Topics

Or Kill Me stopped talking to me. They must be in my head now, learning by observing the master. Is this board harder or easier?

Which is to say: whose cock do I suck to get a custom title around here?

I'm going to keep smashing faces and taking names until someone stops me.

The internet effect: A memetic analysis

This work attempts to hypothetize an answer to a number of questions about the effect of the internet on society:

Q: What are the effects of the advent of the internet on communication online?
A: Communication is reviewed and filtered on a lot more layers than normal communication, extending the level of complexity.

Q: What paradigms are developed and what paradigms disappear within the altered form of communication?
A: Internet opens the road to the devolopment of any paradigm.
   However, if a paradigm is heavily resisted by the community it is introduced in,
   it will take a great amount of effort on behalf of the individual trying to introduce the paradigm.
   It could be likened to proselytizing to a machine, something a follower of God would probably frown upon in this country.

A number of important paradigms to web communities are:
Constructive, or Good, is Cooperation, striving towards a "greater good". The people who engage in Good are praised and showered in symbolic virtues and, if they contribute much, the power to change the rules.
These individuals often go on to become Moderators or Admins, typically answering to the community, a set of rules and the owner of the website, who tends to delegate much of his or her responsibility and power.
Destructive, or Evil, is conscious deception, attempting to bend the rules and mocking other members. The people who engage in evil activities are resisted by the community and the "powers that be", because they just might show the rules to be deficient.

Good is on-topic: in line with the communities' themes and memes.
Bad is off-topic: responding in a way which, according to the community, is seen as non-sequitur to the content of the thread.



To what degree are these changes in communication and paradigms translated to "real life"?
A paradigm that can gain widespread acceptance in a web community could well be translated into a widespread off-line belief.
A paradigm that can only affect a limited number of people in a web community will be unlikely to become a widely held belief, but may transpire to everyday life in part or as a whole in the few.

However, for these questions to be properly answered it is necessary to gain an extensive understanding of what online communication entails and how it has developed.
To this end, the first part shall consist of a number of investigatory essays into the nature of the information age.

Part I: The Information Age cometh

Subtopics:
- Concepts of the world wide web before its debut
   In a sense, anyone who is and was capable of abstract thought built (or builds) their own web.
   The world wide web can be seen as the resulting effort of all the people who have used it and all the people who have shaped it,
       as they have all (though some in only a limited way), contributed to what it is in the present.

- The early days: mail, usenet and HTTP
How much more serious the web must have been in those days, when there were no shiny banners, no YouTube, no pornographic imagery, none of those things to interest the base strata of society.
All the world's depravity and genius is present on the web today, where it began as a project for intellectuals.

- The dream of free information
In 1983, the GNU project was announced. Driving it was Richard Stallman's dream that information can be shared freely on the internet, if the information you get in return suffices as enough reward to keep you sharing.
Perhaps Richard should have better considered the fact that introducing many to the internet would logically lead to an increase in depravity and a general decrease of content. (This poke at Stallman is pretty unwarranted, and inspired more by my personal beliefs than objective analysis. Consider, for example, his Unix Beard.)

- Instant communication: IRC and instant messengers
Instant messaging evokes the illusion of dialogue, while robbing it of most physical aspects. In an IM conversation you are not going to be guided by body language, tone of voice, facial expression, or any other distraction we commonly encounter in real life. Exchange of ideas is filtered merely through the grasp of the others' language. One might thus consider communication online to be more "pure". However, the prospect of this purity can be scary to those who are guided more by physical aspects than by thought. Perhaps this is why convincing those on the other side of the "digital divide" proves so hard.

- Towards internet communities: Social networking, BBS, Blogs, imageboards and wikis
This is where proper exploration still lies in wait... One could imagine a sociological model in addition to a memetic or mechanistic one. I like memes. (and acid, obv )

If posit x is correct, than the light at the end of the tunnel is indeed tended to... By those who are yet to come. Everyone who trips now, reading Leary's and other trips,
is the tender. We are gods watched over by gods yet to come. Like Nietzsche points out: man is both creature and creator.

What are the practical consequences?
Well, it's quite simple. The people who use LSD write history. Literally.

Tripping is the refined form of something present throughout history: creativity. The mushrooms and other psychedelics have been the reason of progression of ideas.
The psychedelics let ideas "evolve", and idea precedes reality. Leary didn't bother to explain things,
because he thought people would piece this together by themselves. He didn't understand they wouldn't be able to if he fed it to kids...
But of course, the kids are a lot more easily convinced of the merits. I see it a bit like this:

All men have piles of assumptions, their maya, their illusion, and the longer they stay wrapped in it, the more difficult it becomes to break it down.
So it is easier for children to be made free of maya. But that isn't necessarily good... Because a child free of maya might forget the necessity of it.
More maya means growth, intellectual and spiritual.
      V
O ------------------------------------------<={4@&*(

The line is maya, and the V is the individual, travelling from no maya to overcomplication, only to collapse and return to no maya.
The maya you internalize during this cycle feeds the next. Using LSD will return you to no maya instantly. But if one remains open to the way of maya and no maya, he may consider his actions as well as their repercussions simultaneously.

