The Realm

A Blog About Digital Culture

[leilasticals-realms]

The “Clean”ers

Over the weekend I watched a documentary that not only made my skin crawl but honestly discouraged me from trying to gain reach on social media all together. It is an hour and a half long video called “The Cleaners” and I do not recommend it to anyone who wants to still have faith in social networks by the end of it. 

We have all become accustomed to chats and theories about different “algorithms” for different sites and apps. However, the truth goes much deeper than that. Everyone jokes about there being some secret FBI agent that watches them through the phone and laptop cameras, yet no one chats much about the truth of who really decides what happens to your posts and whether they do or do not succeed. 

In this documentary, it is shown that, at least during filming, the people sorting through political rhetoric and pictures of your puppy are citizens from third world countries like the Philippines where they are ruled by their dictator of a “president” and are heavily influenced by Catholic culture. This poses an extreme problem for most minority groups as, when content gets reported, half brainwashed, hyper-Christian, overworked and underpaid individuals are the ones deciding whether or not your posts and even your account stays active and visible. These biased individuals, in essence, control the social media network as we know it. For example, there was a wonderful artist featured in the documentary that painted a parody piece of the national embarrassment that is Donald Trump with a, probably factual, small penis. Not only was the post taken down, but so was the artist’s account. Now the question rises as to why the female moderator was so hot and bothered by this, enough so to use the “community guidelines” as an excuse when literal hate speech and nudity by other parties have gotten an unholy amount of passes. As someone who is cultured enough to know that nude painting is even a general part of the curriculum for art students let alone actual artists and works seen in basilicas and museums, this type of biased hypocrisy is disgusting and very much uncalled for. In the documentary, this same moderator is even shown in a sex shop looking at dildos. 

Now this is something everyone tends to laugh off. That is, until it happens to them. This metaphorical grim reaper is holding every person desiring a following on social media hostage. The question is, what can anyone do when the ones who are supposed to keep the social networks clean are the exact ones making sure it becomes dirtier by the millisecond? It is honestly painful just thinking about the effort so many people and original creators put in, only to be shut down and rejected by some random Filipino in a cubicle half a world away. 

All of this being said, this eye-opening revelation of a documentary was brought up in an educational setting for a reason. The fact that it basically opens and closes with Mark Zuckerberg in court is there for a reason. We all seem to believe that social media evolves as we do. However, it is becoming more and more obvious that as we “evolve” (a whole other question in and of itself), the internet continues to devolve back to base “virtues”, ideologies, and practices of the twentieth century before the internet had even been invented. For something to go viral, it must be entertaining but clean enough for a child and the creator must be respectable and, at most times, white, straight, and cis-gendered. That is, of course, unless it is a fifteen year old twerking for the viewer. But, as I earlier stated, the 1900s and prior have always been a very hypocritical era among the white straight male gaze that the internet has basically become another avenue for. 

As someone who is not white, straight, cis-gendered, or male, I have a pretty clear idea of where exactly I stand in the biased eyes of the social media gods and it is not the best position. For anyone in this predicament, there are really only two things you can do: suck up to the ones deciding your fate OR continue as you are without complaining when your audience is limited to maybe half of your current followers. One cannot start a revolution when rebelling accounts can simply disappear with the click of a mouse in some random country. This then brings into question how attacks like what happened on January 6, 2021 and worse are possible but, of course, if a parodical painting of the burnt orange can’t exist, we can obviously see which side the moderating “Cleaners” are on. 

They aren’t on our side. It is best to come to peace with that sooner rather than later. Any real “takeaway” from the documentary can be summarized in those two previous sentences. Whatever we decide to attempt to do, we must keep in mind that the ones watching us are not unbiased or omniscient. The “Cleaners” are far from being Snow Whites. 

[leilasticals-realms]

Viva La Revolution

The internet is already known and pre-established as an ever changing, transforming, and evolving thing. What was likely unexpected was the way it originally transformed. 

This post will likely be similar to the past couple ones as we will basically be readdressing the older points of how the internet allowing in the general public sphere caused a revolution in the worldwide web that allowed for the capitalistic ideas that currently control and fuel the modern day internet. 

