This interview is proof that America has an internal Hajnal line. While I am not sure where it ends in the west, it certainly includes Utah, and in the East, it ends at the northern border of Wisconsin.
That said, I found Kryptogal's assumptions regarding a horizontal society genuinely sad. It really is not her fault that we no longer live in the America of the late twentieth century. While living in places like suburban Utah or Nebraska can provide a simalcrum to some extent, even she sometimes suspects it isn't the real thing. There are so many people from her generation who want to believe ...
In conclusion, her desire for a fundamentally fair society is commendable. Generation X is truly in certain ways superior to what came after.
I think he purposely left that all in instead of cutting the parts where you can't hear him and he's all garbled just to prove how he never listens to anything I say.
My favourite bit was when I was listening to it last night playing Kingdom Come Deliverance and I thought my phone speakers had been dunked underwater when the audio started garbling
I think it also makes a pretty sophisticated artistic point though about how precognitive status and threat weighting makes a man instantly illegible to women and epistemically foreclosed ipso facto. It literally doesn’t matter what he says; to her he just comes off jumbled and incoherent.
It’s incredible how women have objectively worse situational awareness in pretty much all circumstances but Kate thought explaining how women walk would prove a good analogy for why clients are too greedy and myopic when attempting to dictate contract terms. It’s their job to try to get as much as possible and their lawyers’ to walk them back, regardless of who’s male/female.
Walt and Walt’s interns are correct about the “normal” Zoomer girls and the misandry and hatred of men. Many of my HS son’s female classmates were cheering the assassination of Charlie Kirk bc all Nazis deserve to die - and every RW guy is a Nazi. They attend a very progressive school in a very Liberal city in a blue state. This was a common sentiment and not a fringe one which they posted en mass under their name/face IG and TT accts. My son posted a RIP Charlie photo and made himself likely undatable in his school.
- Agree with Walt re OKCupid. It's great for nerdy and weird people, and I think can still help oddball and high-IQ men (and women) find each other. I lasted like four minutes on Tinder when I tried it, just terrible, but OKCupid was great. It's more personality/intelligence weighted in general.
- Walt's right that women are more liquid. Christopher Badcock (omg Walt don't laugh at his name) actually explains this in his book. Women are more mentalistic on average, men more mechanistic, and mentalistic cognition is more "nurture" dependent than mechanistic cognition (mechanistic cognition has huge overlap with IQ conceptually). Ie men skew more "nature", women more "nurture." Autistic and hyper-mechanistic women would be an exception. This kind of explains why in corrupted cultures, women tend to be more corrupted (broadly speaking) / enforce toxic ideologies more than men. Walt's theory of mind theory makes a lot of sense to me, though I hadn't thought about that before.
- Walt is right that a lot of women don't care a lot about looks, varies wildly. Generally speaking, women who are more shallow about men's appearances are also more obsessed with their own. Lots of women are shallow about intelligence and humour tbh. My husband knew a guy who was insanely hot but dumb as bricks and he couldn't get a date because women were turned off once he opened his mouth. A hot stupid woman will still get dates.
- People root for underdogs who WIN. Women find that sexy. Not so much underdogs who stay underdogs.
- Walt is right about the Salem witch hunts. Mostly young women accusing older women. I used to buy the it was misogyny myth and got schooled on this by Margaret Atwood of all people lol. Kate is right re the European witch hunts though, that was more about curbing female power and was largely driven by the printing press etc (I talk about this briefly in The Androgynous Mind essay).
(As an aside, Walt's speed-talking in this episode is more of a jackhammer to the brain than usual, is this the Kate Effect?)
- Re late bloomers, girls get the ick while YOUNG because the guys haven't bloomed yet, but late blooming men are often popular with women after age 30 (Kate is right). But lots of guys still have hang-ups from not being popular with girls in like high school, and that insecurity can be a turn-off. A lot of late-blooming men are actually more intelligent and have more potential that early-bloomers and it may signal a longer lifespan etc so yeah I mean it'll hurt you dating while young, but only if you're still hung up on it when you're older.
- Big boobs (and blonde hair) are fertility signals, but fake boobs impair breastfeeding (and thus child health) and fake blonde hair impairs fertility so guys are right if turned off by it. Bit different I guess if you've already had kids or are not having them.
Rolling back / freezing comms tech is much better by banning the Hardware rather than Software.
Your goal actually can be accomplished better by this:
You proposed 6 Acts:
- National Communications Stability Act (25-year moratorium on the public release of public-facing social media platforms, feed-based algorithmic consumer social products, large-scale dating apps, and immersive social-reputation systems)
- American Vitality Act (prohibit all commercial tube porn, AI-generated porn, deepfake sexual content, app-store distribution of porn, and all advertising or recommendation systems for pornographic material)
- National Courtship Hygiene Act (requiring all digital dating platforms to include longform profiles, delayed messaging, no infinite-stack design, no algorithmic desirability ranking, no frictionless rejection loops, and mandatory locality weighting)
- Executive Function Restoration Act (roll back the feed into a far lower-intensity mode with no infinite scroll, no opaque recommender systems, no engagement-maximizing short-video loops, limited daily exposure caps for minors, chronological feed defaults, strong friction for repost virality, and obligate platform transparency around ranking criteria)
- Protect Our Youth Act (bans unrestricted access to social platforms until the age of 18)
- Industrial Recalibration Act (aggressively subsidize and prestige-load industries that will reroute nerds from software development and the abstracted knowledge economy more generally into long-neglected industries rooted in embodied reality like energy, transit, rocketry, manufacturing, materials science, robotics, and civil engineering + Massively curb the endless capture of high-IQ male talent by adtech, social app optimization, porn tech, engagement analytics, and AI companionship and erotica using IRS)
-------------
My recommendation:
a. Keep the Industrial Recalibration Act you propose
But for everything else, rather than banning the software and stuff, you ban the HARDWARE instead.
