Social Matryoshka

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a hand adding an extra layer to a matryoshka — forever.

I have been hard pressed to show where Orwell could have been wrong during the last decades. 1984 turned out to have been a good user’s manual for the powers that be. Yet I have finally found a quote in which he was wrong. It is not a boot on the neck, but rather the ever building of a larger and larger matryoshka that the future is looking like. Social media are the new social matryoshka. The news episodes of the last week, Biden stories —about the revelations he was clearly incapable of handling the job for which he was elected for or and the announcement of his cancer— and the Patel/Bongino duo about “Epstein did kill himself, trust me bro”, were eye opening. Instead of explaining anything about conspiracies theories that turned out to be somehow verified, those recent shows have just added a new layer of insanity on the top of the garbage pile that was already there.

Adding things up

It is now clear to even the most normie of all normies that so-called mainstream media (MSM) have done a shit job at describing what is going on. The list of abject failures to simply report on reality by the MSM during the last decade is too long to be written down. It goes from the controversy on covid origin to the fact that Biden was “sharp as a tack” passing by New-Jersey UFO/drones frenzy at the end of 2024 etc. Those are extraordinary stories by any pre social media metrics. Take a single trend of the last years and you would have enough journalistic material to feed weeks of narrative arc in the 1990s. The subjects are worthy of public interest, they are complex and tons of questions can be formulated in less than 5 minutes. Yet no definitive answer seem to ever appear. It is a strange mix of incapability of sustain interest (the zone is flooded to use Steve Bannon terminology) with explanations that are even weirder than the phenomenon they are supposed to shed lights on. The best example being given by Patel/Bongino stating that “they have seen the files and evidences and it is clear that Epstein committed suicide”. Let alone the fact that Patel looks like he is solely responsible for the Adderal shortage (thanks SMA 🏴‍☠️ for the image), their “explanation” is actually nothing. They don’t bring any new evidence or revelation. Now add on top of that they publicly doubted that Epstein killed himself, then the result looks more like a ritual struggle session that has been imposed on them than a real revelation. The fact that the act was so blatant, I mean it was not genuine and you can feel it miles away, is not a bug. It is a feature. And in that precisely it is the perfect allegory of our times : things are never explained, instead the cover up is covered up with a new insane narrative layer. Who has enough power to force both the director and deputy director of the FBI to behave like that in public? A whole new can of worm is opened while 0 answer has been provided for the previous incoherence.

When did it started ?

It wasn’t always like that. I remember large scandals of my youth and you had two modes: 1- total denial 2- admission of failure and release of files. One example was the “Rainbow warrior bombing” by the french DGSE. I was young at the time but I distinctly remember the phases of the story. At first french institutions were in mode 1. But as new evidences were piling up they were forced to acknowledge that yes they actually bombed a Greenpeace boat (there was 1 person killed) etc. Of course the institutions acknowledged their implication because of their lack of competence. They were so bad at their job that they couldn’t deny. Today is very different. If the same affair would have occurred, then the institution would leak partial information to muddy the water even more. I have the intuitive feeling that things started to change after the fall of the soviet empire. At least during the cold war there was a real and identifiable enemy: the USSR and its allies. It meant that you were not able to bullshit your way out of a large scandal. Would it only because your enemy would have use it to put your face in the shit forever with it. Notice that it has survived as a ghost in our culture: this is the famous “this is the Russians” line.

The Gordian Matryoshka

The informational space is messy since social media has taken over MSM. It is almost impossible, by construction, to impose a narrative. Every new story is going to be understood differently by different factions. From the start they are going to build information bubbles and filters adapted to their niche. It explains in part why you never find a definitive conclusion to any controversy. Moreover, because the institutions have blatantly, and demonstrably, lied to the public for years without having ever acknowledging their mistake (if they were mistake in the first place!) trust has completely evaporated from the mediasphere. The best you can have is something like: the UFO in New Jersey were in fact military drones. And nothing more. Why ? Why haven’t they said it at the time ? Why members of the congress asking about it were lied in their face ? etc. All those questions are never going to be answered or addressed.

Every move you do in the informational space is like trying to untie the Gordian knot. Only that it is not a knot but a new cover up bullshit explanation that will be added to the affair. A strange chimera of a Hydra and the Gordian knot : every time that you are trying to cut it new knots appear.

Once again I am forced to recognize the prescience of the Queen of the Stone Age song “Go with the flow”

Outside the frame
Is what we're leaving out
You won't remember anyway

…

Do you believe it in your head?