We Are Living Through the Terrible Twos of the Global Consciousness

As a father of three, I can say confidently that the internet needs a timeout. Stat.

Two-year olds are a very special kind of creature. They can be adorable and cuddly, but their primary function seems to be barely skirting death and causing pain to others. As an example, if you give a two-year old a fork and some food, there is an approximately equal chance of any of the following taking place:

1. They use it to eat

2. They stick it in the nearest electric socket

3. They stab the nearest person with it because they make a funny sound

This age is often called the “Terrible Twos” because, for parents, especially with a first child, it can seem like living with a very small, very suicidal serial killer. The reality is more mundane of course — they are developed enough to cause physical harm to themselves and others but not mentally developed enough to assign any meaning to their actions. In short, they are little sociopaths who have to learn not to hurt people. Usually, it’s just a phase and they grow out of it.

The Internet is an angry toddler

The timing of the “birth” of the “internet” is arguable. You could argue it began with ARPANET which started the year I was born, 1969, or pick another point in the development of networked computing. For me, it really started with the Mosaic HTML browser in the early 90s which made consuming content from networks of computers feasible for non-technologists. As many of us remember, the web exploded in just a few years and created a massive bubble in the markets to support its growth.

The problem was that in the early days of the web, while it was clear the internet was important, it wasn’t clear why. It was just a baby with a disordered brain whose neurons were people randomly connecting to each other. Through the 90s, it was figuring out how to wiggle its toes, and eat, and laugh, and shit without a diaper. Regardless, investors poured trillions into “dotcom” companies to feed and grow the baby. Very few of those companies survived the crash that inevitably followed but the baby they fed was crawling and babbling on its own anyway.

In the early 2000s, as everyone scrambled to lick their wounds from all the paper money they lost, and from the shock of 9/11, the baby was largely left on its own, and bad people swooped in to influence it. They saw its potential and wanted to make it do what they wanted.

Enter the PayPal Mafia and a lot of Russian money. They created networks inside the network, like Facebook and Twitter, that grew themselves — some would say metastasized — by amplifying negativity and hate.

It’s largely through these negativity reinforcement networks that the baby’s brain has grown — now incorporating a majority of people on earth into its brain. You, dear reader, are one of five billion “neurons” that have created a trillion webpages, connected tens of billions of devices, and made the baby essential to civilization itself.

Welcome to the machine.

Tantrum

In the last six years, the negativity reinforcement networks embedded in the baby’s brain were activated, expanded and weaponized. Facebook and Twitter grew to be essential utilities at the same time they were intentionally amplifying hate. Smaller networks were created as well, even more negative and designed to spread their poison to the rest of the networks. Reddit, 4chan, 8chan and the dedicated trolling website Kiwi Farms come to mind.

By 2022, the baby has turned into an toddler, lurching towards whatever is most stimulating to its brain, and if left unattended, will be unable to stop itself from running into traffic or falling out a window. Worse, it’s now having a tantrum and it has been handed a loaded gun.

Timeout

All parents are aware that overstimulation combined with lack of sleep will make any child an angry mess. Sometimes, when they get out of control, you give them a timeout. We used to have our kids sit on the bottom step of the stairs for a few minutes until they got bored and chilled out. They hated it, but it worked. It’s just about removing them from the negative situation and letting their brains regain equilibrium.

The toddler you and I are part of, the global network that currently controls the fate of human existence, needs to be disarmed and given a timeout.

If we don’t, the toddler is going to use the gun and there’s no way to know where it will be pointed.

OK, how?

The negativity reinforcement networks that were designed to get us angry, tired and overstimulated need to be regulated. Now.

Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Reddit, Telegram and every other platform that affects the minds and lives of hundreds of millions of human beings need to be seen as critical infrastructure and prevented from continuing to poison our collective mind.

If we don’t, the tantrum we’re experiencing is going to turn into a tragedy.

Sit on the stairs, internet. Time out.