1. No smartphones and tablets for kids under 18 or 21. Criminalize that shit like selling underage alcohol or smoking, and this is deliberate.
If you want Internet connection, get a laptop or PC, and if you want communication, use dumb phones / feature phones. You may get feature phones / dumb phones with WhatsApp or equivalent, but that's it. No smartphones.
2. No smartphones and tablets at universities and military bases.
3. Corporations get tax cuts if they enforce this in their workplace.
Why?
Thing is being sucked to such Skinner's Box is a matter of addiction and it is a matter of that compulsive-impulsive "Imma check my phone" that is UNIQUELY addictive to smartphones the way dumb phones & laptops don't make you to do so.
That compulsive-impulsive Skinner's box is addictive and semi-subconscious, and the thing about Zoomer addiction and more is that they are drifted with this since being sentient is actually harder because all the energy is already used to consume brainrot.
However, laptops and PCs aren't as addictive. You need the conscious effort to set up your laptop (Take it from your bag, put it on the table, maybe plug it in, then turn on) - this being the default mode actually forces sentience.
This is also easier to enforce than targeting the software (Seriously, governments are RIDICULOUSLY bad at micromanaging software and stuff, especially since software is software and therefore easier to evade govt bans). Hardware is easier because the main question is: "Do you need actual conscious mental effort to start it?" Laptops & PCs do have that, but tablets and smartphones don't.
Also, this way you only need 2 Acts. Not 6. Remember, Congress can't even agree to raise its own salary in general, so
Also. Every Millennial ever online should remember the biggest lie of the Internet: "I have read the Terms and Agreements" and "I am over 18 years old" - which they always do all the time but somehow forget today.
Restrict the hardware. It's easier.
----
The Problem is on the nature of software.
The states (I mean state govt) really can’t do any software ban, it’s very easy to get bypassed.
The only real way softwares can be banned & regulated is basically national and international level, and national level = Basically you practically need to create some sort of China’s Great Firewall. If not any VPN can bypass that.
International level regulations: Basically become EU being so anal about privacy and more, or basically having everything = US copyright laws. That’s it really
Anything less = What do you want to do, strike the corporations? Force corporations to do X Y Z? How do you define the features to be banned on literal legalese?
It’s rubber law impossible to enforce especially since Walt’s software bans are very specific
Software can only be “regulated” through community & voluntary things
Thing is that society is a living breathing organism that has to be approached like a physician, but law is inherently a software engineer thing & logic (binary, certain presupposition, etc) (yes that’s just how the law works, and it’s also deliberate - partly to prevent people from just go “I don’t like the color red ban it” and forcing people with verbal IQ and good mental gymnastics to thrive against chudkorps)
Also, child ban on social media = Rhymes with LOL, you want every site scan ID?
But hardware bans? Counties can do it, states can do it, each association can do it, schools can do it, institutions can do it, it’s easy. Software? Impossible to enforce (what are you gonna do, check everyone’s phone for Tinder?)
Besides, I'm not in favor of restricting information from kids, "protecting youth innocence" or whatever, or preventing escapism for kids, or preventing kids from learning through trial and error - that sounds very Jack Thompson & 90s-2000s anti video game crowd & Boomer, that sounds very "LOL nerds & theater kids get rekt again like the 80s". But I am interested in not making kids' brains go mush
Hardware restrictions are best enacted by securing the constitutionality and legal and foundations for private membership associations which ban smartphones. This technique could be used for Walt's other 6 anti-digital acts too. A "sword and shield" scenario would also make sense, in which small towns and private communities would exist in which smartphones were banned outright, and larger or more progressive jurisdictions like states or universities could enact Walt's anti-digital involution policies. In order for any of this to have national political viability, citizens need to see that the policies work on a small scale.
The states (I mean state govt) really can’t do any software ban, it’s very easy to get bypassed.
The only real way softwares can be banned & regulated is basically national and international level, and national level = Basically you practically need to create some sort of China’s Great Firewall. If not any VPN can bypass that.
International level regulations: Basically become EU being so anal about privacy and more, or basically having everything = US copyright laws. That’s it really
Anything less = What do you want to do, strike the corporations? Force corporations to do X Y Z? How do you define the features to be banned on literal legalese?
It’s rubber law impossible to enforce especially since Walt’s software bans are very specific
Software can only be “regulated” through community & voluntary things
Thing is that society is a living breathing organism that has to be approached like a physician, but law is inherently a software engineer thing & logic (binary, certain presupposition, etc) (it’s deliberate)
Also, child ban on social media = Rhymes with LOL, you want every site scan ID?
----------
But hardware bans? Counties can do it, states can do it, each association can do it, schools can do it, institutions can do it, it’s easy. Software? Impossible to enforce (what are you gonna do, check everyone’s phone for Tinder?)
