The US is wallowing in a basic misunderstanding that defines its culture. That groups of people, of any size, think and feel and act. They don’t. It’s not even possible, how would it work? The US therefore sees every emergence of a hierarchy as authoritarianism.

Just as species don’t evolve and become extinct via their own agency, look again at the human world and re-imagine it as what it is. A world in which we have little to no real control, and where change and progress is mostly imposed via catastrophic external events. Humility.

“Man is not only ruled by evil passions; but his rational capacity is severely limited as well. Without the warm cloak of custom, tradition, experience, history, religion, and social hierarchy—all of which radical man would rip off—man is shivering and naked.” Edmund Burke 1/6

That feeling of the world going absolutely batshit crazy is us reaching a specific tipping point. The tipping point where reality itself is defined by the fads and fashions of social life. Where what’s real becomes what trends. /1

The headline almost gets there. This is ‘Team Trump’. The entire Trump phenomenon is the substitution of public, civic life, with team sports on social media. The enshittification of an entire nation, in the precise @doctorow meaning of the term. /1 abc.net.au/news/2025-03-2…

Delicious own-goal by Clarkson here. People turned on Musk when he started to champion the views held by people like Jeremy, about the evils of government.

The almost universal worshipping of small business reveals how far we’re infected by the terrible American disease of iconoclastic hatred of anything institutional. All sides of politics worship small business. It’s a terrible mistake. /1

Henry VIII is a far better historical comparison for Trump than any fascist or Nazi. Far, far better.

How we think, how we act, even how we feel, is overwhelmingly defined socially. By our membership of groups, in battle with other groups, for status. The Welcome Stranger nugget, as a beautiful example. The world’s largest ever alluvial gold nugget. Over 70kg of gold. /1

It’s feudalism, not fascism. My theme for several years now (just saying). It absolutely matters that we diagnose things correctly. These are fundamentally different things. Also this piece’s solutions to me are nonsense. /1 open.substack.com/pub/fosterth...

Mob rule doesn’t discriminate between just and unjust causes. The fact this behaviour is not universally condemned, but ordinary people actually applaud it, is a symptom of how far gone we now are. Let me say it again. Mob rule doesn’t pick and choose causes. /1

The entire dynamic of human life and history. Change comes only when the status quo is reduced to rubble.

Here’s that post-war rebuilding I talk about, when ‘the public’ became the central organising principle of societies. Rather than status. Nearly everywhere, except the US. 1/2

While simpletons use their Left/Right electoral goggles to understand what’s happening, Gil’s ‘Nerd Reich’ begins to implement exactly what they openly promised to do. And there’s even more to see here. /1 www.thenerdreich.com/the-network-...

Copying each other is the most fundamental human act. We imitate because that gives us status, in a given group. It makes us recognisable, to the group. That in turn gives us an identity, we ‘belong’. Groups clash, their statuses collide. Imitative rivalry (Rene Girard). /1

I bought a Tesla this week. Lots of research went into the choice. The reaction from friends and colleagues was remarkable. Almost universal shock and horror, that I would do this. Which surprises me, because the reason they *wouldn’t* do it are things I criticise relentlessly, with them. /1

I use Will’s book often because he captures so much of the work on status, so beautifully. It’s rank or status that drives humans. Not power, not wealth. It’s how rich you are compared to *others*, or how powerful compared to others. Status, rank. Status = identity.

Human life is a battle for status. Status is also identity, without it, you’re nobody. We join groups (teams) to fight these battles, emulating high-status individuals. Team members imitate one another, ‘peer pressure’, to have membership of the group. /1

Populist landslides always lead to triumphalism. Because our entire understanding of politics is elections, we think these victories mean the complete opposite to what they actually mean. Broken societies have populist landslides. Winning those elections is a hospital pass. 1/4

Trump feels like an apocalyptic disaster, or second coming, depending on who you are, because we attribute so much power to elections to transform reality. In reality they achieve almost nothing in the material reality sense. Which still determines eventual outcomes.

The barons/nobles at the coronation of the King. Not an analogy. A pattern repeated throughout history, just called by different names. Note also the heavy representation of social media, from the King down. The greatest source of modern power.

My constant theme. The illusion of democracy as a flattening of hierarchies occurred only after the cataclysmic disasters of the first half of the 20th century. The disasters flattened the hierarchies, it wasn’t democracy. Now the hierarchies are back. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01...

Humans don’t agree. On anything. They disagree until those disagreements destroy their societies. Then they agree, long enough to re-build. Only destruction brings agreement. Then the disagreement begins again.

‘Free speech’ is a fiction perpetrated by media oligarchs. The Chinese block social media platforms not to censor speech, but to prevent oligarchs controlling their communities. Read what happens when that doesn’t happen. Social media is a hijacking of societies. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01...

