As The World Wide Web Enwrapped Us, the Real World Shrunk
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The World Wide Web
Friend or Enemy?
I have noticed a trend as the internet has become increasingly heavily relied upon - one that's puzzled me more each day. The world has opened up, now seemingly so accessible for many people, while also managing to be, somehow, made incredibly small for others. It breeds adventurers and loners alike, some searching for the world outside while others forge plans in secret, hoping for a chance to get their names in headlines. It’s both enlightening and scary, a short kiss of fate, but yet a monster away.
Americans have made our voices dominate the screens for decades now, imposing and overstepping boundaries everywhere we go. We have distributed our 'culture' far and wide, without any regard for future consequences. We have become known as a very poorly structured joke. I feel pretty confident in saying we wouldn't even have the same president right now if the internet had never been invented. The culture of greed and capitalism that we have fostered and cultivated for ourselves has been the catalyst for so much that is wrong right now, and it feels like life just dances on around me, nauseated as I'm disconnected by emotional whiplash.
Seriously, is anyone seeing the babies still being bombed, shot, stabbed to death, often in their parents' arms? I can assure you, they are still there, but the Wicked Witch of the West's algorithms have gone quiet, and Meta is silencing protesters with every click. Palestine is wrestling for its lifeblood as settlers strip its people of all they once had. In Ukraine, the land is still being bastardized by Russians who always seem to need more. Lebanon, Iran, Syria - the list keeps stacking up, and we keep waiting for something in this country to change before we're all nuked to oblivion with the wholly incapable Slitheens in the White House. At this point, I'd absolutely believe Dr. Who shows were documentaries, no questions asked. That'd probably be just a normal Tuesday in that gold-encrusted ballroom by now.
President Trump is just a symptom of the plague, a puppet for the growing number of white people, predominantly, who are hateful toward anyone they deem inferior to themselves. They will spit at you if you aren't Christian, scream at you if you besmirch Jesus' name, and spew slurs at anyone of color they see, yet they will all sit quietly in the church pews every Sunday morning with their hands and ankles crossed like prim, proper ladies and gentlemen, pretending that absolves them of guilt from their activities in the days before.
In a day when lies become truths, and truths become lies, the American public has become a character reel from Idiocracy, painting us all in red, white, and blue - blood-tinged, of course. And in that day and age, the idiots are the rulers, and everyone else is trimmed to their stems by their policies. The dumb become dumber, and the rich become richer, and those in between are stuck in the middle like some nasty mixture of peanut butter and Doritos made into a sandwich, an actual fucking nightmare barrage of texture.
As the world woke up to social media and began perusing and posting on a daily basis, - swarming like moths to a flame - everyone became desperate for likes, comments, shares, engagement of some kind, and the focus of everyday people began to shift. Because now, everyone has a camera attached to their hips, not just the paparazzi, and a majority of the world has access to the internet, making fame as simple as a 5-second video of your kiddo calling ducks chickens or telling you their brother bit them that could skyrocket anyone to instant fame - and yes, that began to come with a fortune, too.
Today, instant fame is one post away, and that has made us all so much worse as people. We have become so selfish and entitled in ways I never knew possible. It's now difficult to find someone to hold a door open when I'm rolling up in my wheelchair, not to mention being walked in front of as I roll, and getting separated from my family multiple times whenever I go into a store. The stares, glares, and comments, the whispers and pretending not to see me - they all belong to a cesspool of specific people who do not care for disabled people, and some even think we should not be in public spaces at all.
It seems like everyone has Main Character Syndrome, searching for their big break, and doing whatever it takes to get it. We have influencers whining about 'losing themselves in the culture' and then presenting their divorce as content, licking toilets of airplanes, and causing madness in stores as 'pranks' where the store workers end up being the punch line. Everyone wants to get a taste of the fortune, and there is no such thing as too far. It has afforded all of us the ability to easily see and connect with the rest of the world on levels once unimaginable, but that isn't always eye-opening.
This isn't the case for all, though, of course. For some individuals, the internet has become a closer of minds, and a safehold for untruths, half-truths, everything beyond and in between. It has created an area of the web so dark and discomforting that even the bravest of us won't venture into - aptly named the Dark Web. And in that dark web, there are groups of people who aim to cause harm. They have sunk themselves into a fallacy they cannot escape without carrying out their big 'event.' They are the mass murderers of 4Chan and other dark web dens so troubling you wouldn't believe any of it were true, the ones who made the digital adventure into the world of incels and angry white, racist men.
The Plague of Mass Shooters & Spree Killers
And Why They Exist
The term 'spree killer' was coined in the early 20th century, defined as someone who commits several murders in succession, at more than one location. The killings in Nova Scotia in 2020, during which a man dressed as a cop then went on a rampage across the area, killing 16 innocent people. These killers show up at one area, murder several innocents, then leave and relocate to do it all over again. Mass murderers are those who might, say, walk into a Walmart full of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans and randomly kill 23 people, including a mother and father with their infant son, who somehow miraculously survived, leaving a shattered and broken life ahead of him now in their absence.
