The Four Ages Of The Internet

A previous essay on this page recounted the life cycle of Internet forums. The Second Hermetic Principle teaches us that as below, so above. As this essay will describe, the Internet itself is running on a life cycle – and we’re moving into the less enjoyable part of it.

The Golden Age of the Internet began in August 1995, with the release of Microsoft’s Windows 95. This operating system took the Internet out of the hands of the technological elite, and put it in the hands of the masses. This was the beginning of the personal computing revolution.

At first, the Internet appealed mostly to nerds, who had been starved of information thanks to the relative inefficiency of the book-and-library system. These nerds did what came naturally, which was to use the Internet to share information. They created all kinds of websites, most of them on subjects appealing to young men, like science, technology and engineering.

In the Golden Age of the Internet, websites consisted of little other than pure information and hyperlinks to more. Being restricted by bandwidth, websites focussed almost entirely on sharing the greatest quality of this info. Search engines such as Metacrawler indexed it all for ease of access. It was like having a library in every house.

The peak of the peak may have been around 2002, when an enormous number of small websites were available on GeoCities (later known as “GeoShitties”). This was also the peak of websites such as SlashDot, which appealed specifically to the programmers who were building the infrastructure of the Internet.

By 2003, the seeds of the decline had become apparent. Google AdSense was launched that year, which changed the web publishing game permanently. AdSense offered something truly revolutionary: cold, hard cash. But as is usually the case when cash is on the table, there were conditions.

The Google AdSense program was funded by advertisers, and those advertisers expected a certain degree of influence. In the same way that advertisers in newspapers 100 years ago exerted influence over what those newspapers published, AdSense advertisers pressured Google to not show ads on sites that carried certain content.

That meant content relating to illicit drugs, erotic literature, serial killers, violent anarchy and political extremism (i.e. all the interesting stuff) was produced less. This was the start of the great decline. Once Google AdSense money got involved, website owners started self-censoring to keep the shekels flowing in. The Golden Age of the Internet ended, and the Silver Age began.

The Silver Age of the Internet began on the 26th of September 2006, when FaceBook became open to everyone, and not just university students. This was the point at which social media really began to take off, a big deal because it meant that users could generate their own content. This steady stream of content could then be exploited by inserting advertising slots in it.

With the arrival of FaceBook, the Internet became a true commercial venture. Now there were billions of dollars involved. This was a Silver Age because of advertising, which corrupted the purity of the information. Although there was a greater quantity of information than ever, it had advertisements all through it.

The advertisers demanded more and more influence over the content. Eventually, FaceBook and YouTube became televisionised, with an extensive list of content restrictions. People started to get banned for calling each other ‘faggot’ or ‘nigger’. But still the Internet grew, to the point where the government decided that they had to get involved.

Once Big Government started to take an interest in what was being said on social media, and making up laws over who was allowed to say what, the Silver Age ended. The Bronze Age of the Internet began in April 2016, when Count Dankula was arrested for a YouTube video of a dog giving a Nazi salute. The freewheeling, freespeaking Internet of free expression was gone.

By the time of the Bronze Age of the Internet, there were so many retards online that much of cyberspace became detrimental to mental health. As the IQ of the average Internet user continued to decline, the quality of the average Internet experience became lower and lower. During the Golden Age of the Internet, the world’s retards bullied people for using computers – in the Bronze Age, they bully people by using computers.

If the Golden Age of the Internet saw its realisation, and the Silver Age saw its commercialisation, the Bronze Age saw its weaponisation. It was realised that, in the 21st Century, wars would be fought with information rather than bullets. The politicisation of the Internet saw people act to restrict the platform access of their ideological enemies.

By the time of writing this article, wrongthinkers are getting purged left, right and centre. Even websites like Reddit, founded in the twilight of the Golden Age specifically as a free-speech platform, are banning entire subforums on a weekly basis. It’s forbidden to discuss any subject that displeases the advertisers.

