The act of taking some item or individual which under some given context is not properly-speaking human and revealing or otherwise attributing it human characteristics is called humanization. This is only somewhat similar to antropomorphization, as the latter refers merely to form, while the former deals primarily with substance. For example interpreting a dog's "smile" as a genuine act of happiness is in some sense a humanization of the dog in question, although the so-called smile does not properly express happiness (although it does express relaxation, in most cases); or, in some other context and in a slightly different sense, welcoming a stranger into your house and taking care of his wants and needs is also an act of humanization.
Conversely, given a particular human individual, the act of taking away, repressing or otherwise failing to recognize certain (or all) characteristics specific to his or her humanity is called dehumanization. Many words have been written on this topic throughout the last couple of centuries, words with which the reader is most certainly acquainted.
A particular class of dehumanizing entity is The Platform. The precise shape of The Platform is less interesting, mainly because its concrete manifestations may in fact bear many forms. Essentially, The Platform is a mechanical beast that enacts dehumanization primarily by removing agency, and it removes agency primarily (but not only) by removing will.
More precisely, The Platform enforces dehumanization through the following mechanism: at first, any pre-existing medium of interaction between individuals is slowly replaced with another one that is to eventually be sold as The Medium (tm)(c) by its perpetrators; then, once this new medium is fully extended, its properties are fine-tuned so that interaction of any substance is in fact rendered impossible, and what remains is mere noise, seasoned here and there with some pieces of signalling.
The result of this process of embrace, extend and extinguish is for all practical purposes a Geostationary Truth Machine, although, in all fairness, the description of this mechanism was covered in great detail by Kafka -- really, have you not read his Trial? -- about a century ago.
As for the whys behind this act of dehumanization: why does the state collect taxes from you? why does TickTock show you some particular piece and not the other one? why does Google's machine, or for that matter Zuckerberg's, enforce "community standards"? For the most part, all these whys follow the purpose of atomization and destructuring, itself done for the purpose of totalitarian control, itself sought because these days you don't value all that much (if anything, if not a negative sum) to those in power.
So next time you go doubting ye olde remark that you are in fact the product, think twice about it. Irrespective of the costs, the humanizing alternative is still on the table, at least until it isn't anymore.
The Platform may bear many forms indeed. In the unlikely case this blog is read by others besides myself and the glowie assigned to the esteemed host, such an improbable reader might be tempted to think mostly of abominable abodes such as Zuccbook and the like. But the Platform goes deeper than that, or, we might say, there are Platforms all the way down.
To wit - I don't know of any city-born Romanian who hasn't grown up on a steady diet of American movies. From the most high-brow to the most vapid, they all, through repetition, successfully installed a platform of American/Western attitudes towards "rights", "strong vs weak", romance, and other important philosophical questions, a platform from which not only conversation, but thought itself can struggle to escape. Sure, over the decades there been a lot of debate, or rather the illusion of debate, but always within tight confines that never overturned the fundamentals of the system. Some have begun to see beyond the Platform, if only as if through a darkened glass, but only because the end of the American/Western moment has arrived anyway, such being the way of all flesh and all empires.
Even keeping the discussion to only "social" networks, I've found that escaping them is not as easy as it might seem, even when one is entirely convinced of their cancerous nature. I've been in many IRL meetings, with allegedly "red pilled" people no less, where the participants still behaved, in both dialogue and thought, as if they were on the chans or Discord. They seemed to be blissfully unaware that real life, human, conversation has different rules... as if they had grown up only knowing the online as a means of communication. Which, come to think of it, is probably just what happened. Seems like you can take the man off Zuccbook, but you can't as easily take the Zuccbook out of the man.
> In the unlikely case this blog is read by others besides myself and the glowie assigned to the esteemed host
To be fair, I think there's a couple of other folks still reading this, some of which I'm impertinently stealing "my" ideas from -- or sharing with, if you will. This is perhaps of no surprise to the glowie(s) in question, of course, of course.