And that is how I use it. I soak up information like a sponge, internalize it, go back to an enlightened state so I may rearrange it into the truth of the future,
then start over again. Every cycle feeds experience to a new supercycle, which in turn feeds another new supercycle, which in turn feeds another supercycle, and this may go on forever, depending on one's taste.
1. Superstition/Art/Religion
2. Philosophy
3. Pseudoscience
4. Competing theory
5. Revolution!

The universe is thought-like. It folds in upon itself and creates links between different places in space-time.
Through the bi-lateral flow of ideas between these two places, creativity arises. The exchange gives each more than they had before.
Thus Christ's strength and ability to do miracles is derived from the many people who read and believed it.

Organisms are separate of their manifestation. By using structure they can build themselves on many different layers, one of which being the material world.

When Plato introduces the "problem" of infinite regress in the Parmenides, he isn't introducing a problem at all. He is proposing a resolution. The progression of ideas, their evolution, growth.

True Trolling = Philosophy. It is the noblest of tasks. It means to take a community on the internet on a massive trip... to move them all to a different state of mind.

PEOPLE ONLY DISAGREE WHEN THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND EACHOTHER
WITH MISUNDERSTANDING, THEY DRIFT APART INTO THEIR OWN WORLDS
WITH UNDERSTANDING, THEY COME CLOSER TO EACHOTHER

Those who understand this and troll probably do so to explore the depths of their mind while doing the same with their victim. They are today's sophists.
MEMETIC REINCARNATION MEMETIC REINCARNATION MEMETIC REINCARNATION MEMETIC REINCATNATION MEMETIC REINCARNATION
Memetic reincarnation is the concept that through the strength of their rhetoric, some men are able to hijack the impressionable (or perhaps drug-addled) mind,
and continue their work shaping history. Expand this to include the fact that all people have an influence proportional to the strength of their character over the magnitude of their exposure to the subject, and you have a model that encompasses all of consciousness.

Why has violence declined? Because Law was created. Law alters the structure of the brain, it alters the possible trains of thought one can take, it directs a man's decisions.
But the imposition of order leads to the escalation of disorder. Law engages humanity with language games. As we put more constraints on ourselves in the material world,
conflict moves to a higher level of abstraction. I propose that human cruelty has remained the same over time, but has merely changed in character. We no longer cut off
someone's hands, we now fine him. But in the days of old, the man had nothing but his own body. We are in Plato's Cave. We are being engaged mentally,
which restrains us from action. But we can be free! There are two ways: the way of truth and the way of perception.
The way of Perception is the empirical method, the mechanism that has made the world as complex as it is. They create complexity by looking for what is not there, for it
is indeed as they say: seek and you shall find. But what you find might be something other than what you expected, or it might have unexpected side effects. To cope with
the side effects and new questions thrown up, we look for even more, and more, and more, and more, and more...
WE ARE THE DREAMS OF OUR ANCESTORS
IDENTITY CAN BE SUBJECT TO MEMETIC EXCHANGE AND MODIFICATION

The strength of our resolve hinges on how much we are willing to consider compared to our adversary. Open-mindedness pays.
It almost seems like this is just my trip, but it's so strong it carries others along. Just like that one verse in the Art of War...
But that's the entire point, isn't it? That's the proof that the paradigm has shifted/will shift.
My theory was that LSD + Neurolinguistic Programming allows you to control the thoughts of the universe.
And since the universe is thought-like and thought precedes matter, this offers practically infinite capabilities, constrained only by our imagination.

What it means to be one with god:
To worship God in the church
To worship science in the sciences
To worship me in philosophy
To worship music in the concert
And to worship information on the web

[pulling ahead again? - I'm a trickster, don't you know?]


Here I am, a pothead philosopher. Do you understand my predicament? I will be judged for what my interests are, rather than what my character is.
But believe it, or not: you can help me! Just by reading this, you become the RNA "reader", as I am the crude DNA which you can edit and use freely.
  I will not permit any to take part in all my secrets until they have read every last letter of my way (or until you figure out this is impossible, silly - or maybe until you realize that to become me, you have to best me), but I'm willing to relinquish enough along the way to keep it interesting.