This has seen the rise and rise of imageboard culture, especially the chans such as 4chan. The ‘anything goes’ nature of these sites appeals to those who appreciated the Golden Age. In the Bronze Age of the Internet, those parts of cyberspace that still uphold the values of the Golden Age are dismissed as “cesspits”. This merely causes the appeal of the chans to grow further.

The Iron Age of the Internet is yet to begin. We can predict what it will look like: a totalitarian surveillance network in which the activities and social interactions of every citizen are tracked to the finest detail. 5G networks offer the bandwidth to transmit high-definition video footage faster than it can be viewed, and the advent of facial recognition technology means that they will know exactly where you are in real time.

Free speech restrictions might be bad now, but they can get worse. Improving AI tech will make it possible for any social media comment to be analysed and, if necessary, shadowbanned before anyone can see it. Even more ominously, the governments of all Western nations appear willing to increase Police harassment of online wrongthinkers.

When the Iron Age of the Internet is fully upon us, the Internet will be unrecognisably different from its Golden Age, much like today’s religions are radically different to those practiced during the Western spiritual tradition’s Golden Age in ancient Greece. We will then, as per Plato’s Republic, have to wait for a movement of philosopher-kings to overthrow the old Internet and institute a new one.

This article is an excerpt from Clown World Chronicles, a book about the insanity of life in the post-Industrial West. This is being compiled by Vince McLeod for an expected release in the middle of 2020.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 and the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 are also available.

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The Ultimate Coronavirus Conspiracy Theory

2020 so far has been the year of the Coronavirus, probably the biggest thing to happen to the world since World War II. As with every major event, plenty of bullshit has been spoken about it. This has led to an inevitable spate of conspiracy theories. This article describes the ultimate COVID-19 conspiracy.

Most conspiracy theories arise to explain otherwise inexplicable behaviour on the part of the ruling class. The great replacement theory arose to explain why Western elites allow so much mass immigration. Another theory suggests that cannabis prohibition was instituted to repress freethinking, not to protect mental health.

The ultimate coronavirus conspiracy theory arose in the aftermath of the economic damage done to Western societies by lockdowns. It isn’t easy to explain why Western rulers are willing to do so much damage to their economies for the sake of a virus that has a 99.7%+ survival rate. Some calculations suggest that the economic damage done by the lockdowns will kill more people than the virus.

One conspiracy theory has it that these lockdowns are part of a Communist revolution, in which the followers of Marx seek to deal a fatal blow to capitalism by destroying as many businesses as they can. The uncertainty created by the threat of further lockdowns has made many businesses go bankrupt, and some think this economic disruption may have been the goal all along.

This theory shares some features with the ultimate coronavirus conspiracy, but the ultimate one is more scientific.

Many climatologists contend that the Earth’s climate is being placed under intolerable stress right now. According to the theories put forward, the volume of industrial emissions getting pumped into the Earth’s atmosphere is so vast that it has started to heat up the planet. Earth’s temperature has spiked in recent years, and if we keep producing emissions at this rate it will continue to climb.

The problem: if the temperature of the planet would heat up by more than a few degrees, human life would no longer be possible. The ecosystems of the Earth are so finely balanced that any change in temperature will cause disruption and death. A two degree temperature rise would have catastrophic effects on food yields, and thus on the viability of human civilisation.

It follows from this line of reasoning that our current course of action is like being in a car that’s accelerating into a brick wall. The emissions we’ve already pumped into the atmosphere have raised the Earth’s temperature by 0.6 degrees, and half of those have been in the last 30 years. Another few decades of emissions will raise it by two degrees or more. If we don’t change course – and drastically – we’re all going to die.

It follows from that line of reasoning that any measure, no matter how extreme, is permissible if it achieved the goal of preventing ecological collapse. Reducing our industrial emissions is an imperative – if we don’t, we’re dead. It simply doesn’t matter how we do this. No price is too high to avoid ecological collapse.

