This is a really good jumping off point for something I've wanted to talk about for a while Something that we all know, many probably understand, but I'm not sure how many people have fully internalized it The internet is a weapon of demoralization

Everything on the modern internet is effectively fake I don't mean AI generated, I don't mean deep fakes, while that is absolutely it's own new kind of issue I'm talking about the reality behind user generated content and virality

There is a very good reason that when you go online anymore all you see are extremes The women are incredibly attractive, they have perfect bodies and perfect faces The men are incredibly attractive, they're stacked with muscle and completely shredded

Young people make hundreds of thousands of dollars Day in the life of videos show you a 24-year-old recent college graduate who lives a life that could only be described as a kind of modern fairy tale

Not all of these people actually exist, but a good number of them do, they are actual people who live this actual life So why call them fake? They are so unrepresentative of the general population as to be a rounding error

This then begs the question, if these people are so rare, why does it feel like it's all that we see? Because that's what the internet is for It is a modern day circus side show, it is PT Barnum's dream made real

But unlike PT Barnum the internet doesn't exist to entertain, not anymore It did for a decade or so But things changed not too long ago. The internet got smaller, and all the little squirrel holes and winding paths of information went away

The internet used to be a magical forest, it was filled with an uncountable number of little caves and hidden holes, filled with everything from the wonderful to the disgusting Now the internet is like a funnel but only certain things make it to the bottom, where we are

This feels like it should be great, and for a few years it was I remember the old YouTube algorithm from maybe four or five years ago. It seems to know exactly what you wanted to watch, and even things you would never watched were things you wanted to see

But something has changed, those little winding paths that would take you down new branches of content aren't there anymore And, with the exception of very large cultural groups, we're all watching the same thing

And all those things that we are watching aren't real But all those things that aren't real are also, typically, enviable From the only fans girl telling you the how much she makes each month, to the fitness bro with th the perfect physique

We used to see "perfect" people with very imperfect lives, this was the entire basis of most reality TV But now a lot of what you see on the internet is perfect people, with perfect lives And that has an effect on people

Because we do not live in a perfect world, very few of us have perfect lives, but we are constantly bombarded with images and video of people who seemingly live much better than us And for many people this is incredibly demoralizing

I feel this impacts Millennials the most, and probably a bit of Gen X Because a lot of our generational peers are stagnated, but also because we were the generations that were told that we could be anything But the reality is we're normal, and normal is imperfect

We don't make as much money as we want to, right now we struggle to pay our bills, we don't look exactly the way we would like to, we aren't as thin or as muscular as we want to

We are imperfect, normal statistically average people, but all we see whenever we log into our portal to the internet, multiple times a day, are fake, unrealistic perfect people We see everything that we aren't, and for many that reminds us of everything we wish we were

And I believe the purpose behind all this, as I said at the very beginning, is demoralization Because demoralization is very important, it's an incredibly effective weapon for control

Demoralized people are a lot less likely to fight back, that's kind of the whole premise of jail, it's an unpleasant demoralizing experience This keeps the inmates in check and pliable. It stops organization and rebellion, because what's the point?

I think all this is important because once you recognize these things that are meant to demoralize you, you can break the programming, you can prevent it But you can also avoid it, and avoid it from infecting other people in your life

I think a very good example of this is porn Porn in my mind only exists to sexually corrupt and demoralize people It is a reminder that your boobs aren't big enough, your dick isn't long enough, your ass isn't nice enough, your face isn't pretty enough

It is an attack at the most basic animal instinct, which is to reproduce It stunts maturation, it damages pair bonding ability, it creates a whole host of issues with self-worth, confidence and more

Social media does the same thing, in very subtle ways You look for a recipe on TikTok, you find it, but now you're watching somebody younger than you in a house, much larger and nicer than yours, prepare food that looks better than yours in a kitchen more expensive than yours

And it's all the more damaging because social media also has the function of replacing relationships A lot of young people no longer have people in their lives that care about them, they lack friendship and camaraderie, the positive influences

We wonder why the world feels so crazy, well everybody's under this constant psychic assault Not only are they under assault, they have nobody to help them, to pull them out of it, to remind them it isn't real and that imperfect in normal are good and okay

I'm going to finish this real long thread with a real weird hard turn, which is that I believe part of the reason Christianity is so suppressed in this country is because it's the solution to these problems Because it teaches you that not only are you good enough, you are loved

Not only are you loved, you are loved unconditionally and eternally And all you have to do to receive this love is believe that it is real and ask for it It's very hard to demoralize and defeat somebody who understands what that means

We're going to make it We've already made it, the fight is already over, because on our side is something that cannot be defeated You can't beat people who know they've already won That's why they want you, atheistic and demoralized