Half-formed thoughts early in the day. The Facebook “emotional contagion” experiment. The instantaneity of emotional response to events on social media. Swarming troll instances and the punishment delivered by the crowd. Some days, it’s easy to see social media, perhaps most especially Twitter, as a giant Milgram experiment. And if it is democratised action, perhaps that only obtains in the sense of the King making sure every English peasant had a longbow to practise with on Sundays. Extending that: the evolution of weaponry is the story of projected action. From rocks to spears and darts to longbows and cannon and guns and missiles and drones. We now have tools that, when activated by a contagion of rage, can be used, at internet speed, across the world, without consequence or even exposure of our location, to project pain into our targets.

That may, in fact, be all those things are really for, now. Virtual machines for punishment. The dopamine pleasures of joining a crowd in pressing a button that causes pain to someone in another room.

 

Reading: THE ADMINISTRATION OF FEAR, Paul Virilio (US) (UK)