40 years ago McLuhan said the medium is the message. It’s not the content of media we should be focusing on. It’s the way the specific media shape our social relationships. Social media implements a worldview. Those who own it own our societies.

Social media is not just where people share information. It’s a replacement for society itself, and intended as such. What I call the ‘decoupling’ of societies from their foundations. Now, a literal de-coupling! This fascinating data will get a range of interpretations I’m sure. /1

To recap, for in-room air cleaners, HEPA *IS NOT NEEDED*. What matters is the combination of filtration, fit, and airflow, to maximize the Clean Air Delivery Rate for a target particle type and size, verified by an independent laboratory test to an industry standard. /7

The answer is, single-pass filtration efficiency DOESN'T MATTER except in specific cases like Powered Air Purifying Respirators (PAPR), clean rooms, operating theaters, or nuclear laboratory exhaust—HEPA's original purpose. /2

There’s nothing to balance. There has never been any such thing as free speech in the way the modern crusaders believe.

Cory Doctorow. Any platform that doesn’t have almost zero switching costs for users will eventually be enshittified. My dilemma right now too, do I set up an entirely new network of contacts here, only to then maybe have to do that all over again down the track? doctorow.medium.com/https-plural...

These are the tensions of all social media use. If you restrict it to specific interests, you get a wide proliferation of groups who have linkages with those topics. Healthy. But to turn social media into a sort of melting pot of all of society together, is when the shit starts. /1

The Magna Carta signing in 1215 was one of the foundations of democratic governance. It was the carving up of power between Kings and barons/nobles. It never was about ‘the people’. Today the exact same negotiation is happening between Trump and his billionaire barnacle group.

“The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please. We ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risque congratulations, which may be soon turned into complaints.” Edmund Burke, describing our modern world, centuries before it arrived.

I don’t yet see a meaningful way BlueSky will pay for itself over the longer term. And this matters probably more than anything, because if it can’t, it can’t exist.

I’m not sure resistance is choosing which social media platform will replace society.

It was Deleuze I think who pointed out that the city/country divide was always a false one. That they’re the same entity.

All societies are always organised around one thing. Status.

The idiot paradox of our travel cultures is that most of the places we go to gawp at in wonder were created by people who just stayed home, for generations, making them the wonderful places that they are.

Storr is absolutely right that all of society is status games. What I call team sports. There’s no escaping that, but there is shaping those sports so that they focus on more productive things. ‘Games of success’ include modern science and engineering. Still all status. 1/3

No amount of us all talking is a public. The public is a statistical calculation, a continuous assessment of collective need. It’s what bureaucrats do. There is no public without bureaucracy. The politics of our time despises ‘red tape’. It’s why there is no longer a public.

In feudal times a small number of families (the nobles or aristocracy) hoarded most of a society's wealth, in alliance with a King or Queen. 'The economy' is really a social deception to reinstate feudalism, history's default form. 1/2

Stop me when you figure out which country and government this is. 1) Government comes to power and within 3 years has built 3,500 km of high quality new roads. 2) Within that same 3 years, tens of billions spent on job creation schemes. /1

I'm sick of wearing a mask. But being sick of is much better than being sick with, something. I'd prefer politicians took a break from fellating lobbyists and went back to allowing a public health system to operate.

One of the most important parts of status as the mechanism of all societies, is the scapegoating mechanism that Rene Girard talks about. The relentless battles for status - status games or team sports - lead to chaos. We’re seeing that right now. How do societies survive? /1

So many of those who stormed the Capitol were social media groups/teams. It was the essential infrastructure of the insurrection. We create tools, and then the tools create us. Most of what we take for 'society' right now is just teams on social media, arguing.

Another day in the algorithm we now call society. You’ll feel sadder and angrier at the end of the day than at the beginning, and that’s the algorithm doing its job.

I’m already seeing the building passion and excitement for the upcoming Oz federal election. We don’t see that this is like the Super Bowl for the team sports of our entire lives. Every issue is a mini-election now, with battling teams looking to win status. 365 days a year. /1

I believe the origin of both monarchies and churches is societies attempting to stabilise status hierarchies. We don’t see this, looking back on them. But they were primarily about stopping the eternally violent battle for status.

I look on every day as our most serious problems have nothing done about them. Activism won’t shift that. Somebody called me cynical for continually pointing this out. To me cynical is pretending all of these daily team sports solve anything. 1/3

"The lesson many will find impossible to accept is this: never believe groups who claim they just want ‘equality’ with rivals. No matter what they say, no matter what they believe, they don’t. They weave a marvellous dream of fairness for all, but the dream is a lie." Will Storr