Substack’s new Twitter-clone Notes immediately turned into the standard social media rats-nest, dominated by the Engagement Seekers.
Batya: Every time you fire back hatred at a perfect stranger online, somebody makes a whole lot of money.
Localizing: Who makes money? The perfect stranger, who knows exactly how to weaponize your hatred for profit.
New thought after getting more sleep than usual:
This is the opposite of real business.
In real business, we pay for a product BECAUSE WE LIKE IT. You might call the process addictive, but it’s usually beneficial to both the customer and the business who provides good quality and good service. It’s a virtuous loop. More customers means more profit, thus more resources to improve the quality and service.
In media, from old newspapers to new Twitter, we pay for a product BECAUSE WE HATE IT. This drives the producer toward horrible quality and atrocious service, to piss off more customers.
The entire tech world, from the social shit to the software and physical products, follows the media model. Larry Ellison stated it explicitly: Let the fires burn.
Their purpose is not to make profit. Their purpose is to burn down civilization so they can occupy the vacant land and assets. Scorched earth, just like Sherman in Georgia. Wildfires and riots are literal. Other panics, from “global warming” to “virus”, are not literally fiery but serve the same end. Force the peasants to sell cheap, or just bankrupt them and evict them, then occupy the land or assets. A PSYCHOPATH NEEDS TO BE THE SOLE OCCUPANT OF THE UNIVERSE.
The tech demons inherited this model from the LBO raiders, who have always been present and grew dominant in the 80s at the same time when the tech world was starting.
Here’s a wonderfully HARDASS history and description of the LBO pirates by economics writer Gretchen Morgenson.
Polistra's Mill 