I’ve been thinking a lot about how tightly news was controlled when it came from just a handful of major TV networks and publishers.
Trump going on Joe Rogan felt like a turning point — a signal that podcasts, not cable news, might become the new battleground for political campaigns. We — the internet — can now ask politicians the questions that matter to us.
As long as creators serve their fanbases, and stay independent of corporate pressure, we can finally do what the media was supposed to do when freedom of the press was enshrined: hold power to account.
I don’t think we’ve fully realized the door that’s been opened — or what we’re capable of here if we do a little strategic coordinating. Imagine if the online community decided that politicians must be asked, at every opportunity:
“How are we going to create a world without any war?”
It becomes more than a question — it becomes a tradition. A meme. We adopt the civic duty that no politician should reach office without facing it…the narrative around peace gets totally reconceptualized, leaders are forced to take a serious and mature approach to ending war. Plus, at least some of us vote based on the answers we hear, so peace-friendly candidates are more likely to rise to power.
Sounds crazy, but here's the full breakdown, which includes a cool way to start the tradition/meme…
https://medium.com/@ryan.norrish/a-plan-for-world-peace-that-can-actually-work-3f2bac7cbef9
Web: www.worldpeaceattempt.com
As wild and utopian as it might sound, it's an attempt to create world peace, and it'd be cool to see the internet make an attempt no matter the outcome.
Futurology: The internet is now giving us the power to pressure politicians more directly. If we rally around asking the right question, incessantly, we can make an attempt to create world peace. And the attempt might actually work.
byu/Repulsive-Crazy8357 inFuturology
15 Comments
Most of the world censors the internet. So, fat chance.
Hey all, re the above, I’d love to hear what you think. Does the core idea land with you? What would make this movement more capable? What would make you more likely to engage with it, ie by talking about it to friends, following on socials etc?
You can ask all you want. Nothing compels anyone to answer. Or be honest. Or do anything.
I suspect that this would only be applicable to nations where the politicians actually care about human rights.
I can’t see a fascist dictator giving a toss beyond having the offending party locked up.
Instructions unclear, demanding the mayor explain why the town’s schools have littler boxes in them for furries, also possibly threatening to kill him.
Humanity has filmed the horrors of war for over 100 years now.
At every turn governments have used it to glorify war.
The only exception was Vietnam. It was one of the few instances of it being used to end a war.
Nowadays we are fed so many war images that they don’t even have an effect. We see destroyed buildings crying children. But they keep the true horrors, the corpses and mutilation.
It’s always. Look at this building a drone destroyed! Not, look at these mangled bodies under the rubble.
Posting the actual horrors of war gets you banned or silenced on almost every platform out there.
This is why peace hasn’t happened.
The politicians can pressure back with more money and target ads.
That would be nice, if it wasn’t for state actors massively manipulating social media to artificially push their narrative. If they could get Palestinian expats in Detroit to vote for Trump alongside Zionist Jews in Brooklyn, then the power you ascribe to the mass of disorganized internet users is meaningless.
You misunderstand what liberal democracy is in its essence. Elected officials are not directly beholden to public opinion in this way. They are primarily beholden to factions of the investor class.
Mass movements do have the potential to cut through all the garbage and scare up real change, but not mild slacktivism like you’re describing. Look to the movements which secured the 8 hour working day or ended Jim Crow for the way forward.
I dont have the means to bribe- I mean pressure politicans
As a person who has dealt with apologists frequently, I highly doubt this. Pivoting, moving the goalposts, and spreading misinformation means you are endlessly chasing down bad arguments.
Love the enthusiasm. but the example you cite, Trump on Rogan, pushed the most powerful nation on Earth towards facism and undermining the rule of law of one of the shining hopes for humanity on the geopolitical stage.
Sadly, almost ever time humanity strives for some utopia it ends up being one of the worst things we’ve ever collectivley done. See all facist and communist movements. That is how your average human envisions their utopia.
If the answer seems easy or that it will solve all your problems, that’s a sign that it’s the wrong answer. Life is hard, unfair, and complicated. Focus on progressive and systemic changes. That’s how you got to live in the greatest period of human prosperity ever recorded.
Where ever you are, half of the people will likely oppose your ideals and thus the strategy you propose is just as likely to produce the opposite outcomes that you want. By making incremental and progressive improvements you can essentially trick the other side into improving the human condition. This is how left leaning people all over the globe have created the greatest period of human prosperity ever recorded over the last hundred years,.
oh, dear… we don’t live in that world anymore, I’m afraid.
first, the press. sadly, creators are as beholden to their *actual* sponsors as old media is, if not more, because of legal liability. Rogan is a terrible example of a free “creator”, btw. his stunt with trump was literally a play for PR, PRECISELY to give people the feeling you got. how do I know? in the 100 days interview, the reporter went off script with the “MS13 tattoo” bull, and donnie got clearly pissed, unlike with the flabby barbs from Rogan.
second, the neolib era made it so there are no direct channels between the politicians and the public, and the antiterrorist laws added a new layer of separation, even before this new laws against protests trump just implemented.
and about this not being that world anymore… whatever idea of rule of law we were brought up in, it’s over, even before Trump, it’s just clearly finished now, the president created concentration camps, other countries instead of doing better chose to create their own ones, like France. my point is, this is a time of tyrants all over. the age of fake cordiality (if you didn’t scratched much) that neoliberalism brought, it’s completely over. think the cold war but a little worse now.
how can you end wars when it’s been demonstrated that not every “leader” can be talked or negotiated with, and when the season for new annexations and conquests just began and everyone is moving to make use of it ASAP?
I know we should hope for a better future, but it takes a lot of work, and part of that work is to understand the present and build -or at least survive- from there.
You do realize that companies spend billions of dollars on lobbying politicians into their pockets, as long as they are able to do that common people have already lost.
Like Epstein’s island and the list we asked for. Right?