Reddit is historically US tech workers. When the userbase was younger they were still some what anti-establishment. They have gotten more institutionalized as the years have gone by. They support big tech. They support the tech bro oligarchs. Their livelihood is tied to the fate of the US oligarchs. They are the sycophants. The yes-men.

Anyone who has been around before the tech oligarch era can attest to how different things are. What we have today isn’t anywhere close to the type of anarchist, anti-establishment type of nerds of the older internet eras. Today those types of people are all but extinct.

As you said, nobody actually talks critically about the tech industry. It’s certainly not in the way people used to. The term “walled garden” has long ago fallen out of the internet lexicon. The tech monopoly took root. The dominant narrative became of those in support of single closed ecosystems.

The tech nerd sycophants took over. There haven’t been competitors so long. There’s only one reddit. Only one twitter. Only one facebook. Only one youtube. And the prevailing mindset of tech is in support of this. Nobody speaks out against it. These companies have written the paychecks and funded the retirement of all those nerds.

These tech libertarians never stop trying to make their own company towns.

Here was a recent failed attempt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidewalk_Toronto

Also this piece never gets old. https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertarian-police-department

Make solutions in search of problems while collecting big tech premiums. If anyone accuses you of wasteful spending call them science illiterate to turn the public against them to divert the attention away from yourself.

It means accounts that consistently upvote posts that end up being banned.

The naive take is that this will remove bot/brigade swarms that are collaboratively boosting content that breaks site wide rules. You can derive ulterior motives from this if you want but I’m pretty sure that’s the basic premise.

I have no doubt this will be leveraged by the far-right to sow more discord. They already have a history of raiding subreddits with false flag attacks to get them sanctioned until it escalates into full blown subreddit ban. This is all but formalizing the mechanism.

Brave browser is a litmus test.

I’ll be the one to say it. We have been living in good times. The internet has the vocal crowd of naysayers. I believe they are signal boosted by “the algorithms” sowing the discontent bubble. That’s why there hasn’t been much counter-movement. Enough people are still too comfortable.

And you all can spare me the belligerent replies about how this or that sucks for whoever or whatever. That doesn’t strike the fact that things are good for enough people such that there isn’t mass breakdowns of social order.

It’s actually kind of crazy how the system keeps bending yet nothing has completely snapped. We’re not even at Occupy Wall Street level.

Your parents witnessed the fall of communism. We are here to witness the fall of capitalism. Your stocks will be worthless. Don’t worry about taxes.

It started with gmail IMO. That was an early milestone of the evil empire. They announced mining your emails to build an ad empire. I remember being bewildered that nerds on forums were going nuts over 1GB of storage. What a shit trade off I thought. But what did I know then especially relative to the expertise of internet nerds.

Gmail was launched around 2005 which means the concept was in development several years before. That puts the timeline around 2000 probably. Google was evil from very early on.

I’m certain those replies are in bad faith to discourage people from leaving reddit. The first one is obvious for your aforemention reason. The second one. I mean the internet has been around for decades. People haven’t suddenly forgot how to use it. Even normies have been able to figure out how to click a server. They’re fomenting lazy inertia.

People are still thinking in 20th century. The 21st century tech oligarchs are more powerful than nations. They control digital infrastructure. The ones who own social platforms can incite civil unrest. They control the algorithmic knobs of the population.

It’s literally in your face how obvious it is. Musk has Trump cowering at the Resolute desk. The most powerful seat in the world.

I think people must be in denial. Trying to justify with some other reasonings other than what is. Musk isn’t an asset. It isn’t a side business. He’s taken over the world superpower. Nation states aren’t the highest theater anymore. It’s tech oligarchs.

There isn’t a 4-8 back and forth cycle anymore. This paradigm no longer exists because the GOP has abdicated. It took the two parties to agree on this unwritten understanding.

The Dems are continuing to muddle around under the guise that a bygone era of decorum still exists… That maybe the old Republican party will come back. After each Dem term, MAGA will continue to do whatever the fuck they’re doing with reckless abandon. They know the Dems are cucked. One or both disappears as a party. We’re past that point for the GOP as it’s clear MAGA isn’t an aberration of 2016. So it must be the Dems re-invent themselves as something that can actually challenge MAGA.

This isn’t just a setback for Democrats. This needs to be a realization that the Dems are no longer a viable party. Sure on paper and in a bottle they are indeed a political party. Not one that is going to rise to the challenges.

People have been wondering if the party will be listless if Trump dies. Maybe that’s when MAGA finally reverts to the old Republicans. It’s clear now it won’t. They’ll elect a puppet president. The real president will be Musk or who ever else manages to worm their way in.

Sundar PIchai was front and center at the inauguration. Right next to Musk himself.

Where did this come from? Is this a precursor to pushing some blockchain shit or something?

In other news the first arrivals are at gitmo concentration camp.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/08/us/politics/guantanamo-bay-migrants.html

This quite a historic geopolitical paradigm shift. It’s been implicitly assumed that the two countries are forever allied out of mutual interest.

I’m still waiting to see if the second amendment is actually real.

It’s not money. It’s power.

When you can’t win, accuse them of cheating.

The next several years are going to be very violent.

Dear Penthouse Forum reddit, I’m a 20 year-old college student and I never thought I’d be writing to the Penthouse Forum reddit, but…

It’s the lowest common denominator of smut entertainment. The tech companies have managed to veil it all in prestige. It should be called gossip media or something.

Instead people think there’s some kind of real human connection. Some kind of deep discussions happening.