content: It's funny. There is sort of a vicious cycle I've watched happen with the internet since the early days. Services like Google have made access to any information we desire, at any given moment, so fast and effective that we have all taken it for granted. We've grown used to the speed and ease of access, so much so that millisecond timelines added to a page loading frustrate us. As the internet has aged, it has grown. It is simply to large today to navigate solo. Gone are the days of linking to other sites from individual webstie's page links. I haven't browsed the web like that in years and years. We depend on compiler services now. So as the internet has grown, so have we become conditioned to demand everything we want to be immediately accessible. Therefore people have come to depend on 'others' to do the searching and determine what is relevant for them. There are very few people anymore who scan the web in the old way, in the ways 'researchers' do. We depend on compilations of content like Reddit and Voat because we are biased to assume that what's popular is what's relevant. So despite the relative freedom of the web, we still start to consume its media like we did with the television. What we've discovered is people don't truly want freedom. Freedom means extra work. Freedom means responsibility. Critically analyzing and thinking. No. We'd rather be told what's important to know. It's easier. It gives people a false sense of safety and a grip on the world. Too much freedom has proven to be too stressful for most human beings. The ruling class now has the web. It was always going to all along. Until the next paradigm shift occurs and people think, "Yep, this is it. This is the moment. Freedom forever." And it too will go the same way as the internet has, until the next paradigm shift after that. So on and so forth. I mean look at the dissemination of printed materials. People used to treat the ability to freely print and distribute reading materials as a nation-changing phenomenon. All of that free thought poured out in written content so anyone could have access to the minds of any number of the world's genius thinkers from all ages. Did access to books radically change us as a people. Did it do away with ruling structures and hierarchies? No. Because creators and radicals will always be outnumbered in an overwhelming way by the sheep, and the sheep don't want freedom. Freedom is a burden in its own way. I'd argue that in a relative sense, people today (in the West) are freer than any people that has ever lived on this planet. And what does that look like? We're eating ourselves alive. The sad reality is that 99% of the people on the planet need to be controlled, and without even realizing it, most of them want it as well. Choice can be a monster of arbitrariness, and meaning totally relative, enough to drive people mad, unless the group is there assuring them what they're doing does have meaning. The flock calms them as they see the others moving in the same direction.