By Ezra Stein-Garde

What Is the Reality of the Contemporary American Internet?

In order to fully grok the contemporary American internet I jacked into a Turing-Verified VR of a San Francisco 1998 rave.

I was going to explain the future of the internet to simulated 90s techno-utopians.

I am a visitor from the future, I say.

I say: in 2018, 224 million Americans have miniature computers disguised as cell phones.

I say that these miniature computers are each more powerful than the most powerful of your puny 1998 computers.

I say that all of these computers are connected together at bandwidth rates orders of magnitude exceeding your highest desire

The techn-outopians smile but don’t believe me.

I take out my iPhone and livestream the sun setting over Big Sur.

“So you’re telling me” the Techno-Utopians say “that the future has confirmed our wildest techno-utopian dreams”

“Not exactly” I say.

“But clearly if so many people have such incredible computers, and everyone’s connected and everything can be shared, and communication is free, society must be a lot more liberated and horizontal, right? Everyone’s sharing everything!”

“Yes, anyone can message anyone, and everything can be shared: all the things the internet was supposed to let us do, we can do, but we do them on privately owned platforms.”

Potemkin Internet Villages.

Facebook, for example, combined two core internet functionalities: rapid messaging and information sharing, but it spied on what its users were saying and sharing and used that knowledge to sell hyper-targeted advertising smuggled into the user’s information feed.

“But why would anyone want to use that” asked the Techno-Utopians.

Because Facebook studied Video Poker and Slot Machines and designed their interface to get the users hooked to the product.

Because Facebook discovered that anger boosted engagement, and so adjusted the algorithm to share more infuriating information.

Because communication is compelling on its own, people used Usenet quite a bit back in 1998, but the difference is one of degree and quality.

Because usenet never offered the endless buffet of communication. Because usenet didn’t didn’t structure itself to generate the itch.

Because Facebook scratched your itch for human contact, it wasn’t designed to build dependency.

Because you loaded the Book compulsively and without pleasure, this is when they really make money off of you.

Potemkin may never have built village along the Dnieper but the term designates any construct, real or literal, meant to hide an unsettling reality.

In the case of Facebook, the construct is the ability to “connect’ with friends, message, share information: the “mission statement” side of the company.

The seamy reality behind the facade is the spying; the hyper targeted advertisement; the addictive interface design; and, more generally, the fact that a common resource is being used for private good.

The same Potemkin pattern applies elsewhere: The internet made it possible for anyone to livestream and share photos; to offer a universal market; to share transportation and housing; to host discussions.

Instagram, Google, Amazon, Uber/LYFT, AirBNB, and Reddit all offer these functionalities, but set it up in a way to benefit their owners.

“It just seems like a bunch of Bond villains stole the internet! Isn’t there any hope in this narrative?” my 1998 San Francisco Techno-Utopians asked.

“No! there’s no hope at all everything’s just getting worse everyday; it’s a dystopia without any possible alternative”

I screamed, and then remembered this was a simulation, and took off the helmet.

How I Came Up With The Answer

That night, as I sat in the bathtub testing out the research chemical that I had been hired to review on an underground labor sharing platform, the answer came to me: CROWDSOCIALIZE THE INTERNET.

I didn’t know what this meant, but then I thought about it, and realized that it meant to crowdfund a workers-and-users-owned ad-free, spying-free, fully encrypted, addiction free alternative.

A commons that would let users message each other and share information.

Facebook was all itch and no scratch, endless digital itch.

This alternative would be total scratch, just a utility that gave people the power of the internet back to them.

The alternative would be called ALTERNATIVE.

My inner critic wasn’t fully convinced.

Diaspora, Mastodon, Ello, aren’t they all trying this? Didn’t they all fail.

The Migration Problem

Nobody figured out how to get past the migration problem: how do you get enough people out of Facebook’s Potemkin village onto the new resource?

I thought about crowdsourcing.

I thought about the stock market.

I thought about Herbalife.

I thought about how I was going to get out of this tub.

I thought actual snake oil might make my legs work again.

I thought about incentives.

I thought about how Facebook grew out from Harvard, radiating downwards through the US News and World Report Educational Hierarchy; how students turned other students on.

I thought that Snake Oil wouldn’t work because Snake Oil didn’t actually exist.

I thought about how users built Facebook, evangelists built the userbase.

I thought about Herbalife again.

Specifically, I was thinking about Bill Ackman’s failed short on the company.