The world’s industries produce their emissions as an inescapable byproduct of meeting the world’s demand for goods and services. The only way to reduce emissions to a level where the planet can survive is to reduce economic activity, perhaps by shutting down all of the advanced economies of the world.

Any idiot can anticipate that people would resist such a proposal. After all, we all know that when the elite ask us to make sacrifices, they don’t intend to make any themselves. An economic shutdown would primarily affect the already poor.

How, then, to get the world to accept a drastic reduction to their standard of living? As rulers have always known, put enough fear through a population and they’ll do whatever you tell them to. Author Michael Crichton described it simply: “Social control is best managed by fear.”

The usual sources of fear are absent this year. There is no sign of a war on the horizon, and the Muslims have been quiet since the Christchurch mosque shooting. So the ruling class had to go back to the tried and true: a pandemic.

The ultimate coronavirus conspiracy theory has it that the world’s ruling classes took the opportunity presented by the COVID-19 outbreak to dismantle the world’s economy under the guise of fighting the virus. The real motive behind the lockdowns is to reduce fossil fuel emissions. The coronavirus pandemic might have happened naturally, and might be a real thing with real victims, but the lockdown measures are only superficially related to the pandemic itself.

The true purpose of these intensely intrusive rolling lockdowns is to suffocate the world’s economic’s activity. This is why no-one cares about the severe GDP contractions: those are not drawbacks but objectives.

Even though socialist rulers like Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand or Dan Andrews in Victoria are successfully destroying capitalism in the areas under their control, the lockdowns aren’t a Communist conspiracy to destroy the West. Capitalism, and the economies of the world, are being destroyed to save the environment.

We can predict from this that the lockdowns will continue until living standards in the West are reduced to around the level experienced by Brazil today, or less. This might take five or ten years to achieve.

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Clown World Chronicles: What Is A ‘Glowie’?

Alternative movements have always been concerned about spies within their ranks. It’s a fact of life that if you get any kind of interesting movement happening, the Establishment will try to fuck it up before it becomes a threat to them. Their agents who they task to do so are often referred to as ‘glowies’.

The term comes from the belief that infiltrators into certain groups stand out so much that it is as if they glow in the dark. Agents provocateur can enter Internet spaces and start agitating for violence as a way of poisoning the well. Sometimes these individuals stand out like a television screen stands out in a dark room.

A ‘glowie’ (or ‘glownigger’) is an infiltrator, usually a government-controlled one, who is advocating for some action that brings the group into disrepute. Their purpose is to sow discord and division within alternative movements, with the intent that those movements either collapse from infighting or are banned.

Some believe that federal intelligence agents are regular visitors to certain Internet locations. According to this belief, the security services are concerned that these Internet forums are radicalising young men into taking violent actions that threaten the Establishment. Both Anders Breivik and Brenton Tarrant were known to spend a lot of time online, and the security services want to preempt the next one like them.

Support for beliefs like this come from known facts about psychological operations such as Operation Mockingbird, in which the CIA made an effort to use the power of mass media to manipulate public opinion, molding it to be more conducive to achieving America’s security objectives.

Operation Mockingbird saw the CIA plant or recruit individuals within the mainstream media, who then used their position in the apparatus of propaganda to regiment the public’s opinions on certain matters. With control of enough media sources, the CIA was able to manufacture consent for evils like the Vietnam War.

The CIA claims to no longer do this, but evidence suggests they do. The mainstream media happily did the cheerleading for the Iraq War, just as willingly as if they had taken direction from the CIA itself. It wasn’t until after then that social media had become popular enough to threaten the television’s stranglehold on popular perception.

The rise of the Internet, the story has it, provided a new challenge to the CIA’s ability to control the narrative. Once people were able to discuss things in online groups of likeminded people, away from those trying to manipulate them, they started arriving at conclusions that the ruling class didn’t want them to.

Thanks to the Internet, people were able to get together and realise that the government was lying about cannabis, was lying about psychedelics, was lying about wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam (and everywhere else), was lying about acting in the people’s interest, was lying about their rights to enforce laws on an unconsenting populace etc.