Bandwidth restrictions in specific areas could do the job. Limiting it to < 0.5 megabytes per second effectively renders anything beyond email impossible. Hence, the most pernicious Zoomer Oral Culture applications such as Tinder or Tiktok would cease to function. However, you are correct in stating that the only complete solution to digital involution is creating a smartphone-free community. To restore pre-2010 normal human culture, anything with a touchscreen would have to go. Here is one plan: https://swiftenterprises.substack.com/p/computational-independence
> Bandwidth restrictions in specific areas could do the job. Limiting it to < 0.5 megabytes per second effectively renders anything beyond email impossible. Hence, the most pernicious Zoomer Oral Culture applications such as Tinder or Tiktok would cease to function.
And you're basically also killing Internet access altogether.
I actually don't want to wipe out the Internet and in general are more liberal regarding this - generally trying to "return" to the past is disastrous - but I do agree that the information intake is too far and it turns Zoomers' brain into a mush.
What I'm focusing on instead is forcing sentience and removing the addiction. I'm not in favor of restricting information from kids or "protecting youth innocence" or not letting kids having the full access of the Internet for escapism or whatever - that sounds very Jack Thompson & anti-video game Boomer crowds back in the 90s & 2000s, and returning nerds to be extremely low status as well - but I'm in favor of ensuring kids' brains don't go to mush.
I do agree with your sentiment that anything with a touchscreen has to go though, the difference being just keep the laptops and the PCs as is, if anything let laptops & PCs be more advanced
kate: when you said selfies were invented in 2009 did you mean to say self cameras? like the camera facing back towards you on your phone so you can see yourself?
Emo girls definitely took selfies with digital cameras for myspace in the early 00s. I know that sounds impossible but I saw it with my own eyes a hundred times. My ex even made me look good in photos. She was a selfie wizard
I just meant the actual word "selfie". People took photos holding their camera at themselves before that. They just wouldn't then go showing everyone or putting it in a frame or on their wall or something, not unless there was at least someone else in the photo with them.
I am pretty sure they had that name even in the myspace era (03 onwards), but I'm not as confident about that part. There were definitely girls taking pictures of themselves by holding their arm out and pointing the camera back at themselves and the purpose was definitely to post said photos to the internet.
I do agree that being a showpony on the internet was more niche until around the late 00s, I don't think I ever took my own selfie before probably even the early 10s
I found myself agreeing with Kryptogal a lot throughout this conversation, not because I thought Walt was wrong, but just in this gravity of Gaia sense of "we're all going to die soon, why spend all this energy on perfect understanding or finding optimal solutions?" And, as Walt has said in some other words, that is sort of an eternal and irrefutable female point of view, and yet if men internalized it universally, then... forget reduced civilization, we'd be extinct. Of course I'm overessentializing spirits in order to say that. But in the mixed spirits men are always going to advocate the degree of Faustianism or whatever that advantages them and then turn pseudo-Buddhist when they're older, and women will advocate just chilling because it's a more convenient perspective for guys they aren't interested in to take, while they can utilize passivity in ways that guys can't.
Maybe it's because of my Dutch background, but I do resonate with Kryptogal's leveling impulse much more than Walt's hierarchalism. But I also prefer Walt's advocacy for asymmetric relationships over a sort of natural equals negotiating as sex-irrelevant humans thing. Not saying Kryptogal would say that exactly, just that that's the opposite of Walt.
I really, really don't resonate with Walt saying men should duel or that incels would be satisfied with voting on men to kill. Maybe I'm too estrogenic or something, but it genuinely does nothing for me. It may be partly because dueling could really end in men competent in firearms just doing what they please and killing genuinely aggrieved men. I do think men beating each other up in non-permanent ways should become more normal again, assuming that that naturally produces male coalitions in youth that teach honor and reliability in instinctual rather than preachy ways. But maybe technology just prevents that. We see too much, and complaints can be heard by too many. To some extent, masculinity comes from an escort/highwaymen dynamic that goes away in a fully conquered, mostly monitored world.
My husband is 50 years old and the only social media he has ever had is Linked In. There is a profile picture of him, but it likely the one he added when he first created his profile so it is likely 20 years old. He goes onto Linked In when he changes jobs to update his new job. The entire idea of taking a selfie is insane to him.
I really only used FB as my social media. It was never an open profile. All people I knew IRL. It was nice to keep up with people, plan meet ups when high school friends were in town and we used it to plan homeschool activities and I have used it to plan high school reunions.
I nuked FB during Covid when people started posting Covid Vaccine selfies and it was giving me anxiety. When I came back (I had to use FB for some reason to sign into the karaoke machine we got my daughter for Christmas? I think bc my old Spotify was linked to my FB) the entire FB algorithm was nuked and it was reels of people I didn’t know, AI “Chicken Soup for the Soul” style slop (inspirational long posts written by AI), fake videos, and even though I have 1K real connections but the algorithm only shows me the same 20 people over and over. It’s also riddled with ads now too in a way it didn’t used to be.
It’s not remotely interesting to me as someone who likes a more slow and thoughtful social network … which is what it used to be. And it ruined it by trying to become TokTok.
It's all Tik Tok and AI slop now, it's quite pathetic. It was okay for a short era from about 2017-2024, which was AFTER all of the "cool" kids and political crazies left for the greener pastures of Twitter, Insta, Snap, and it only left fairly normal people who wanted to stay connected to what friends/family were doing and weren't trying to become viral e-celebs. Then in 2024 it turned to straight Tik Tok style random reels and nonstop AI and ads.
