Top 10 Signs We Are Entering A New Dark Age. By Jamie Frater. I thought this would just be rubbishy clickbait when I clicked on it in a moment of weakness, but actually it makes some good points.
10. Social Media Censorship
9. Supression of Speakers on Campuses …
8. YouTube Censorship …
7. Google Search Destruction
In the last three decades we have handed over the curation of the wealth of human knowledge to a company that had the motto “don’t be evil”; until 2018 when it quietly placed it in the last sentence of its code of conduct, now just an afterthought. The last two years have seen Google progressively destroy the quality of its search results, first filling them with sponsored posts and now, as of May 2020, seemingly-replacing the entire index with results that give Google and its friends financial support during Coronavirus.
Online webmaster forums are full of website owners declaring their sites dead as 50–70% of their traffic from search has been slashed in favor of big brand results from companies aligned with Google’s world view.
It is probably fair to say that the future of the world wide web is one in which most search results end in a 404 error (page not found). Google is effectively shutting down the Internet. With all the search traffic gone, the sites that do remain will be compelled to look to subscription models.
6. Chained Bibles
Remember the chained Bibles from the last Dark Ages (hint: they were chained up because they were incredibly valuable, not to stop people reading them)? Guess what? They’re coming back! As Google has begun what seems to be its final onslaught against small and medium information websites and YouTubers, more information is either disappearing or is being locked behind paywalls and subscription models.
Once all the best content is locked away, we will have finally reached the point where the web is the exact opposite of what it was meant to be. Instead of the dissemination of information to the whole world for free (paid for by ads obviously), we will have a tightly locked vault of knowledge for only those who can afford to read it.
And unlike the Bible in the Middle Ages, we don’t have internet priests who can read it to us every day. This truly is the intentional removal of learning for all but an elite rich. …
5. Joe Rogan Spotify …
4. Wayback Machine Censorship
“‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’” These words from George Orwell’s frighteningly prescient novel 1984 ring true particularly today. The WayBackMachine or Internet Archive is an amazing site with snapshots of most parts of the world wide web going back decades. It has, on many occasions, been used to reveal deceptive editing from the mainstream media. …
Recently, the WaybackMachine begun marking certain archived pages as disinformation, particularly as it relates to the Coronavirus. It is retroactively stating that historical news or events were not true. It is only a matter of time before they start expunging the original content itself or replacing “misinformation” with “facts” as determined by unnamed movers behind the scenes.
3. Free Discussion in Science
Scientists and doctors are now routinely fired for discoveries (or even espousing theories) that are now deemed contrary to ideas “proven” by scientific consensus (argumentum ad verecundiam anyone?) The fear of causing offense (or worse: causing offense to those with very loud social media presences) is largely behind this dreadful situation. Scientists should not be stifled and it doesn’t matter how offensive their discoveries or views, they should be put out in the fresh air for debate. If we are not allowed to argue against ideas, how can we truly show them to be wrong—or to prove their opposite to be true?
From the environment to race and gender, a new “theology” is being formed and questioning it is tantamount to heresy with shaming and ostracism becoming the new burning at the stake.
2. Zombie Apocalypse …
Instead of talking and sharing our experiences and knowledge, instead of reading a book or even a magazine, people are playing games or watching videos on YouTube (the ones Google hasn’t suppressed yet). This is the zombie apocalypse; and it is voluntary. Until you see a city street full of people with vacant faces staring down, you can’t truly appreciate how horrifying this really is. …
1. Historic Information Sources May Vanish …
With some places already banning cash due to paper being such a good carrier for the virus, it is plausible to think that institutions of human knowledge such as libraries and, to a lesser degree museums, may eventually also be shuttered in the name of public safety. This would be partially manageable if it weren’t for the fact that the rest of the items on this list are also occurring at the same time.
Once all sites are gone except the highly questionable Wikipedia at the end of Google’s search holocaust, we could find ourselves finally untethered from the shared pool of knowledge of our ancestors upon which we have built our amazing and wonderful society.
Why is this happening?
It is easy to control one large corporation and impossible to control thousands of small ones. …
The powers that be, whatever you want to call them, understand that to maintain control of large parts of society and how we think and function requires the end of small businesses. This may not be 100% the reason for the bizarre changes we are now living through, but regardless of the intent, it is safe to say that every single day, more and more information is being removed from the internet and made inaccessible.
We can no longer pretend that we are in a burgeoning golden age of knowledge . . . we stand on the brink of the greatest dark age in human history.
It’s easier to fight a single dog than a swarm of bees.
