Social media, the rise of the decentralized virtual surveillance state, and the ongoing collapse of Western culture

A systematic theory about how social media is impoverishing our institutions, our speech, our thinking, our culture, and our politics: a video essay

Below is an elaboration and summary upon what I said in the video, in case people want to read instead of watch

I first apologize for my lack of a shirt and now regret doing it that way

Nonetheless the show must go on

The East German Stasi and its chief technique of combatting subversives: “decomposition”

• The East German Stasi was one of the most effective state security services and secret police forces in history

• The Stasi used a systematic approach called “decomposition” to delegitimize and psychologically break down political dissidents and other subversives

• Decomposition used reputation-destruction, surveillance, harassment, and divide-and-conquer techniques universal to all human societies in all places, but usually only used by individuals and small groups—the Stasi systematized and bureaucratized these techniques inside a massive, hierarchical, brutally efficient state security apparatus

• This approach avoided the backlash and martyrdom of open political repression involving imprisonment, execution, etc.

• People who worked or collaborated with the Stasi did so because they were rewarded and because they believed in the Stasi’s mission of suppressing subversive speech and activities: the future of communism was at stake

• More than 800,000 East Germans are estimated to have eagerly assisted the Stasi in carrying out surveillance, harassment, repetitional destruction, etc.

Social media and the rise of the global virtual surveillance society

• Social media gives rise to virtual parasocial tribal hierarchies

• These virtual hierarchies have real-world consequences, increasing the access of high-status members to real-world opportunities and resources

• Climbing a virtual parasocial tribal hierarchy requires publicly exemplifying its beliefs and values, i.e. that tribal hierarchy’s group identity

• A person’s status within a virtual tribal hierarchy is largely based on visibility and engagement, i.e followers, clicks, views

• Thus, climbing a virtual parasocial hierarchy, and gaining access to the real-world resources that this entails, requires publicly exemplifying the beliefs and values of that hierarchy in the most visible and engaging way possible

• More polarizing and emotive statements generate more visibility and engagement, thus most rapidly enhancing one’s standing within a virtual tribal hierarchy

• These incentives are widely known

• Most virtual tribal hierarchies therefore come to be defined by emotive and polarized content, that is, the tribal identity comes to be emotivized, polarized, and extreme

• The larger the tribal hierarchy is, the more defined it is in a emotive and polarized way, because the masses tend to emotion and polarization; small communities can avoid this tendency so long as they stay small

• One of the most basic components of all tribal identities is the concept of insider-outsider; insiders are good, outsiders are bad

• Virtual tribal identities therefore, in becoming extreme and polarized, are polarized against other tribal outgroups

• Much of the content produced within virtual tribal hierarchies therefore is directed at disparaging outgroups; this content is popular because each disparagement reaffirms virtual tribal identity; this content also increases the status of the poster within the tribal hierarchy

• Thus, virtual tribal hierarchies produce a lot of hatred toward the outgroup, which individuals within the group hope to exploit to increase their status

• To increase their status within the tribal hierarchy, members of a group monitor members of the hated outgroups, especially when such members are trending in the media

• “Taking down” members of such hated outgroups increases status

• Takedowns can take the form of debunkings, slander, personal harassment, signing up an enemy for large numbers of mail lists, professional cancellation, etc.

• Such virtual tribal parasocial hierarchies therefore reproduce, on an organic basis, the same strategy of Decomposition as the more formally organized Stasi—with the incentives being strikingly similar—but on a much wider, global scale, and with no accountability to any centralized authority

• This is like pre-internet cancel culture but on steroids—with massively increased power and surveillance capabilities

The destruction of free thought, free expression, and the ability for self-correction within the institutions

• Dominant virtual parasocial tribal hierarchies can have thousands if not tens of thousands of people monitoring “enemies” from outgroups on a voluntary basis, to harvest for the purpose of creating content to rise in the hierarchy

• This monitoring can take the form of reading old work or writing, watching videos or television appearances, in extreme cases, real-life stalking, etc.

• These hierarchies exclude outsiders; taking an outsider “seriously” is anathema to the hierarchy

• Virtual hierarchies, because of their exclusivity, emotiveness, and polarization, begin to influence real life, starting the process of socially and professionally excluding people in real life whose views do not match the emerging views of the parallel virtual hierarchies on social media

• What is defined as “orthodoxy” becomes increasingly narrow

• Heterodoxy is relentlessly sought out and cancelled by the emergent distributed virtual surveillance state

• Institutions polarize across ideological lines, as virtual tribal hierarchies define the orthodox ideological boundaries, and relentlessly socially and professionally punish those who deviate from them

• Heterodoxy comes to be present exclusively outside the institutions, which means that the views of the heterodox are not grounded in a well-informed view of institutional life

• Heterodoxy thus becomes in many cases a faint shadow of real criticism, often missing the mark, producing phantasms and chimera, that take the place of real criticism, for popular consumption

• Institutions lose important sources of heterodox feedback as these sources are systematically excluded by the emergent decentralized virtual surveillance state

• Institutions are less easily able to self-correct, or rather, self-correction tends to take place closer and closer to the brink of catastrophe rather than as a result of rational thinking or planning

• Absent appropriate internal feedback, institutions become destabilized, more dysfunctional, and more vulnerable

• Those who remain inside the institutions feel afraid to say what they think and are for all practical purposes silenced

• Those who remain inside the institutions tend to be more intelligent than those who leave, meaning that the most intelligent voices are silenced

• This silencing takes place across institutions, across society, across countries, around the world

• The light of humanity is profoundly dimmed

The real problem is a profound loss of cultural richness and institutional integrity due to the virtual surveillance state; the problem is not government censorship

• As institutions increase in vulnerability, dysfunction, and instability, their vulnerability becomes obvious to members of the outgroups, who then take advantage of these weaknesses and attack the institutions

• Among these institutions are government institutions

• Government institutions thus become just as polarized as all other institutions

• Members of government institutions are appalled at the content produced by outgroups and heterodox content producers, find such content alien to their way of thinking (because all dissidents have been long ago banished and the rest have been silenced) and call for censorship

• Censorship is directed at a melange of misinformation, half-truths, and suppressed truths—all of which is alien and terrifying to those on the inside of institutions, and which those on the inside of the institutions cannot relate to

• This means that the problem of free speech online isn’t one of simply defending the First Amendment; while important, defending the First Amendment is only the tip of the iceberg

Solutions

• The goal is to make dissidents inside institutions more resilient to the virtual surveillance state

• Education: educate people not to participate in ingroup-outgroup thinking or status hierarchies that encourage cancellation

• Institutional empowerment: make institutions more resilient in the face of calls for professional cancellation

  • In academia, faculty rather than administrator-led

  • With a culture encouraging dissidence

• New laws: most controversially, pass laws to ban incitement to professional censure, similar to laws against incitement to violence