After completing the course reading, involving two different essays about the evolution of the digital world, it is clear that the idea of granting the public access to the internet was not thoroughly thought out. 

There seems to be a tug-of-war between the mass majority of public users and the original Silicon Valley virtual superpowers. The way that users originally used the internet to share scholarly information then transitioned to using it as a space and “free market” for general opinions (whether factual or not) shows the dawn of a virtual revolution. 

While the Silicon Valley “big brothers” would much rather keep the internet limited and contained to what is profitable and what contributes “positively” to the capitalist ideology the top 1% has, the public masses are leaning towards a desire for an open space to roam and explore the digital world without the need to pay or be at any specific level of class or education. 

The solution showed itself in the form of a compromise: the dawn of social media and online commerce. 

Sites (and eventually applications) like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even Amazon blossomed and blew up as more people from every social and monetary class found their way into the virtual sphere. 

[leilasticals-realms]

The Internet 2.0

The idea that the internet is the same it has always been or nothing more than a continuous steady evolution is one of the greatest lies people have been led to believe. In reality, the internet has not evolved, it has completely transformed.

There were two readings that I completed when researching this topic and both pointed to the fact that the internet is much more than what it seems. While we already imagine the internet as this everlasting thing with no boundaries that continues onto infinity, the point is that while it does have its limits it has still formed itself in such a way that it seems limitless. However, the idea that the limitless abyss of the internet is still the same internet that was invented in the seventies is misguided. It is, in fact, an entirely different being all together. The dawn, if not recreation, of the internet as we know it came when the concept of commercialization was introduced. 

The first reading I will be sourcing is one by Tim O’Reilly. This reading discussed the idea of the internet 2.0. 

In this reading there was a lot to cover. However what I grabbed the most from it was just how different the “internet” is from what it was originally supposed to be. It is almost scary how codependent we have become as it expands and becomes more and more accessible. The introduction of business and commerce has not just boosted but rocketed the internet to new heights but is also the downfall of its original purpose. It is something that we could not run from as a society. With the new internet or “Internet 2.0″ a Cain and Abel effect seemed to form along with a constant need to grow and expand and evolve. With mega-sites and corporations forming to grab at the virtual free real estate, the competitions and constant need for the “newest thing” took over. Whether it was MySpace versus Skype, Yahoo versus AOL, Google versus Bing, etc. these sites began popping up everywhere and the internet was no longer free space but a battleground. 

The second reading comes from an excerpt of James Curran’s book “Misunderstanding the Internet”. Another hefty reading, it cam be summed up in a single sentence: The idea that it is “the same internet” is the biggest lie one can tell about the this expansive thing known as the internet. The internet is not some frivolous place one can venture into innocently or in a simple pursuit of knowledge anymore. With the internet being such an all consuming thing, one must venture in with caution and purpose, despite what it’s original purpose was supposed to be. It is, however, something that can be severely misunderstood by an user. The internet is like a massive ocean anyone could end up adrift in and with so many people inputting and exporting information it is complicated enough to get confused by. A single Google search or saved picture on Pinterest will not only lead the user to a seemingly infinite amount of other pages but it will even lead to suggestions and ads and emails that are so tailored to one’s interests or curiosities that it can feel as if a camera is constantly on them. 

That is a whole other concept of digital media and its interactions with users that I am sure I will be discussing in a later post. However, for now, it is simply evident that the internet is not what it was invented to be and, in fact, it is a whole other beast entirely. It is, in fact, the internet 2.0.

[leilasticals-realms]

What is the actual direction of Digital Culture?

When asking the question of what the internet is and what it is supposed to be used for, no answer will be the same. These answers may contain similarities, but never the exact same components in the exact same order. A similar statement can be said when addressing the just as, if not more, important question of what direction is the internet actually going in? When asking myself this question, I found myself looking in two opposite directions at the same time: the past and the present. Without even the slightest desire of looking towards the plentiful possibilities the internet has been granted for its future, I have looked into the history of it versus what is currently being done with it. 

