The internet is not the nascent land of hope and creativity that it once was. Universality has been replaced with isolation, community with algorithms, and art with slop. What began as an invention that inspired builders and explorers alike has transformed into something else entirely.
Contrary to popular belief, manifest destiny didn't end at the west coast–that's just where it decided to change dimensions and enter cyberspace, giving us a whole new hell that we get to exist in: technofeudalism. Now, instead of oligarchs owning our land and possessions, they just own our minds, attention, and data. Just because we ran out of land on planet Earth to colonize doesn't mean we have to stop colonizing. Just like water filling every possible crack that it can find, our insatiable greed will always find a way to own anything that can be claimed. Our desire to extract every last bit of every possible resource impressively always seems to prevail.
All of this has laid that stage for our very own middle ages online.
In the early stages of technofeudalism, we were still part of a community. The internet used to feel collaborative: it used to connect us. But as the apps shifted away from one to one relationships and prioritized algorithmic feeds and curated content, we slowly created less and consumed more. That's when the walls were built that siloed us in our own little corners of the internet. This didn't used to be possible. The internet used to be so small that there wasn't enough area to go around breaking everyone apart. However, as data-centers multiplied, so did the size of the internet. Fast forward to now and it feels like the land of the internet is non-euclidean. We live in hyperbolic geometry where it's harder and harder to draw straight lines between us. Despite the world becoming so large, our online worlds have become so small.
And now all we are left with is the increasingly ironic absurdism of memes and content creation. More and more, this content is what the younger generations relate with. I'm not sure if it's because we are born into a distinctly absurd reality, or if it is just our way of contextualizing everything, but brainrot is what we are left with. We're left with meta-irony that is funny only in that it is so stupid.
But this landscape has also lead to the creation of new prolific genres such as hope core, a form of digital curation that patchworks different beautiful moments together into powerful stories, or core core, its more absurdist cousin. People online yearn for the human connection, community, and beauty that these videos depict. For me, what is most captivating about this form of content is the rawness of the moments. Occasionally, you will see movie clips or professional videography thrown in these edits, but most of the time they are just collections of spontaneous moments showing the unfiltered charm of normal life. These videos highlight the inherently sublimity in experiencing life as it is.
While these videos are still an example of consumption, not a real return to real world human experience, I think it is a sign that we are moving in the right direction. Gen Z exists in such a weird consciousness that we are so hyperaware of how trapped we are by our phones and by the trajectory of the world. We are paralyzed by it, but at least we recognize it. We long for the fullness of life; we are fed up by the empty calories of brainrot, short-form content, and AI slop.
The tides are turning, I can feel it. I see it in the comments everyday as I clock in my doomscrolling time. The people are disgusted with what AI and tech has done to our experience–how it has cheapened us to commodities. I think the next few years will see a huge paradigm shift away from technology. I'm not sure how exactly yet, but it needs to happen. I await the explosion of art and culture that will emerge an era of post brain-rot romanticism.