> Some have begun to see beyond the Platform
For what it's worth, I don't see this. Folks are, or are being primed to be stolen by the next thing in the program, 'cause, as a wise man once said, the human capacity for suffering seems, for all practical intents and purposes, unlimited. It certainly looks like everyone's gone numb, that is, if they haven't been numb all throughout history and I'm just viewing things through that special snowflake scope myself.
People just be stupid, in fact I'll readily admit that I'm not highly above that myself.
> Which, come to think of it, is probably just what happened
Incidentally, I was watching this Tubes channel with raw footage from '90s TV, and, leaving aside the fact that even when he hadn't much to say, the common man still made much more sense than he does now, the "personal computer as an educational tool" was a great pantsuit propaganda device. It pretty much caught me (and perhaps a few other folks I know) in its midst, I'll admit.
> For what it's worth, I don't see this
Well I did say "some". There is always a percentage of people that see beyond the system, the question is just how large it is and whether anything specific can be done with it. Most people are obedient and "stupid", yes, but then again most realistic theories of power state that it doesn't matter what "most people" think. The issue is.. very complicated. But what I mean basically is that there is definitely enough dissidence at this point for it to be visible and indicative of a shift in world events.
> personal computer as an educational tool
Amusingly, there seems to be a pattern about pretty much any media invention being seen by its creator as a revolutionary educational tool (often those words exactly) that would usher in a new age of reason and enlightenment... only for their hopes to be dashed hard as people use it mainly for entertainment and propaganda. It definitely happened for the personal computer, TV, radio, and, I'm pretty sure for the printing press too. Then again, as I always say, education consists of instruction and indoctrination, and there is always a lot more of the latter than the former. So in that sense, perhaps all these inventions really did achieve their "educational" goal.
I've little to write, other than I read this website; learning Latin has made me so happy, and will continue to reveal pleasant things unto me; and there's a lot of value in isolation.
Latin will provide to me an escape from the meta-platform, perhaps.
@Cel Mihanie:
> there is definitely enough dissidence at this point for it to be visible and indicative of a shift in world events
While I agree that things are set for significant change (if anything, covid was a clear sign pointing that way), I think that any sort of dissidence will ultimately be co-opted by... the system. Indeed, the main difference today from a decade ago is that it's pretty clear even for the average guy that the West is failing -- for example, the press is writing quite plainly about Pops Joseph's recent blunder in the middle East -- but it's harder to see what precisely this failure points towards. If anything, it looks to me that whoever runs the show is giving it a vigorous push.
If I were to guess, I'd say that at the very least some portion of the old rule is ready for retirement, along with the old folks put in charge.
> and, I'm pretty sure for the printing press too.
Indeed, the main difference between the new and the old thing lies merely in the degree of amplitude.
> education consists of instruction and indoctrination
That's about as much as could be achieved of the grand goal of making everyone and their dog literate. My grandmother, God bless her resting soul, with her eight years of education, was better read, wiser and, quite importantly, more aware of her position in the world than many PhD graduates that I know. Inversion of values and all that, I suppose.
@Verisimilitude: Wait, you're not the glowie mentioned above, are you? Lol.
> Latin will provide to me an escape from the meta-platform, perhaps.
Perhaps. Have you read Solzhenitsyn, by the way? Or I would heartily recommend Corneliu Coposu's interviews, where he recounts his days in the communist prison. The detainees there survived (spiritually, first and foremost) by solving mathematical equations or by translating long pieces of text, all in their mind, since they didn't have any means of reading or writing. Unfortunately I don't think any of his spoken or written works have been translated into English, so who knows, maybe this could serve as a pretext for taking a stab at Romanian.
But more generally, North American culture is a dead end and you're better off studying any other -- Arab, Russian, French, Chinese, or what you will --, there's many other ways in which this endeavour could help one make an escape from the so-called meta-platform.
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