. K. Schwab and his goons regularly appeared in world summits like the G20 (the fact check on this is hilarious to read) or the COP 27.
The war on life is raging on both ends. Roe vs Wade was turned around this year in the US. It only put briefly in the spotlight where we stand on this. There are states in the US without any restrictions on when it can be performed. In Canada the MAID program developped step by step, similarily in Netherlands the needle is pushed a little bit further. There is a societal push against natalism in the name of climate protection is a thing. Meanwhile birthrates are crumbling everywhere, here are UN data (beware of what is on the right part of the red dashed line…):
The year in Crypto
0n the crypto front the year can be summarized in two words: it sucked. That is for people who only consider cryptos as a vehicle for empty speculation. War is coming. There is a more charitable way to see it. It can be understood as the place where the digital revolution takes place. The famously evanescent web 3.0 could be a way to name it. So it goes farther than crypto (understood as blockchain an distributed consensus mechanisms). So in addition to the crypto market crash what happened in this area this year ?
Balaji proposed the network state model. It is very naive and provocative at the same time. On one hand he clearly underplays the practical problems: from raw technical problems -Where do the chips, the material infrastructure required by the network to run, come from? The electricity? etc.- to more fundamental ones -What happens to a smart contract used to rent a flat in Kabul when it is ran over by Talibans?- and almost intangible things like legacy -How do you ensure that the network state will propagate in the future and be transmitted to future generations?- But this is a first theoretical draft containing very interesting propositions. It has the merits to adress the really fundamental question of our time.
Central banks are jumping on the bandwagon. The Fed tested for a few weeks its own proposal. Many things can be said around a programmable currency. The shadows of an authorization based citizenship are stronger than ever. It looks like the fight of the years to come will turn around this: Income tax will be either too hard or too easy to collect. Either you will be controled in every aspect of your life, the idea to add an ESG-score tuned to the individual level exists and is technically possible. This example is striking since it links together the smallest action (whatever small buy you make is controled) to the largest outome (basically fix the planet). There is nothing closer to a demonic version of the Jacob’s ladder that I am aware of.
Every year since 2016 has been even crazier than the preceeding ones. Each time I thought that a semblance of normalcy would prevail for the coming year. Each time I was wrong. I don’t know what to think of 2023, maybe just the fact that it exists is a sign of hope.