Beware the Web

Reflections on Internet Usage

Content advisory: this article references sensitive content. 

    Throughout this article I will refer to “the internet” doing something several times. When I do, I do not mean that the internet as a tool or as an inanimate object is trying to do something of its own accord (like Skynet in the Terminator movies). I mean that the internet is willfully designed to do what it is I am referring to.

Beware: The internet is a simulacrum. The internet isn’t real — it’s an imitation of reality. It’s a copy of a copy of a copy of reality — a simulation constantly being restructured and reconfigured to be another, parallel reality with ever increasing influence over true reality. It is like real life, it has many actual people on it, and it almost always has real world consequences. And that’s what gives it its power. What gives it it’s seductive power and seeming legitimacy is that it has real people participating in it as if it were the real world. But it isn’t the real world. It’s all digital and manipulatable and unverifiable — and ever increasingly so! Soon, not only will people be able to tell what is real and what isn’t — no one will be able to tell what is made by a human and what is made by something else (as more people are experiencing every day, whether they realize it or not). It’s hyper-real, a simulacrum, a copy of a copy, constantly improving its anti-reality to the real reality. It’s not real; but it has consequential effects on the real world. For more on simulacra, see Michael O’Fallon’s conversation with James Lindsay here: https://sovereignnations.com/?submit=Search&s=Simulacra. 

Beware: The internet is a high stakes game, a game with real life consequences. It used to be that the worst thing that could happen to you was getting verbal abuse online or getting scammed or hacked. Now you can lose your job, lose the access to your bank account, get fined, even imprisoned — yes, in Western countries too – for words you posted online, sometimes not even your own words.

Beware: Everything you say on the internet can and will be used against you. It doesn’t matter what you say or how you say it, it will be used against you. Every interaction — every word, like, repost, etc. — matters, and every interaction has the potential to haunt you for the rest of your life. 

Beware: Everything you do on the internet can, will, and is being tracked. More than just your intentional interaction, every site, every click, every keystroke, every reaction you make to a pop up is not only being recorded and stored, but used to understand how you work and think, what you like and dislike. Often, it is being used for more nefarious reasons than these. The point is this: any and all of the information online has the potential to be used against you in an attempt to destroy you. User beware. 

Beware: The internet is designed to turn you against your friends. It makes you, 1, aware of controversy (especially contrived controversy caused by people completely divorced from the situation and context), 2, invested in the controversy, and then, 3, involved in the controversy. From there, the rest is easy. Its goal is to make the those involved in the controversy as polarized as possible. Human nature is all too at home to oblige to the pursuit of such a goal. Each side of the controversy pushes the other side further away for fear of losing the controversy. At a certain point it doesn’t matter what you’re arguing — all that matters is that you are on one side and your goal is to maintain the moral high ground, and your friend is on the other, whose goal is substantively the same. Soon, through this downward spiral, you are on the side of people who have always hated your friend and wanted to destroy them, and in the controversy, you are their best ally. James Lindsay has made this point time and time again: see https://x.com/conceptualjames/status/1731785825199780221?s=46 and https://x.com/conceptualjames/status/1713685772484620779?s=46 

Beware: When it comes to the internet, no one who publicly criticizes you or calls you out without contacting you first is your friend. This is doubly true for those who have had contact with you in the past and are able to contract you. If they are more concerned about entering a controversy they don’t need to for moral standing within the simulacrum, they aren’t your friend. Or, to put it another way: If they are more concerned about winning the controversy in a digital simulacrum than they are about you, your church, your family, your faithful ministry across decades, they aren’t your friend. They may say they are, but if they are acting just like your worst enemies, who would ever want friends? A great example of this is what happened to Alistair Begg (see this https://standingbeforegodblog.wordpress.com/2024/01/19/alistair-begg-weddings-grace-and-truth-in-a-twisted-world/ and this https://standingbeforegodblog.wordpress.com/2024/01/21/a-brief-response-to-owen-strachan-on-alistair-begg/) — a contrived controversy based on unproven assumptions and promoted by countless writers who could have contacted Begg but, in the name of “confronting public sin,” dragged his name through the dirt on the internet based on a one-minute clip they heard an hour before publishing their articles. The worst of these struggle sessions is that these friends didn’t even have to become involved in the controversy; but, having been made aware, they quickly chose to become invested and then involved in the controversy. User beware. 

Beware: The internet is designed to entrap you. This entrapment can take many forms, but they all have this in common: keeping you online for as long as possible. Whether it’s pornography, video games, social media, short-form video algorithms — the internet is designed to suck you in and keep you in. It is literally a digital spiders web. User beware.

Beware: Beyond simply entrapping you, the internet is often used to manipulate you. Whether through media narratives, bots which appear human used to nudge your opinions (Matt Taibi exposed factors in the government for this very thing in the Twitter Files: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1720420903744311715.html), or more subtitle forms of nudging (nudging: designing your online experience to guide your choices and influence your reactions through digital environments), the internet is constantly manipulating you. 

Beware: The further you go into immorality on the internet, the further it will beckon you into immorality. This can be seen overtly in a new report: “P0rnhub admits trying to push trans videos to straight men and teens” https://wng.org/opinions/normalizing-lgbtq-pornography-1705458692. This is especially true on TikTok, the China Communist Party designed and controlled platform, governed by an algorithm designed to make its users more degenerate https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qbv-VteX5H8&t=4s&pp=ygUVVGlrdG9rIGFsZ29yaXRobSBldmls. User beware. 

Beware the world wide web, friends. It is not just a tool. It is designed to trap you; it is designed to allow the devil and the world to suck the life out of you; not to mention designed to let your own flesh devour you.

User beware.

“My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent.”

~ Proverbs 1:10