I feel like we are headed to some sort of collective that im going to be outside of.

Join the Borg!

This digital divide is getting worse too - studies show kids from lower-income families average 7+ hours of screen time daily vs under 2 for wealthy families who can afford "tech-free" activities and education.

Also, free range kids are likely to be reported by 'concerned' neighbors.

Pretty soon, 'Stand By Me' and 'The Goonies' are going to be classified as dangerous propaganda.

Non-paywall: archive.ph

An electorate that has lost the capacity for long-form thought will be more tribal, less rational, largely uninterested in facts or even matters of historical record, moved more by vibes than cogent argument and open to fantastical ideas and bizarre conspiracy theories. If that sounds familiar, it may be a sign of how far down this path the West has already traveled.

For canny operators, such a public affords new opportunities for corruption. Oligarchs attempting to shape policy to their advantage will benefit from the fact that few will have the attention span to track or challenge policies in dull, technical fields; what a majority now wants is not forensic investigation but a new video short “owning” the other tribe. We can expect the governing class to adapt pragmatically to the electorate’s collective decline in rational capacity, for example, by retaining the rituals associated with mass democracy, while quietly shifting key policy areas beyond the reach of a capricious and easily manipulated citizenry. I do not celebrate this, but our net-native youth seem unfazed: International polls show waning support for democracy among Gen Z.

Lest you mistake me, there is no reason the opportunity to sideline the electorate or to arbitrage the gap between vibes and policy should especially favor either the red team or the blue team. This post-literate world favors demagogues skilled at code-switching between the elite language of policy and the populist one of meme-slop. It favors oligarchs with good social media game and those with more self-assurance than integrity. It does not favor those with little money, little political power and no one to speak up for them.

That's what we call "getting old"

This is an advertisement in this article

Tldr: New tech (audiovisual media) bad, old tech (reading) good.

They even say that good reading skills lead to liberal democracy. Which is ironic because there is no government on this planet (that i know of) that is democratic (or liberal).

Personally i think we would live in a utopia if people consumed cave-art and stories by storytellers rather than this book-slop which is easy to mass produce and distribute.

I mean I’d say the Stage of Technology we’ve been in since like 2010 has been very detrimental for the individual and destructive to society. Social media, smartphones, surveillance states. AI is an even worse version of these. If social media ran by billionaires are not open, unbiased, non-manipulative emotional-reactaction-over-critical-thinking silos, what makes you think all these LLMs run by millionaires and billionaires won’t be? They’re just the next step in social media.

I think this is all very person-dependent. I have found 3d printing resources/tips/experiences from others. I have gotten into building my own antennas after learning about VNAs via social media. I have gotten into SDRs, ham radio, electronics thanks to shtuff on social media. I have learned a few new 3d modeling tricks via social media. I have found a few suggestions for go packages, etc. I could keep going for years about what I have run into online.

I have found the world's knowledge available at my fingertips. Others are finding tiktok dances. I think this is a matter of who you are and what you prefer to do than "the bad tech" making people somehow bad. You will find that people through history have fit a similar distribution of people who are into learning and people who just want to be entertained.

Are you okay? You're saying a lot of weird things there

I agree on all of this, but were books different (except for surveillance)?

• Back then those authors that wrote books with messaging supporting the owner class received loads of coverage from their media andtherefore spread their propaganda far and wide. While the average Joe could write whatever they want, nobody was able to see it (until now with social media), because printing is timeconsuming and expensive, and marketing even more so.
• Back then fascists spread their ideas in books, today they do on social media. In both cases supported by the money of the 1%.
• Back then only politically active people were surveilled, now it is everyone. This is a big change.
• Back then entertainment was inexpensive, now it is basically free.

Also that's not really the point the article is making. They say that simply reading books makes you smarter. As if people read physics books in their freetime back then. No, they just read entertaining stories, and now they stream entertaining stories. Nothing has fundamentally changed. Back then Oil made you part of the owner class, now it's IT and the owning of marketplaces.

The Netherlands?

Personally i think we would live in a utopia if people consumed cave-art and stories by storytellers rather than this book-slop which is easy to mass produce and distribute.

That's sarcasm. Don't worry.

Democracy

There is no democracy on this planet because all democracies are representative democracies. In representative democracies the politicians are not representative of the people, but they promise to do things a certain way, and if people elect them for it, that's like indirect representation.
However this breaks down as soon as secrecy laws are put in place, because if the government or private companies can decide which knowledge will reach the people, and which will not, they will simply declare information that will upset their voters to be secret. This breaks all representative democracies.

Then there is the issue of corruption, which is generally legal under the guise of lobbying.

