Discontent caused by the internet can outweigh (and does outweigh) its benefits

Amid the discussion about “freedom of speech,” and in the presence of relatives who believe that regulating the internet in Brazil will make the country communist (whatever that means to them, at this point), I think that, with or without legislation, “silence is golden.” Basic wisdom.

My idea is original, because I wrote about it in November 2021, without the current influence of Byung-Chul Han on me. The fact, therefore, undisputed, is that we are subjected to an informational outrage. Han advances on Foucault, arguing that we have moved from biopolitics to psychopolitics.

In the era of production lines, the individual was subjected to a social organization that drove them, through biopolitical “orthopedics,” to wake and sleep, eat and enjoy, do everything necessary for the body to complete its shift. Now, production is immaterial.

We are used to, “naturalize,” the role of entrepreneurs of ourselves. Have you updated LinkedIn yet? And the Lattes (Brazil’s academic CV platform)? We lack the “peace to read a book” — a famous statement by an artist about the quantum of anguish. Who knows how to really rest in 2023?

If culture brought us the benefit of the instantaneous, video calls, for example, we also ask ourselves whether video calls would be necessary if the people we love were nearby, whether there was truly any benefit; surely there was and is a discontent.

Will we be minimally civilized enough to acknowledge that the internet causes us feelings diametrically opposed to happiness? If we lose the ability to find common reasons among people and groups, we fail infamously. The networks, by our greatest fault, are sinister places.

What do platforms have to do with it? How do we hold accountable the producers who discovered themselves talented at winning audiences, and at making income from content? It is admirable and humiliating that influencers have gone around journalism. But that imprudence is costing dearly.

I do not think it necessary to insist that the subject is extremely serious, urgent and relevant, because I am persuaded that we are in the same boat. What can set us apart is the reaction to the hole in the hull: some build lifeboats (I am of that lineage), others wait for a miracle.

The Bill mentioned in the first paragraph can be read in full (in Portuguese).

Watch the Fantástico report “Perverse challenges: how the Discord app became a tool to draw teenagers into an underworld of extreme violence” (in Portuguese).