just few thoughts today based on the recent events with the banning of TikTok and subsequent internet user activities.

these are in no particular order.

first let me say that I tend to be in the camp of it being a national security threat. all the positive publicity in the world is just that: publicity. I don’t think China has the USA’s best interests in mind (because why would they?), and I think it’s a terrible idea to let them control an information environment of that scale and style.

now, having said that, some things I find interesting / funny / generally absurd (in a comedic way)…

> the ban lasted like six hours, and it feels good being right, again, as demonstrated by this tweet. TikTok was back up and running hours after being officially banned, at least for a large portion of users. the Nothing Ever Happens people were vindicated once again, but it also made me think that, in an increasingly volitile world, where information moves at the speed of light, maybe things are happening all the time, but because they happen so quick, and have such a short shelf life, because something new always comes up, that it feels like nothing ever happens because it’s always happening.

that is to say, any environment where things are always happening is indistinguishable from an environment where nothing ever happens. this is a comment and observation on the way that social norms are developed and impact our perception of the pace of the world. when reality is more absurd than fiction, everything starts to look normal, because it’s all absurd. when something shocking happens it’s like, well, yeah, why wouldn’t it? of course that happened.

> while TikTok was banned, and in the days leading up the ban, users started migrating to another app called XiaoHongShu or something, and it was like nothing I had ever seen to be honest. the culture shock on both sides was something to behold, and to be honest, I think both governments might have gotten a bit nervous about what the other’s populace was being exposed to. for a brief moment, the veil was lifted, and the receivers of propaganda were free to cross-reference with each other.

there was a plethora of tweets made about how the wave of western internet culture shocked our newfound internet friends in asia. which, like, I get. our (USA) internet culture gives people brainworms. it was like North Korean soldiers getting unfettered internet access and getting oneshotted. for example, the tweets in this link.

like, it’s just so funny to think that there’s people being exposed to a wave of american content and just getting “oneshotted”, as the saying goes, by white girls doing TikTok dances. that’s so unbelievably funny. I cannot overstate how ironic and hilarious that is. like a Seinfeld episode come to life.

> this serves as a nice segway into another thought: how does one develop a cognitive immune system so they don’t get wrecked by memetic hijacking and propaganda and misinformation and disinformation and flat out lies in the media? some cultures seemingly try to keep things squeaky clean, so their citizens don’t succumb to “brainrot”, as it’s typically called; a type of cognitive state marked by simply being an idiot, about everything, and using way too many internet slang words in real life.

I do not think this approach is particularly effective. if you’re trying to build an immune system, which you should be, because the popular opinion is that wars are now fought with information and media instead of guns and grenades, then it would make sense to expose yourself to a variety of mild threats in order to build an antifragile adaptation to memetic mold. knowing what the degenerates are doing and how they do it is a great way to avoid degeneracy without being neurotic about it. knowledge is power. always has been, always will be.

all this to say: if the information environments of the internet are becoming increasingly sickly, a cultural battleground of ideology, then it might not be a bad idea to, in controlled doses, consume some brainrot material so you can build a defense against it. high openness, low agreeableness is a good loadout for this experiment.

> another thing I’d like to note is that, sometimes, in the context of strategic development, it helps to stir up some action in your competitive environment in order to see what baseline behavior looks like when actors in that environment are stressed. in doing so, you can update your contingency plans for how people behave, better positioning yourself in the current competitive environment. I would not be surprised if this was some sort of pot-stirring-moment in order to see how people would react, and then let everything go back to baseline while “priors get updated”, as they say.

we are reaching big levels of “you can just do things” and the next four years are probably going to look like the Wild West re: Culture & Economics and the general tone of society.

would like to propose the question again, in these times: just because you can do things, does that mean you should?