Then I saw the answer.

You’re not just crowdfunding the ALTERNATIVE to Facebook; you’re crowdfunding a collective short on Facebook.

A Collective Short on Facebook

When the the users buy (say) ten dollars of shares in ALTERNATIVE LLC, five of those dollars go to a fund that is buying shorts on FB, five fund the thing that will make the short succeed: the ALTERNATIVE.

Alternative investors already betting against conventional wisdom, a vicious monopoly, and the Terminator-like drive of one pale, frighteningly wealthy manchild.

We’re betting against the house: the center of the economic model of the industry.

The Casino Vs. The Megachurch

Facebook has a casino dynamic about it, you are always playing the social capital slots, hoping for more likes, more shares, more messages, more connections.

Facebook is all house spread: the user never really wins, just keeps playing.

Of all American institutions, only one rivals the Casino: the Megachurch. At the megachurch everyone is a winner and the more people who come in, the more everyone is a winner.

ALTERNATIVE is at the mysterious intersection of a revolutionary movement, a megachurch, a crypto currency, and a communist heist movie.

It works because Facebook deserves to fall, it works because we deserve a better internet, it works because if it works, everyone makes money.

When you buy into ALTERNATIVE you’ve created for yourself a personal financial stake in the success of the platform and the failure of Zuckerberg’s Potemkin Digi-City, and breathed more life into a repeatable model for success: make your business a literal bet against the bastards.

The democratic cryptocurrency model, where Bitcoin (and crypto) unseats the petrodollar, ALTERNATIVE unseats the corporate-communications platform.

Every exodus from Facebook makes the short more money.

Jim Carrey gets involved.

A narrative coagulates: facebook is going down.

Every converted soul is cash in our collective pocket, it’s a better scam than Amway, Scientology, Hillsong, canvas fundraising, and Snap Inc, combined. You don’t have to buy in to register, but you will profit if you do.

The strategy also answers the other big problem.

Without ads or subscription, where does the money come from for design, engineering, hosting and maintenance of ALTERNATIVE?

The short can provide more than enough funding for ALTERNATIVE.

Don’t overthink ALTERNATIVE: it just needs to offer a way for users to chat, form groups, and to share and follow information.

That’s what people use Facebook for when they don’t consider the algorithm and the Darwinist competition to get likes, comments, and sell whatever you’re selling.

The advertisers are remorae on the social shark, devouring what we were too careless to value.

The Migration problem, Reconsidered

None of the other facebook alternatives could answer the terminal question: “why should I leave? my photos are here, my mom’s here, my account’s here.”

Maybe you want to see a powerful corporate malevolence get taken down.

Maybe you would love a free, encrypted, nonaddictive way to communicate and share information.

Maybe you want to be a co-owner of a socialist internet cooperative.

You have a heart.

But now there’s a way to connect your heart and your bank account. Finally.

You’ll leave because you will make money if you leave, and you’ll convince your mom to come because you’ll both make more money if she comes.

I was so excited by this idea that I considered finally learning how to code and operate a company and minimal viable producting the shit out of ALTERNATIVE.

But then it became apparent that my legs still couldn’t move.

I was going to be in this bathtub for a few more hours before these research chemicals wore off.

What I Did In the Tub

Visualize and manifest the creation of ALTERNATIVE. I wrote an email to the editors of the only surrealistic anarcho-communist outlet MOON ALLEGORY explaining to them how the proposal to crowd socialize facebook wouldn’t just go viral, this was going to go epidemic.

Moon Allegory would publish the article and it would be shared on XXX and then it would go from XXX to various other internet blogs and then someone, not me, because I was in the tub, would set up the crowdfunding site and collect the needed fifty thousand dollars to start Alternative.

The crowdfunders build the site and get past those first user-acquisition hurdles and more and more people are investing in ALTERNATIVE LLC, and watching, day by day, as the value of the total short continues to increase, and they pester more and more family members and friends to get ALTERNATIVE, which lets people talk to one another and share information without any spying or ads and make money and steer the future for their trouble.

Facebook’s user’s count crumbles.

The site becomes a digital ruin.

Everyone on the US is now on ALTERNATIVE.

I realized that this is only Stage One.

Stage Two?

With the vast loot left over from the Facebook short, we can now develop LIBRARY, a search engine that doesn’t spy on you, and VIDEO LIBRARY, a free place to share videos. I hadn’t managed to move my legs yet, but I had solved the internet.