And because all democracies that i know of have secrecy laws, they can't be considered democratic.

Liberty

With the liberal part: A person can only be free if they feel safe. But in all countries (that i know) there is a large part of the population that works most/all of their day because they are (rigtfully) afraid they can't pay for their daily needs if they don't. And they don't like their job.
So how can any society claim to be free, if a (large) part of their population is not controlled by their ambitions, but by their fears? If you dislike your job, but do it anyways because if you don't you die, that's not freedom. That's the definition of slavery.

Am i OK?

Absolutely not. Here a list of problems that could (all) be solved by diverting some funds from the world's militaries:

1. Startvation
2. Malnutrition
3. Homelessness
4. Climate Change
5. Wage Slavery fixed by UBI/Scary Communism

And here a list of things that can be fixed literally for a negative cost. People would be richer while fixing the following problems:

1. Mass animal torture fixed by Veganism.
2. War
3. Any disease, physiological or mental including aging fixed by Antinatalism

And these are just a few of the worst problems. All of them fixable. Many for free.

Knowing that all of the problems are easily fixable, and the people around me are not only not working on them, but actually making things worse by dedicating their live to emitting CO2 (SUVs, Meat-Eating), supporting (Wage-)Slavery (Being against UBI), and making more babies so they may suffer under these manufactured conditions makes me sad (and angry).

I would say the first step in fixing these problems is realizing that things are absolutely not OK. That earth is closer to hell than to paradise. The next step is realizing that no sane person can (or should be) OK under these conditions. And the final step is implementing a solution, ideally with the help of others.

Is it a representative democracy with secrecy laws? Then no.

There is no democracy on this planet because all democracies are representative democracies. In representative democracies the politicians are not representative of the people, but they promise to do things a certain way, and if people elect them for it, that’s like indirect representation.
However this breaks down as soon as secrecy laws are put in place, because if the government or private companies can decide which knowledge will reach the people, and which will not, they will simply declare information that will upset their voters to be secret. This breaks all representative democracies.

People are voted here for the person there are or for their idea's on certain subject or whatever somebody chooses to make their vote. Everybody can enlist themselves to be voted on different levels on the politic spectrum. Heck, it is even is a spectrum instead of a 2 or 3 party system.

A lot of what is done in the government is transparent and open for the public to read/see, a lot of our justice system is publicly available as well (except certain cases regarding children).

Most companies have to be transparent at least on a financial level and most of the bigger once also on other levels.

Our politic system is far from ideal though: https://www.democratiemonitor.nl/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Democratie-Monitor-2025.pdf

Let's say i put myself out there and say people should vote for me if they want world peace.
Let's assume the people vote for me, because they want world peace.
Now that i am elected, a lobbyist from a arms company visits me and asks me to grant them an export license to sell weapons to an agressor (let's assume i have the right to sign such deals).

Are there laws in place that allow me to prevent my voters from finding out that i granted that export license, like a law that says i don't need to report publicly that i signed this? Or maybe even a law that prevents journalists from reporting on this even if they find out, because the contract (or it's contents) are considered secret and publishing it would be illegal?

We have a lot of registers and depending on the licence the company or person receives it will be made public. Things like building changes, export of live animals etc. You can look some up over here: https://www.nvwa.nl/onderwerpen/erkenningen-registraties-en-vergunningen/overzicht-bedrijven-met-erkenningen-registraties-en-vergunningen

Weapon licences go through the police instead of the government itself https://www.justis.nl/producten/wet-wapens-en-munitie/een-ontheffing-op-de-wet-wapens-en-munitie-aanvragen-bij-justis the office of justice needs to sign it off it seems.

So it just works differently, if you would want to pass a law that changes how those licences are signed, it would be known, and you wouldn't be the person signing it. The office of justice would be, and probably it is checked multiple times before it even gets there that it isn't financing terrorism or something which is illegal according to the WWFT and some other laws.

Pretty sure a journalist is allowed to write about anything and everything https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/media-en-publieke-omroep/persvrijheid-bewaken there are probably some exceptions on things like kids etc, but a public spokesperson doesn't have that anyway.

This law goes on about the open government: https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0045754/2025-07-01
And there are multiple parties who try and keep businesses somewhat in check (like accountants, the fiod, etc.)

So if you would try and pull this off in The Netherlands you would have a hard time doing it and I doubt you can do it without somebody being a whistleblower.

Representative democracy is a type of democracy. You're not doing anyone any favors by conflating "direct democracy" and "democracy".

Though somehow, I feel like you know exactly what you're doing...

You're also ignoring the massive rise in literacy rates as compared to when books were new. Most people simply could not read them.