> Walt argues the 2010-era internet was the ideal scale
LOL no - 2010-era is when the endless "REASONS WHY WHITE PEOPLE GO EXTINCT AND THAT'S A GOOD THING" era plus when bullying girls liking Justin Bieber, 50 Shades of Gray and shit were so common.
Nobody knows "Make fun of girls liking smut and stuff with your own risk, if you don't let them fangirl and blushes reading smut you'll turn them all into lesbians" - after all New Atheism was over and changed into SJW, the early 2010s Internet nuked by Gamergate, etc - the culture changes for a reason
If you want to reduce Zoomer cognitive dysfunction you go to the HARDWARE, not SOFTWARE. Millennial childhood & teenage years were laptops and dumb phones, it actually is the thing that preserve cognitive functions more
Don't interfere more than ensuring kids' brain don't go mush, that's turning you into full blown Boomerism + anti-video game crowd + practically every uncool stodgy oldpeepo ever back in the 80s & 90s + turning theater kids back into being bullied
> Walt wants WASPs to be more openly supremacist, Walt genuinely appreciates WASP civicmindedness
Disagree. Basically at this point WASPness & Aryan-ness means wokeism / being the wokest person ever. If you want to become true white supremacist you become hyper-woke basically
All the whole misogyny panic in Britain and "OI YOU GOT A LOICENSE FOR THAT MEME" shit is THE EXACT SAME VICTORIAN PURITANISM Britain exercised during 1800s and EVERY THEOCRACIES & DEEPLY RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES ACT THE EXACT SAME WAY, just different morality
Liberal-Progressive Modernity legitimately IS now the actual orthodoxy status quo in every step of the way, and if anything is THE new British Victorian puritanism and theocracy.
If anything:
Thing is about the Enlightenment is that the reason it won out over religion is because the Enlightenment was comparatively closer to the Trvth than religion.
Hobbesian metaphysics is more correct than Aristotelian, and so on
But the problem is that "Contemporary status hierarchies select for people who can handle contradiction quietly without incurring cognitive load" = Also does mean the Enlightenment and basically the entire liberalism as a meta-ideology has run its course.
Actual progress really does mean removing this delusion entirely
> How different is Walt from most guys?
Are you kidding me you are VERY different from most guys
> Kate argues men are idealistic and bound to abstractions
Agree with Kate here
> Is Walt ugly
Depends on your presentation lmfao
> Zoomers see 32 as ancient
Yes actually. In fact Millennials back then do that too online.
The Internet, modern life, city life etc is basically made for 20-somethings.
It's simple really: They have all the rights of an adult but not yet all the responsibilities of an adult
> Kate insists that beautiful virgin mormon Zoomettes can’t find a hubby
Interesting. Actually had I were actually born in America but retained my personality & fetish these are the types I want lmfao (I even remember Kate even say to me "You would do well with ex-mormon girls" lmfao)
> Afghanistan
You want a true libertarian society? It's actually pre-911 Afghanistan.
Afghanistan pre US invasion was practically a lolbertarian utopia. That's what actual minarchism, Ancapistan etc would gave you IRL.
The police and the state are practically nonexistent outside government buildings. Thus rural people in general fall back into a system of unwritten deals, anarchy, tribal laws and family ties.
Here's a serious elaboration of why war in Afghanistan fail
Thing is that the consequences of having a state so small it can't do anything is basically protection racket mafias.
Even to actually have big companies invest and more (companies if anything want stability), you have to establish monopoly on legal violence and create courts and state capacity, and thing is even this is not a trivial task (You would be surprised at how many states actually failed about this).
Plus, even the concept of private property (and its protection) is also inherently a state conception, and the complexities of navigating trade, corporate disputes, IP laws and the like really do mean you have to make complicated IP laws and more.
And corporations being too big actually can disturb this need.
So paradoxically, free markets rely on taxes and the state to remain "free".
Thus libertarianism is already bogus and pie-in-the-sky ideology, like Marxism.
(This isn't including market failures and more, which libertarians deny it exist but it actually does).
There's a reason:
- Every third world country escaping from poverty shithole are always pragmatic developmental state. Yes, all of them
The reason the US failed in Afghanistan is because of their (and everyone else's) total failure to understand the rural Afghan way of life. This is literally above EVERYTHING ELSE, all the other mistakes are trivial
Afghanistan is NOT a modern state by any means, like ever
Women would never want to actually murder a man, but it's preferable to kill 40% of men if they're incels than to put restrictive norms on men and women that reduce the incel rate? It was a throwaway statement to close the conversation, so I don't take it seriously, but it's really, really dark if you do take it seriously.
No, I know. You just did a "yeah, ok" to finish the conversation. Walt doesn't really mean it either, he's seeking a reaction or trying to cheer on women's vindictiveness to purchase more cold analysis playing room.
This interview is proof that America has an internal Hajnal line. While I am not sure where it ends in the west, it certainly includes Utah, and in the East, it ends at the northern border of Wisconsin.
That said, I found Kryptogal's assumptions regarding a horizontal society genuinely sad. It really is not her fault that we no longer live in the America of the late twentieth century. While living in places like suburban Utah or Nebraska can provide a simalcrum to some extent, even she sometimes suspects it isn't the real thing. There are so many people from her generation who want to believe ...