Thanks to the Internet, many slaves came to leave the thought plantation.

The ultimate threat to the CIA’s narrative control comes from imageboards. On these boards, people from all around the world get together to discuss politics without interference from mainstream media brands and personalities. This leads them to draw conclusions that are unpalatable to their rulers.

To destroy imageboard culture, or so those afraid of glowies say, federal agents have descended on them with the specific intent of encouraging acts of violence. This violence achieves two major goals: associating violence with a particular imageboard can help to get it banned, and successful terrorist attacks cause the security services to get more government funding.

All this explains why, if someone suggests that the way forward is to start shooting people, that person will be called a “glowie” and told to piss off.

In reality, secret security officers don’t agitate to have politicians killed. That would be like a pub bouncer specifically inviting patched gang members into the bar to fight the bartenders, with the intent that the pub owner will then expand their security apparatus by hiring more bouncers. Secret security officers, like any other professional, are judged on how well their achieve their core responsibilities. Theirs are to keep politicians safe.

However, it’s true that the security services keep close tabs on alternative thinkers and places where alternative thinkers gather. They would be remiss not to, on account of that, historically speaking, challenges to the system are often violent. Ever since the assassination of President McKinley by anarchist Leon Czolgosz, those tasked with protecting the Establishment have believed that threats can arise from anywhere that freethinking is allowed to fester.

The author of this book has been visited by police officers who wanted to interrogate him about his political beliefs. This is becoming more and more common throughout Clown World. Glowies don’t encourage people to kill politicians online, but they’re sure not above letting freethinkers know they’re being watched.

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Demography Is Destiny

The West is in a dismal state today. Despite unprecedented material wealth, our collective social capital has never been lower. Sometimes it feels like the West is in a state of civil war, with chaos and destruction reigning in many major cities. Most of this was predicted at least half a century ago, by those who studied the demographic trends.

The American fertility rate was over three children per woman from 1950 to 1964. This period of high fertility became known as the “Baby Boom”. The rate fell sharply after 1964, and by 1978 it had fallen to 1.8 children per woman. This demographic pattern had serious economic consequences.

As the Boomers entered the workforce en masse, an incredible economic phenomenon began. Because there were a great number of workers, and very few elderly or young dependents, the economy was unusually profitable. This is measured by something called the dependency ratio, which is the ratio of people in the workforce to people not in the workforce.

The dependency ratio was high during the Baby Boom, on account of all the children, but it began to plummet from around 1980, after those children entered the workforce. This led to a time of great profitability, which lasted as long as the Boomers were in employable age groups.

By today this process has begun to reverse. The first of the Baby Boomers hit the pension age of 65 in 2010. Ever since then, the dependency ratio has risen. In 2000, there were five workers per pensioner in America; by 2050, there are expected to be 2.9 workers per pensioner. We are about to go through a time of great unprofitability.

The saying “demography is destiny” refers to the fact that the macrotrends of Western economies since World War II have followed demographic trends.

When the Boomers die off en masse, a process which is beginning now, the dependency ratio will improve. This will also lead to a sharp decrease in housing demand. The combined effect of these two major changes will create an economic boom lasting several decades. Unfortunately for most of the people reading this article, the post-Baby Boomer boom won’t fully start happening until after 2050.

The situation might seem bad for the West, but it’s even worse in the industrialised countries of the Far East. Their fertility rate collapse is a more extreme version of the Western one.

China had a similar economic boom to the West from 1985 to 2010, with a large demographic bulge of working-age people keeping the dependency ratio low. But China today, despite being infamous for its population, only has a fertility rate of 1.7.

In 2010, the old-age dependency ratio in China was 11%, meaning nine workers for every pensioner. By 2060, it is expected to be over 50%, meaning two workers for every pensioner. Considering that they are only a middle-income nation today, and that future economic growth is uncertain, a dependency ratio of 50% threatens to cause extreme poverty.