The internet made it possible for these killers to gorge themselves on murder, gore, and mayhem, then replicate what they find. Horror killings like Columbine in 1999 and the massacre carried out during a midnight showing of the new Batman movie in 2012 have become blueprints for lonely, angry men who can't regulate their emotions enough to go to fucking therapy instead of committing horrific crimes against people who did nothing to deserve any of it - they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
These murderers are the men we call incels - the involuntarily celibate. They can't gain the attention of a woman in the way they want, so they take it out on anyone they can, often before taking themselves out once they're done. They don't have the strength or courage to face prison, because they are nothing but limp noodle-dicks who lament all day about not being able to have sex while doing nothing at all to earn it. They think they are owed it, they deserve it, it's their right as a man. Too fucking bad, Bucko, that isn't how it works in the real world.
It starts with the blessed boys of Christian mothers singing the song of olde - "Boys Will Be Boys" - while never muttering the word "no" when necessary. This is how we end up with men who think women owe them our bodies and our virtues simply because he was born with a penis and thinks that makes him the gods' gift to women.
The internet has created spaces for men like this to harness their hatred for the sake of exacting their twisted fantasies on a set group of people and whoever gets in their way. These "boys who will be boys" were never taught to sit in silence with their thoughts. They were never told the word "no" during formative years, often spoiled by Mommy, well-meaning but enabling.
These men make their worlds so small they can't see the forest for the trees because they're focused on one small part of the picture. Instead of self-improvement, they pivot to loathing - not necessarily toward themselves, but often toward women and men that hang with them. That hate builds up further and further, simmering to the edge like the climax they so wish they could have, until finally they explode in violence, taking everything out on people they typically don't even know...all because they haven't had a chance to get laid yet because they are creepy Joe Goldberg types, but with much less game.
How The World Opens Up
Now that I've traumatized you a bit, we can talk about something a little lighter. Think of it like instant therapy. In all the ways the internet has made the world smaller, it has opened it up in so many more. It has shown me scenes and cultures seemingly up close and personal, places and things I would likely never see in my lifetime as someone who cannot afford to travel, especially overseas. It has afforded me the knowledge of who I am and how to reconnect with my culture - I am Plains Apache, raised as white, decolonizing every day.
I don't know that I would have been able to escape the Bible belt, hoity toity Christian attitude that I was raised to have without the access I've had to the internet. I have been able to completely reprogram my mindset, rejecting all the teachings of childhood church sermons that never sat quite right. The pastor would tell a misogynistic joke or maybe something a little callous, a homophobic jab or two, and a sprinkle of racism on top for shits and giggles. That was a typical Sunday morning, and then we all went home to sin some more until we shuffled back into the pews to apologize to a man who wasn't there.
What I was seeing on social media was so much body positivity, support, inclusiveness, disability awareness, and a growing respect for other humans in a way that I hadn't seen in a long time. There was a steady evolution of acceptance for Queer identities, and the world was beginning to relax its Medieval laws. Influencer culture hadn't yet turned into the whirlwind it is now, and there were still relatively few people out there who had amassed millions of followers, unless they were celebrities.
However, I must have blinked, because it's now 2026, and Donald Trump is president again; thanks to the Muskrat that somehow hasn't ended up on the wrong end of a K-Hole and his billionaire pals who feed on the souls of humans to get their rocks off. Now the Puritans are trying to catapult us back into the Dark Ages with archaic and repressive rulers who treat women as the property of their partners. Maybe the world opened up a little bit too much, because his bullshit has been spreading, and the government has just secured $70 billion for ICE funding.
I have an enormous suspicion that the United States, as well as some countries in the Middle East, have been carefully plotting something deeply nefarious in favor of the rich. In the event that the Persimmon Pedophile were to kick off World War III, where would we all go, and what would we do? Go off the grid, start our own compounds that trade with one another, and protect their own - an actual village to raise our kids? Do we sneak off to some remote desert, find a cave, and hope we can ride out the apocalypse? Because I would be game.
Actually, I'm not so sure I want to survive an apocalypse, now that I'm considering it. Living with my chronic illnesses would be an absolute nightmare, I would have no access to Remicade, and I sure as hell am not great at gardening, so making my own medicine is probably out of the question. Hell, let's face it. My husband is my caretaker at this point, I suffer from indescribable pain every single day, and no doctor seems to want to do anything about it anyway.....So, you know what, sure. Bring on The Apocalypse or whatever. Just don't even give me a warning if it's coming. I want to be blissfully at peace, unaware.✌🏼😝 I'm kidding. Mostly.
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