In conclusion, her desire for a fundamentally fair society is commendable. Generation X is truly in certain ways superior to what came after.
I will admit it. I read both of my sister’s journals, and my older sister read my mom’s journals.
And no I don't actually think you are old Walt.
W shout out
S-tier pod, L second half audio
I think he purposely left that all in instead of cutting the parts where you can't hear him and he's all garbled just to prove how he never listens to anything I say.
My favourite bit was when I was listening to it last night playing Kingdom Come Deliverance and I thought my phone speakers had been dunked underwater when the audio started garbling
I think it also makes a pretty sophisticated artistic point though about how precognitive status and threat weighting makes a man instantly illegible to women and epistemically foreclosed ipso facto. It literally doesn’t matter what he says; to her he just comes off jumbled and incoherent.
It’s incredible how women have objectively worse situational awareness in pretty much all circumstances but Kate thought explaining how women walk would prove a good analogy for why clients are too greedy and myopic when attempting to dictate contract terms. It’s their job to try to get as much as possible and their lawyers’ to walk them back, regardless of who’s male/female.
Oral culture is real.
End of Pod notes:
Walt and Walt’s interns are correct about the “normal” Zoomer girls and the misandry and hatred of men. Many of my HS son’s female classmates were cheering the assassination of Charlie Kirk bc all Nazis deserve to die - and every RW guy is a Nazi. They attend a very progressive school in a very Liberal city in a blue state. This was a common sentiment and not a fringe one which they posted en mass under their name/face IG and TT accts. My son posted a RIP Charlie photo and made himself likely undatable in his school.
Second End of Pod Note:
Kate is also correct that Walt seems more grounded when he is interacting with humans.
If you take a shot every time Walt says "precognitive" you die thirty minutes in
Early thoughts --
- Agree with Walt re OKCupid. It's great for nerdy and weird people, and I think can still help oddball and high-IQ men (and women) find each other. I lasted like four minutes on Tinder when I tried it, just terrible, but OKCupid was great. It's more personality/intelligence weighted in general.
- Walt's right that women are more liquid. Christopher Badcock (omg Walt don't laugh at his name) actually explains this in his book. Women are more mentalistic on average, men more mechanistic, and mentalistic cognition is more "nurture" dependent than mechanistic cognition (mechanistic cognition has huge overlap with IQ conceptually). Ie men skew more "nature", women more "nurture." Autistic and hyper-mechanistic women would be an exception. This kind of explains why in corrupted cultures, women tend to be more corrupted (broadly speaking) / enforce toxic ideologies more than men. Walt's theory of mind theory makes a lot of sense to me, though I hadn't thought about that before.
- Walt is right that a lot of women don't care a lot about looks, varies wildly. Generally speaking, women who are more shallow about men's appearances are also more obsessed with their own. Lots of women are shallow about intelligence and humour tbh. My husband knew a guy who was insanely hot but dumb as bricks and he couldn't get a date because women were turned off once he opened his mouth. A hot stupid woman will still get dates.
- People root for underdogs who WIN. Women find that sexy. Not so much underdogs who stay underdogs.
- Walt is right about the Salem witch hunts. Mostly young women accusing older women. I used to buy the it was misogyny myth and got schooled on this by Margaret Atwood of all people lol. Kate is right re the European witch hunts though, that was more about curbing female power and was largely driven by the printing press etc (I talk about this briefly in The Androgynous Mind essay).
(As an aside, Walt's speed-talking in this episode is more of a jackhammer to the brain than usual, is this the Kate Effect?)
- Re late bloomers, girls get the ick while YOUNG because the guys haven't bloomed yet, but late blooming men are often popular with women after age 30 (Kate is right). But lots of guys still have hang-ups from not being popular with girls in like high school, and that insecurity can be a turn-off. A lot of late-blooming men are actually more intelligent and have more potential that early-bloomers and it may signal a longer lifespan etc so yeah I mean it'll hurt you dating while young, but only if you're still hung up on it when you're older.
- Big boobs (and blonde hair) are fertility signals, but fake boobs impair breastfeeding (and thus child health) and fake blonde hair impairs fertility so guys are right if turned off by it. Bit different I guess if you've already had kids or are not having them.
Will finish later, my poor brain.
"Na Walt" - good one. Took me a minute.
> roll back / freeze comms tech
I'll say this again:
Rolling back / freezing comms tech is much better by banning the Hardware rather than Software.
Your goal actually can be accomplished better by this:
You proposed 6 Acts:
- National Communications Stability Act (25-year moratorium on the public release of public-facing social media platforms, feed-based algorithmic consumer social products, large-scale dating apps, and immersive social-reputation systems)
- American Vitality Act (prohibit all commercial tube porn, AI-generated porn, deepfake sexual content, app-store distribution of porn, and all advertising or recommendation systems for pornographic material)
- National Courtship Hygiene Act (requiring all digital dating platforms to include longform profiles, delayed messaging, no infinite-stack design, no algorithmic desirability ranking, no frictionless rejection loops, and mandatory locality weighting)
- Executive Function Restoration Act (roll back the feed into a far lower-intensity mode with no infinite scroll, no opaque recommender systems, no engagement-maximizing short-video loops, limited daily exposure caps for minors, chronological feed defaults, strong friction for repost virality, and obligate platform transparency around ranking criteria)
- Protect Our Youth Act (bans unrestricted access to social platforms until the age of 18)
- Industrial Recalibration Act (aggressively subsidize and prestige-load industries that will reroute nerds from software development and the abstracted knowledge economy more generally into long-neglected industries rooted in embodied reality like energy, transit, rocketry, manufacturing, materials science, robotics, and civil engineering + Massively curb the endless capture of high-IQ male talent by adtech, social app optimization, porn tech, engagement analytics, and AI companionship and erotica using IRS)
-------------
My recommendation:
a. Keep the Industrial Recalibration Act you propose
But for everything else, rather than banning the software and stuff, you ban the HARDWARE instead.