It’s worse still elsewhere in Far East Asia.

In 2020, the South Korean fertility rate is less than 1.1 children per woman. At a fertility rate this low, the South Korean population will halve every generation. The fertility rates of people in Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan are only slightly higher, around 1.4. Their populations should decrease by a third every generation. China’s should decrease by a quarter.

Some might argue that Europe and Far East Asia are overpopulated anyway, and the environment would benefit from a sharp population decrease. The trouble is that the rulers of both places are accustomed to a certain standard of living, and, if given the choice, will act to maintain that standard of living even if succeeding generations have to suffer for it.

In Western countries, falling populations have been preempted by mass immigration. This has prevented Western economies from shrinking, keeping stock prices and house prices high, and the ruling class happy. However, the result of this process has been the collapse of social cohesion, reflected everywhere in less trust.

A nation that opens itself to mass immigration also opens itself to division and, eventually, chaos. The historical record is clear on this subject, as is the science. Changes in kinship intensity have direct and far-reaching political consequences. If demographics lead to a decrease in a nation’s kinship intensity, then that nation’s destiny is discord and war. The civil unrest in today’s America is merely a foretaste.

That demographic trends are capable of tearing nations apart from the inside can be understood mathematically. Taking the example of France, it can be seen that the destiny of any population with a low fertility rate, once it comes to host a foreign population with a high fertility rate, is to be conquered.

If the white population of France is 50,000,000, and their women reproduce at the rate of 1.5 children per woman, the white French population will fall to 28,125,000 after two generations. If the Muslim population is 5,000,000, and their women reproduce at the rate of three children per woman, the Muslim French population will rise to 11,500,000 after two generations.

After three generations, the French population will be some 21 million, and the Muslim population some 17 million. By that time, the majority of fighting-age males will belong to the Muslim population, and France will be a de facto conquered land. Muslims will have achieved with their wombs what they could not achieve with their swords 1,300 years earlier, at the Battle of Tours.

Much the same logic was followed by French financier Charles Gave, who outlined it in a paper he wrote for the Institute of Liberty. He was immediately attacked for promulgating the great replacement conspiracy theory, only it is no conspiracy. It’s a simple extrapolation from currently known values, and its logic is inescapable.

The fertility rate in France has been famously low for over a century now. The fertility rate in neighbouring Algeria, by contrast, was over seven children per woman as recently as 1980. The consequence is that, by today, there are two to three times as many Algerians in France as there were French people in Algeria in 1940, when Algeria was a French colony. France is now itself a colony in all but name.

France’s destiny is to become an Islamic state. This follows inexorably from their current demographics, and is no harder to predict than was the German victory over France in World War II. This victory had been forecast over half a century beforehand, by people who knew that Germany had a much higher fertility rate than France, and who had calculated that this would eventually lead to an overwhelming German numerical advantage.

The single most important demographic trend of this century is the one that predicts that the population of Africa will quadruple by the end of the century. Currently around one billion, it is expected to be four billion by 2100, which will mean that almost half of the world’s population will be African.

Countries like Niger and Somalia are still reproducing at the rate of over six children per woman. The total African fertility rate is 4.4 children per woman. The sad reality of this population explosion is that, by the end of this century, the majority of Africa’s megafauna will be extinct in the wild. Most megafauna are already threatened thanks to human population pressure, and they will not survive an African population of four billion.

The societies of Europe are unlikely to survive it either. Europe today is barely capable of defending their borders against migrant inflows from the South. In the medium-term future, with an even smaller European population and a surging African one, they won’t be capable of defending them at all. The destiny of Europe appears to be getting overwhelmed by the surplus African population.

The next century looks like it will bring a drastic decrease in the high IQ populations of the world, and an equally drastic increase in the low IQ populations of the world. The inevitable result will be low IQ people surging into high IQ territories, and a profound increase in the average amount of human suffering. Demography really is destiny, and it suggests that the world’s destiny is a grim one.

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