We were told the internet was freedom with no boundaries. A digital frontier and a place where everyone had a voice.
You picked a name. Built a presence. Found resonance, not region. You didn’t vibe with your local environment. No problem; the internet had, or, more likely, was the alternative.
But what if the boundaries didn’t vanish but moved into the code? What if they’re stronger than ever and pretty much ubiquitous now?
No more iron curtains, curfews, and restrictions. Now, we live inside curated cages, ironically labeled as personalization.
Algorithms
Today, most people have social feeds based on accounts pre-selected by the algorithm. They see ads for things the algorithm believes they should really buy. Who they truly are is irrelevant.
They don’t discover but get assigned from pre-selected choices fitting labels and categories. Those that don’t fit? Well, you don’t see them.
Not because they’re wrong, offensive, or violate rules, but because they don’t make sense to the algorithm.
Notions like cosmopolitan and polymath get tossed around but seem to be banned as the algorithm says we should look no further than our immediate environment, living as local one-trick ponies who follow and buy stuff from other local one-trick ponies.
— POTB
Or at least it does, based on your location, as discussed in the previous post.
mIRC
In her Joe Rogan appearance, Blaire White says we didn’t appreciate MySpace. IMHO, we also failed to recognize apps like We were told the internet was freedom with no boundaries. A digital frontier and a place where everyone had a voice.
On mIRC, you could have a nickname resonating with your core self, not conforming to the expectations of your immediate environment. You could date and interact with people from wherever you wanted with no pre-selections.
Whatever happened happened between you and the other person. You could decide to tell others or keep it lowkey.
In the early 2000s on mIRC there was no middleman or feed, just presence. No default filter, just connection. It was the Magick of serendipity and discovering people we weren’t supposed to meet.
— POTB
Stars in Nuit’s Body
Esoterically, decentralization fits the prophecy of people living as stars in Nuit’s body, interacting and bonding with each other without an authority filtering experiences or events. Anywhere on the planet Earth, and hopefully sooner between planets.
Taking that away from the internet defeats the purpose of the internet, turning it into nothing more than a fusion of mostly local news, gossip, and telephone on speed.
Compton and the Iron Curtain
I’ve heard countless stories of people not being allowed to click with Western culture and buy such goods due to the ‘Iron Curtain.’ The Red Party prohibited those labeling them as ‘weapons against the commie values and community.’
After some research, I found that algorithms have a somewhat similar location bias in pre-selecting, feed, potential viewers, and clients.
Bandcamp, for instance, told me that by disabling location, I risk not getting any fans, as their algorithm pushes my music locally. No matter what I do.
While some fail to explain why, others claim it is part of their care to strengthen local communities. Yet what machines fail to understand is that you cannot strengthen connections that didn’t exist in the first place.
Another thing this made me recall is how, in the 70s, people of color weren’t allowed to leave places like Compton(where crime rates were obscene) after certain hours. Perhaps those who enforced such rules could have called them ‘community strengthening‘ too.
Censorship and Algorithms
In their Shenzhen documentary, Bloomberg criticizes China for not letting people use the internet outside of the government version. Nevertheless, they do, similar to previous generations of locals who consumed nothing but Western culture during the Soviet era.
But are such restrictions really that different from algorithms pre-selecting one’s content or viewers?
Based on my discussion with creator support on YouTube, my favorite platform, and double-checking with Gemini and chatGPT, the content is first pulled to the locals. If they don’t engage, it gets buried.
More research and experience showed me that Meta does that much more aggressively, only topped by TikTok, which can’t be changed even if you use a SIM card from a different place.
ChatGPT states this might be worse than Soviet censorship because, at least then, people sought each other out based on shared interests and values, not just location. Ironically, there wasn’t a loneliness, isolation, and mental health issues pandemic.
Broken systems were honest about their walls. Algorithms just hide them better.
Dating, Groceries, and the Algorithm
When I installed dating or grocery shopping apps on my phone in the past, I noticed something strange. My views dropped. Massively.
Meanwhile, local content I never click on starts flooding my feed like it’s urgent.