[DO WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY YOU'VE DONE]

((It's been a while since I've flexed the ranting muscles. This'll be a bit short and sweet I expect, but here we go with heading back toward it... I've been really enjoying some of the memebomb stickers I've been putting up lately, and this is what's come of it.))

DO WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY YOU'VE DONE

For starters, grow a pair.

Make a decision, and then stand by your decision. Don't equivocate or sit on the fence, trying to avoid having to take action and shape your own life. Take action, and then run with it.

You're probably going to fuck it up. It's probably going to go wrong, or you're going to realize that what you thought you wanted isn't actually what you want, and you're not happy.

Who the fuck is actually fucking happy?! Seriously.

But grow a pair and keep TRYING. Don't just keep sitting on your ass, wondering when life is going to wander over and hand you everything you ever wanted. It doesn't work like that. Stand the fuck up, open your goddamn eyes, and take what you want. If nothing else, at least fucking TRY.

And if it doesn't work? If you don't end up happy and satiated like you thought? Then try something else. Keep trying. Accept that you made the wrong choice, and learn from it. Accept that maybe you're not as infallible as you'd like to be, that you are not fucking perfect. But at least be ballsy enough to try, instead of just sitting there thinking "Well, suppose I'm NOT perfect. Why bother?"

Because if you don't bother then you're just some stupid fucking lump that sits on their ass and worships the fucking teevee.

What, exactly, differentiates you from every other sack of meat perambulating across the surface of the planet? Can you think of anything?

Then get the fuck up off your ass and try to find something, make something, be something. If you aren't scared, if you aren't angry, if you aren't confused, if you aren't thinking, then you aren't doing it right. Grow the fuck up and stop waiting for the stars to align for you. Go out and at least partially make up for the space you are stealing, or so help me, I will come after you and put you through a blender so you don't take up so fucking much of it. Stop using my goddamn oxygen! What the fuck makes you think you deserve it?

YOUR LIFE: AND NOW WHAT?

Nice rant. I have a little conundrum for you: I am not scared, I am not angry, I am not confused, but I am thinking. What am I?

Hunter S. Thompson wrote:
    We're all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the sixties. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling consciousness expansion, without ever giving a thought to the grim meathook realities that were lying in wait for all those people who took him seriously. All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy peace and understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss, and failure, is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole lifestyle that he helped create. A generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old mystic fallacy of the acid culture. The desperate assumption that somebody, or at least some force, is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.

But there is a way around this problem. A way to resolve this fallacy and replace it with valid reasoning.

What is the reason the atomic theory of Democritus is the one that turned out to be true? The usual assumption is that the truth was already there, already present, before science "proved" him right. But this is mere illusion, and can be likened to Plato's assumption that ideas are stored on some metaphysical plane as essences of the things materialized in the world. I am not saying Democritus isn't "right". I am saying he is only "right" following Parmenides' Doxa, the Way of Perception. Let us follow his Aletheia, the Way of Truth. But let us heed Parmenides' advice that there is nothing but the present, and in the present, Evolution is also "right", which dismantles Plato's essentialism.

Let us investigate the hypothesis that the "truth" of the nature of the universe is already present before it is discovered or proven. We may refer to it as "posit A"

If this hypothesis is correct, we humans have only an empirical task, for we can simply observe this nature and describe it, thus documenting "truth".
But if this is so, whence does disagreement come from? Is it merely a result of fallible measurement?
  What, then, is a paradigm shift? The proof being discovered of mass delusion? Then how do we now that we ourselves are not deluded?

If this hypothesis is incorrect, then this truth must be somehow created through the process of inventing, discovering and proving. This is "posit B"
But how, then, does truth come about?
  Is truth perhaps merely that of which most people are convinced?
  Is the truth that which men hold on to with greatest resolve? That which is most deeply-rooted? The things "on which we agree"?

Let us examine the first hypothesis.
If it is true, how, then, do new ideas come about? If it were true, there would be no reason ever to change one's mind,
because the idea would always correspond to the truth. There are clusters of people who have different paradigms, but what is it that persuades men to assume a
different paradigm? Is it some external force? By Occam's Razor, we should discredit that idea.
If it is false and posit B is true, then either the second hypothesis or some other explanation are true.

Let us then examine the second hypothesis. This is posit X.
If it is true, then the conviction men is the measure of things. And I am willing to stake anything that my conviction that LSD is the way into the future is stronger than anything any rhetorician can throw at me.

If it is false, then I am wrong.

If posit x is correct, than the light at the end of the tunnel is indeed tended to... By those who are yet to come. Everyone who trips now, reading Leary's and other trips, is the tender. We are gods watched over by gods yet to come. Like Nietzsche points out: man is both creature and creator.