The Internet Is Bad For You

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Even before the October crash, Americans had become ever-increasingly suspicious to all institutional forms of authority—from traditional political parties to mainstream media organizations to Wall Street executives, educators, and lawyers. As Harvard University's Center for Public Leadership reported late last month, 80 percent of Americans believe there is a leadership crisis in the country. And that research was conducted in the fall—before AIG, before Lehmann Brothers, before the public humiliation of Detroit’s elites.

The phenomenal popularity of the personalized, democratized Internet, the zeitgeist of our age, is both a cause and a consequence of our suspicion with all forms of institutional authority. That’s fine, of course, in an age of prosperity when everyone has a job; it’s great in an age of “yes we can” optimism when an army of grassroots activists can use the Internet to elect a young politician of infinite hopefulness. But, as the nightmarish implications of the 2008 crash unfold, I fear that giving broadband Internet access to the innocent victims of global economic might have disastrous unintentional consequences. In 2008, the Internet elected Barack Obama; in 2012, in an America with 15 percent or 20 percent unemployment, I doubt that the digital crowd will be quite as wise.

The question is: In our democratized world of individual empowerment, how will the newly unemployed millions, the victims of the meltdown, react to their economic disempowerment? In a culture that prioritizes the personal, how will the masses vent their rage against a system that no longer personally works for them?

Even today, the Internet’s unholy synthesis of immediacy, intimacy and anonymity has created an online culture of insult and vulgarity. The unedited Internet is the natural home of racists, liars, hate-mongers, and raving lunatics. Take, for example, the massive Internet popularity of Loose Change, the vindictive movie which, in its absurd conspiracy theory that explains 9/11 as a Bush-Cheney plot, is about as empirically credible as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the granddaddy of all fascist conspiracy texts.

In an America with universal broadband access and 50 million unemployed people, expect the biggest online hit to be a mash-up of Loose Change and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion—an “innovative” low budget movie blaming the entire global financial meltdown on all the (Robert) Rubins and (Larry) Summers of Wall Street.

Silicon Valley utopians argue that blaming the Internet for online hatred is like blaming Johannes Gutenberg, the 15th century inventor of the moveable type printing press, for Mein Kampf. And that’s true, of course. Yet given the way in which we know that the unfiltered Internet spreads corrosive lies and inflames prejudice, why would we want to give all Americans universal broadband access at the very moment when millions of them will be unemployed, disorientated and angry? Rather than spending billions of dollars in telecom technology, wouldn’t it be better to invest that money in local libraries and librarians, where their education could be supervised by accountable human beings.

For another sneak preview of digital fascism, it’s worth looking at South Korea, another country with universal broadband infrastructure. In April, the new democratically elected South Korean President, Lee Myung Bak lifted a ban on imported American beef. This resulted in an eruption of anger on the Internet—first amongst teenage girls, then on the popular online portal Daum, and finally through teenage "citizen journalists" on blogs, videocasts, and social networks. The rumor spread that all the American beef was tainted with mad cow disease and an online petition for Lee’s impeachment got 1.3 million signatures in a week. And for an even more real-time example of digital fascism, take a look at the way in which this week’s raging anti government violence in Greece by the young and unemployed (already at over 9% in the Greek economy) has been coordinated by Facebook, Twitter and other viral digital networks.

The fascists of the 1930s were able to take advantage of the yawning gap between individual expectations and the harsh realities of the global economic system. As the nightmare of the 2008 economic meltdown unfolds, I fear the reappearance of that unbridgeable gap between expectations and reality. We live in an increasingly democratized culture in which individuals, tragically, have less and less control over their own economic lives. The Internet—in its seductive promise of personal empowerment—only compounds this illusion. In his speech earlier this month, Obama said, “here in the country that invented the Internet, every child should have the chance to get online.” If only enlightenment was that simple.

Andrew Keen is the author of the controversial international hit Cult of the Amateur, which has been translated into 15 foreign languages. Known as the Anti-Christ of Silicon Valley, he is the most hated person on the Internet. He twitters at @ajkeen.com.

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