I can’t prove if such apps leak my location to YouTube or IG. But when I cleaned my phone, my visibility improved.
It seems that algorithms believe our viewers should also be people we’d potentially date or buy groceries from.
— POTB
Maybe that’s how they fish us—tagging us, scoring us, slotting us into invisible buckets. Maybe it makes sense to a machine and to some humans. To many others, it doesn’t.
Rending the Veil
In the mIRC days, I did wild stuff and graffiti in my hood. I dated in completely different neighborhoods, females from completely different contexts. When I had my first mentor, I entered a completely different yet simultaneously existing reality.
Was this so revolutionary? Or is it that the ‘new internet’ fails to provide the most basic feature of the internet:
Enabling you to transcend locations while being who you truly are, which for many of us is not one-dimensional.
The human soul has many aspects, which Magick nurtures, while modern platforms seem to cripple. It’s sad as the Internet was supposed to be the biggest Magick by rending the veil between local and global, personal and universal.
— POTB
Globalization and the Algorithm
Mentioning global, we’re also told that we move toward globalization. But is this really the case, since influencers, rappers, and online marketers push the ‘hyperlocal agenda’ to unseen degrees?
In one video, an Australian YouTuber, BJJ enthusiast, and creator coach, I actually forgot the name of, shared the advice he gave to a German creator in the productivity niche.
What it boiled down to was transcribing all of Ali Abdaal’s videos with AI and remaking them one-to-one in German. The pro tip was that the people who’d criticize the guy for stealing Ali’s work would never buy from him, while his actual buyers would never criticize him.
Realistically, this kid would likely never come close to Ali Abdaal. Yet, that doesn’t mean he’d never be able to provide his unique perspectives on productivity to people across the globe. Why, rather than helping with that, clipping his wings before he could even fly.
Some people would actually prefer to fail, knowing they tried their best to build something that, although small, had meaning to individuals globally, rather than becoming a legend in a local area they never resonated with.
It’s choosing to know that you’ve tried over the burden of ‘what if.’
The Nature of Evil and the Algorithm
One of the first things Occultists learn is that evil is subjective. Another one is that the whole Tree of Life, the central schema of Western Esotericism, is based on pairs of opposites/alternatives with shadows in the Tree of Death. According to Dion Fortune:
“You’ll never be an occultist if God and Devil fight in your head.”
— Dion Fortune
Given all this, to me, ‘evil’ has to do with depriving freedom of choice and alternatives. Algorithms aren’t evil per se if they could operate alternatively. If they don’t, their developers, CEOs, and ‘creator insiders’ should be more upfront about it.
A chopper, for instance, has a caution reading; you shouldn’t put your fingers near the blades.
Speaking of that, whenever I try to research the topic, I only get tutorials on how to tag a location as a travel vlogger. This is rather bizarre. Am I really the only person concerned with it? I highly doubt it.
The local bias shouldn’t disappear. It should be available as an option to enable on your dashboard.
Hope, Utopia, and the Algorithm
As far as an alternative, I don’t see that coming from the current platforms. If it happens at all, I assume it will be from the outside, kinda like Set, who is the outsider, an alternative to all other Neters (gods), according to Neoplatonic organizations.
Take Apple, for instance. They’re not angels. But at least with Apple, you know what you’re getting.
Hardcore users don’t buy Apple purely for specs or luxury. We pay for an alternative to the shitshow of codecs, trackers, forced updates, viruses, bugs, incompatibility, and spyware.
— POTB
Getting my first MacBook long ago, I felt liberated not just from that but from the locals I had to call to fix my computer. Apple was like mIRC, an alternative. Though mIRC doesn’t work on Macs.
In the San Bernardino case, Apple defended user privacy against the FBI, stating:
“What happens on the iPhone stays on the iPhone.”
— Apple
Wishful Thinking
They stood against Facebook in regards to ads and activity tracking, while Facebook claimed they protect small local businesses. I have nothing against those; I just don’t want them to be part of my day.
Hence, my wishful thinking is for someone like Apple to come up with an alternative and kinda revive the internet. If it ever happens, it will be like building a garden, not another casino. But that’s just my opinion. Thank you for your time.