1. No smartphones and tablets for kids under 18 or 21. Criminalize that shit like selling underage alcohol or smoking, and this is deliberate.
If you want Internet connection, get a laptop or PC, and if you want communication, use dumb phones / feature phones. You may get feature phones / dumb phones with WhatsApp or equivalent, but that's it. No smartphones.
2. No smartphones and tablets at universities and military bases.
3. Corporations get tax cuts if they enforce this in their workplace.
Why?
Thing is being sucked to such Skinner's Box is a matter of addiction and it is a matter of that compulsive-impulsive "Imma check my phone" that is UNIQUELY addictive to smartphones the way dumb phones & laptops don't make you to do so.
That compulsive-impulsive Skinner's box is addictive and semi-subconscious, and the thing about Zoomer addiction and more is that they are drifted with this since being sentient is actually harder because all the energy is already used to consume brainrot.
However, laptops and PCs aren't as addictive. You need the conscious effort to set up your laptop (Take it from your bag, put it on the table, maybe plug it in, then turn on) - this being the default mode actually forces sentience.
This is also easier to enforce than targeting the software (Seriously, governments are RIDICULOUSLY bad at micromanaging software and stuff, especially since software is software and therefore easier to evade govt bans). Hardware is easier because the main question is: "Do you need actual conscious mental effort to start it?" Laptops & PCs do have that, but tablets and smartphones don't.
Also, this way you only need 2 Acts. Not 6. Remember, Congress can't even agree to raise its own salary in general, so
Also. Every Millennial ever online should remember the biggest lie of the Internet: "I have read the Terms and Agreements" and "I am over 18 years old" - which they always do all the time but somehow forget today.
Restrict the hardware. It's easier.
----
The Problem is on the nature of software.
The states (I mean state govt) really can’t do any software ban, it’s very easy to get bypassed.
The only real way softwares can be banned & regulated is basically national and international level, and national level = Basically you practically need to create some sort of China’s Great Firewall. If not any VPN can bypass that.
International level regulations: Basically become EU being so anal about privacy and more, or basically having everything = US copyright laws. That’s it really
Anything less = What do you want to do, strike the corporations? Force corporations to do X Y Z? How do you define the features to be banned on literal legalese?
It’s rubber law impossible to enforce especially since Walt’s software bans are very specific
Software can only be “regulated” through community & voluntary things
Thing is that society is a living breathing organism that has to be approached like a physician, but law is inherently a software engineer thing & logic (binary, certain presupposition, etc) (yes that’s just how the law works, and it’s also deliberate - partly to prevent people from just go “I don’t like the color red ban it” and forcing people with verbal IQ and good mental gymnastics to thrive against chudkorps)
Also, child ban on social media = Rhymes with LOL, you want every site scan ID?
But hardware bans? Counties can do it, states can do it, each association can do it, schools can do it, institutions can do it, it’s easy. Software? Impossible to enforce (what are you gonna do, check everyone’s phone for Tinder?)
Besides, I'm not in favor of restricting information from kids, "protecting youth innocence" or whatever, or preventing escapism for kids, or preventing kids from learning through trial and error - that sounds very Jack Thompson & 90s-2000s anti video game crowd & Boomer, that sounds very "LOL nerds & theater kids get rekt again like the 80s". But I am interested in not making kids' brains go mush
Hardware restrictions are best enacted by securing the constitutionality and legal and foundations for private membership associations which ban smartphones. This technique could be used for Walt's other 6 anti-digital acts too. A "sword and shield" scenario would also make sense, in which small towns and private communities would exist in which smartphones were banned outright, and larger or more progressive jurisdictions like states or universities could enact Walt's anti-digital involution policies. In order for any of this to have national political viability, citizens need to see that the policies work on a small scale.
Walt’s 6 Acts
I kind of disagree.
The Problem is on the nature of software.
The states (I mean state govt) really can’t do any software ban, it’s very easy to get bypassed.
The only real way softwares can be banned & regulated is basically national and international level, and national level = Basically you practically need to create some sort of China’s Great Firewall. If not any VPN can bypass that.
International level regulations: Basically become EU being so anal about privacy and more, or basically having everything = US copyright laws. That’s it really
Anything less = What do you want to do, strike the corporations? Force corporations to do X Y Z? How do you define the features to be banned on literal legalese?
It’s rubber law impossible to enforce especially since Walt’s software bans are very specific
Software can only be “regulated” through community & voluntary things
Thing is that society is a living breathing organism that has to be approached like a physician, but law is inherently a software engineer thing & logic (binary, certain presupposition, etc) (it’s deliberate)
Also, child ban on social media = Rhymes with LOL, you want every site scan ID?
----------
But hardware bans? Counties can do it, states can do it, each association can do it, schools can do it, institutions can do it, it’s easy. Software? Impossible to enforce (what are you gonna do, check everyone’s phone for Tinder?)