There is a saying that I no longer remember the exacts of which basically stated that something rooted in evil intentions will never grant a purely good outcome. In another not necessarily similar but definitely relative context, there is another saying about how war is never the answer and how peace could never come from it, only division and malice. These two ideals correlate as the internet was originally forged for wartime efforts and purposes, despite the very first computer being created purely for calculation purposes. As we all know in modern-day society, while every device we can access the internet from is derived from the mechanics of a computer, not every device with internet access was created equal. Because of this, my main focus in this conversation is strictly the internet and the main point I would like to make about it is the danger factor it contains.

The internet was never a place of peace, regardless of what it made the users believe. Nowadays, it is an enigma with multiple purposes, some of them rooted in good. However, none of it will be able to change the true roots of war and competition. The past and history of the internet could be taught and discussed by scholars over a course of time that would require the lessons to take months if not years to fully dissect. One could talk about either world war, Enigma, the Cold War, and truthfully any national or international conflict since the beginning of the twentieth century. It all came together and corrupted an item, if one can even call the internet anything besides the noun that it is, into what it is today: a passive aggressive battleground. 

I take the liberty of calling the internet this as not only have we all seen how our world leaders have used and are currently using it, but also how most of the common population use it. We can go into any app and discover drama. We can look up the stock market and see how companies rival each other. We can go onto one shopping website versus another and even that contributes to the competitive aspects of the internet. Regardless of age, it has never been the place it is commonly advertised to be: one of worldwide opportunity and acceptance. Instead we now live in a world where we can find a five year old, or a few thousand of them, lying about their age so they can make accounts on apps in order to try their chances at gaining virtual “popularity” while their parents are off in their own sector of the internet, likely doing the same thing. It is not like this happened overnight as the primal instinct of the human race is survival via power or domination. While the truth is rotten, it remains the truth nonetheless. 

This give-and-take minus the give is something that the human race as a species has been known for before the internet came into existence and will continue after the internet ceases to exist, if it ever does or if it does not kill us first. This is why I must admit that I laugh whenever an individual shares the slightest sliver of hope over the future direction of the internet even possibly being a positive one. It is a vicious cycle and a toxic codependency that even the conscious ones partake in due to the way we have rendered ourselves incapable of surviving without it. The internet is not something that could technically be destroyed, at least not all at once. 

It is rather hilarious that in the modern times we all live in, the internet is completely dependent on this cable map staying the same and not being damaged. By this I do not mean the picture of the map, but the under-sea cables that quite literally cover the globe. If something were to happen to this black widow web of cables that connect the farthest reaches of the earth to a thing like the internet, then there is little doubt that the world would implode into a world war, that is, if the modern world could even have a world war without the use of the internet given the dependence even the major “superpowers” of the Earth have on it. It is something truly terrifying to think of but nonetheless something we all must think of and consider. The internet is not yet a free-willed self-thinking thing. It may have artificial intelligence however the capabilities are just that: artificial. Rerouting the internet towards a positive outcome would take a mass censorship and removal of toxic and unfriendly parties from its assets, something highly improbable. It would also require those with the capabilities of good to only use the internet for strictly positive and educational purposes. This is once again highly improbable given the, as I have previously mentioned, dark roots and original purpose of the internet. This is, of course, not to mention the fact that we as a species would have to completely remove the innate desire for power, domination, control, and competition that the human species has. 

This would cross an infinite amount of lines and breach barriers the laws of our world have put into place. However, if, in some future and advanced society, we were all able to follow in the path of peace, leaving behind our desire for competition (as none of it is actually healthy for anyone), completely dissect the internet (what it is, what it contains, etc), and transform it into a place purely designed for positivity and education, then it would be able to proceed in a positive and genuinely useful direction. Until then, I can only see the direction the internet is currently spiraling downwards towards being destructive if not detrimental to its users. In such a world and time as this, I can only hope the damage it has already inflicted can be reversed. I also entrust the survival of humans as a species to those with little to no dependence on the catch 22 modeled, double-edged sword that is the internet. 

[leilasticals-realms]

“When day comes we step out of the shade of flame and unafraid. The new dawn blooms as we free it, for there was always light if only we're brave enough to see it, if only we're brave enough to be it.” 

- Amanda Gorman, Poet Laureate