Bandwidth restrictions in specific areas could do the job. Limiting it to < 0.5 megabytes per second effectively renders anything beyond email impossible. Hence, the most pernicious Zoomer Oral Culture applications such as Tinder or Tiktok would cease to function. However, you are correct in stating that the only complete solution to digital involution is creating a smartphone-free community. To restore pre-2010 normal human culture, anything with a touchscreen would have to go. Here is one plan: https://swiftenterprises.substack.com/p/computational-independence
> Bandwidth restrictions in specific areas could do the job. Limiting it to < 0.5 megabytes per second effectively renders anything beyond email impossible. Hence, the most pernicious Zoomer Oral Culture applications such as Tinder or Tiktok would cease to function.
And you're basically also killing Internet access altogether.
I actually don't want to wipe out the Internet and in general are more liberal regarding this - generally trying to "return" to the past is disastrous - but I do agree that the information intake is too far and it turns Zoomers' brain into a mush.
What I'm focusing on instead is forcing sentience and removing the addiction. I'm not in favor of restricting information from kids or "protecting youth innocence" or not letting kids having the full access of the Internet for escapism or whatever - that sounds very Jack Thompson & anti-video game Boomer crowds back in the 90s & 2000s, and returning nerds to be extremely low status as well - but I'm in favor of ensuring kids' brains don't go to mush.
I do agree with your sentiment that anything with a touchscreen has to go though, the difference being just keep the laptops and the PCs as is, if anything let laptops & PCs be more advanced
kate: when you said selfies were invented in 2009 did you mean to say self cameras? like the camera facing back towards you on your phone so you can see yourself?
Emo girls definitely took selfies with digital cameras for myspace in the early 00s. I know that sounds impossible but I saw it with my own eyes a hundred times. My ex even made me look good in photos. She was a selfie wizard
I just meant the actual word "selfie". People took photos holding their camera at themselves before that. They just wouldn't then go showing everyone or putting it in a frame or on their wall or something, not unless there was at least someone else in the photo with them.
I am pretty sure they had that name even in the myspace era (03 onwards), but I'm not as confident about that part. There were definitely girls taking pictures of themselves by holding their arm out and pointing the camera back at themselves and the purpose was definitely to post said photos to the internet.
I do agree that being a showpony on the internet was more niche until around the late 00s, I don't think I ever took my own selfie before probably even the early 10s
I found myself agreeing with Kryptogal a lot throughout this conversation, not because I thought Walt was wrong, but just in this gravity of Gaia sense of "we're all going to die soon, why spend all this energy on perfect understanding or finding optimal solutions?" And, as Walt has said in some other words, that is sort of an eternal and irrefutable female point of view, and yet if men internalized it universally, then... forget reduced civilization, we'd be extinct. Of course I'm overessentializing spirits in order to say that. But in the mixed spirits men are always going to advocate the degree of Faustianism or whatever that advantages them and then turn pseudo-Buddhist when they're older, and women will advocate just chilling because it's a more convenient perspective for guys they aren't interested in to take, while they can utilize passivity in ways that guys can't.
Maybe it's because of my Dutch background, but I do resonate with Kryptogal's leveling impulse much more than Walt's hierarchalism. But I also prefer Walt's advocacy for asymmetric relationships over a sort of natural equals negotiating as sex-irrelevant humans thing. Not saying Kryptogal would say that exactly, just that that's the opposite of Walt.
I really, really don't resonate with Walt saying men should duel or that incels would be satisfied with voting on men to kill. Maybe I'm too estrogenic or something, but it genuinely does nothing for me. It may be partly because dueling could really end in men competent in firearms just doing what they please and killing genuinely aggrieved men. I do think men beating each other up in non-permanent ways should become more normal again, assuming that that naturally produces male coalitions in youth that teach honor and reliability in instinctual rather than preachy ways. But maybe technology just prevents that. We see too much, and complaints can be heard by too many. To some extent, masculinity comes from an escort/highwaymen dynamic that goes away in a fully conquered, mostly monitored world.
My husband is 50 years old and the only social media he has ever had is Linked In. There is a profile picture of him, but it likely the one he added when he first created his profile so it is likely 20 years old. He goes onto Linked In when he changes jobs to update his new job. The entire idea of taking a selfie is insane to him.
I really only used FB as my social media. It was never an open profile. All people I knew IRL. It was nice to keep up with people, plan meet ups when high school friends were in town and we used it to plan homeschool activities and I have used it to plan high school reunions.
I nuked FB during Covid when people started posting Covid Vaccine selfies and it was giving me anxiety. When I came back (I had to use FB for some reason to sign into the karaoke machine we got my daughter for Christmas? I think bc my old Spotify was linked to my FB) the entire FB algorithm was nuked and it was reels of people I didn’t know, AI “Chicken Soup for the Soul” style slop (inspirational long posts written by AI), fake videos, and even though I have 1K real connections but the algorithm only shows me the same 20 people over and over. It’s also riddled with ads now too in a way it didn’t used to be.
It’s not remotely interesting to me as someone who likes a more slow and thoughtful social network … which is what it used to be. And it ruined it by trying to become TokTok.
It's all Tik Tok and AI slop now, it's quite pathetic. It was okay for a short era from about 2017-2024, which was AFTER all of the "cool" kids and political crazies left for the greener pastures of Twitter, Insta, Snap, and it only left fairly normal people who wanted to stay connected to what friends/family were doing and weren't trying to become viral e-celebs. Then in 2024 it turned to straight Tik Tok style random reels and nonstop AI and ads.
Most of the gender war articles make my brain spin lol I can’t even understand them for the most part. Maybe I’m offline enough idk.
Best episode…you found your foil.
> Walt argues the 2010-era internet was the ideal scale
LOL no - 2010-era is when the endless "REASONS WHY WHITE PEOPLE GO EXTINCT AND THAT'S A GOOD THING" era plus when bullying girls liking Justin Bieber, 50 Shades of Gray and shit were so common.
Nobody knows "Make fun of girls liking smut and stuff with your own risk, if you don't let them fangirl and blushes reading smut you'll turn them all into lesbians" - after all New Atheism was over and changed into SJW, the early 2010s Internet nuked by Gamergate, etc - the culture changes for a reason
If you want to reduce Zoomer cognitive dysfunction you go to the HARDWARE, not SOFTWARE. Millennial childhood & teenage years were laptops and dumb phones, it actually is the thing that preserve cognitive functions more
Don't interfere more than ensuring kids' brain don't go mush, that's turning you into full blown Boomerism + anti-video game crowd + practically every uncool stodgy oldpeepo ever back in the 80s & 90s + turning theater kids back into being bullied
> Walt wants WASPs to be more openly supremacist, Walt genuinely appreciates WASP civicmindedness
Disagree. Basically at this point WASPness & Aryan-ness means wokeism / being the wokest person ever. If you want to become true white supremacist you become hyper-woke basically
All the whole misogyny panic in Britain and "OI YOU GOT A LOICENSE FOR THAT MEME" shit is THE EXACT SAME VICTORIAN PURITANISM Britain exercised during 1800s and EVERY THEOCRACIES & DEEPLY RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES ACT THE EXACT SAME WAY, just different morality
Liberal-Progressive Modernity legitimately IS now the actual orthodoxy status quo in every step of the way, and if anything is THE new British Victorian puritanism and theocracy.
If anything:
Thing is about the Enlightenment is that the reason it won out over religion is because the Enlightenment was comparatively closer to the Trvth than religion.
Hobbesian metaphysics is more correct than Aristotelian, and so on
But the problem is that "Contemporary status hierarchies select for people who can handle contradiction quietly without incurring cognitive load" = Also does mean the Enlightenment and basically the entire liberalism as a meta-ideology has run its course.
Actual progress really does mean removing this delusion entirely
> How different is Walt from most guys?
Are you kidding me you are VERY different from most guys
> Kate argues men are idealistic and bound to abstractions
Agree with Kate here
> Is Walt ugly
Depends on your presentation lmfao
> Zoomers see 32 as ancient
Yes actually. In fact Millennials back then do that too online.
The Internet, modern life, city life etc is basically made for 20-somethings.
It's simple really: They have all the rights of an adult but not yet all the responsibilities of an adult
> Kate insists that beautiful virgin mormon Zoomettes can’t find a hubby
Interesting. Actually had I were actually born in America but retained my personality & fetish these are the types I want lmfao (I even remember Kate even say to me "You would do well with ex-mormon girls" lmfao)
> Afghanistan
You want a true libertarian society? It's actually pre-911 Afghanistan.
Afghanistan pre US invasion was practically a lolbertarian utopia. That's what actual minarchism, Ancapistan etc would gave you IRL.
The police and the state are practically nonexistent outside government buildings. Thus rural people in general fall back into a system of unwritten deals, anarchy, tribal laws and family ties.
Here's a serious elaboration of why war in Afghanistan fail
https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/qoursn/what_were_the_exact_reasons_the_western//
Thing is that the consequences of having a state so small it can't do anything is basically protection racket mafias.
Even to actually have big companies invest and more (companies if anything want stability), you have to establish monopoly on legal violence and create courts and state capacity, and thing is even this is not a trivial task (You would be surprised at how many states actually failed about this).
Plus, even the concept of private property (and its protection) is also inherently a state conception, and the complexities of navigating trade, corporate disputes, IP laws and the like really do mean you have to make complicated IP laws and more.
And corporations being too big actually can disturb this need.
So paradoxically, free markets rely on taxes and the state to remain "free".
Thus libertarianism is already bogus and pie-in-the-sky ideology, like Marxism.
(This isn't including market failures and more, which libertarians deny it exist but it actually does).
There's a reason:
- Every third world country escaping from poverty shithole are always pragmatic developmental state. Yes, all of them
The reason the US failed in Afghanistan is because of their (and everyone else's) total failure to understand the rural Afghan way of life. This is literally above EVERYTHING ELSE, all the other mistakes are trivial
Afghanistan is NOT a modern state by any means, like ever
Women would never want to actually murder a man, but it's preferable to kill 40% of men if they're incels than to put restrictive norms on men and women that reduce the incel rate? It was a throwaway statement to close the conversation, so I don't take it seriously, but it's really, really dark if you do take it seriously.
Walt said that, not me! I don't think anyone has to die (except psychopaths, we can do without them and should take them out).
No, I know. You just did a "yeah, ok" to finish the conversation. Walt doesn't really mean it either, he's seeking a reaction or trying to cheer on women's vindictiveness to purchase more cold analysis playing room.