I think the USA has taken a deep dive in international standing since January 2025, and Reddit is a USA-flavored USA-centered content publisher in terms of front page community. Things were pretty anti-USA with all the support of Israel in 2024, but now in 2025 with Elon Musk being the center of all USA society attention every minute of every day, sites like Reddit are being turned away from (or people only reading to mock the USA) - where the HiveMind is extremely USA technology consumerism / technology lifestyle worship.
For example, I never witness anyone on Reddit criticize Apple Computers for funding Twitter / X in 2025. It’s tech addiction as the primary religion on Reddit. And I think those outside the USA are sick of that machine lust / machine mind behavior of Elon Musk, Zuck, Amazon, etc.
“Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology.”
― Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, 1992
Reddit is historically US tech workers. When the userbase was younger they were still some what anti-establishment. They have gotten more institutionalized as the years have gone by. They support big tech. They support the tech bro oligarchs. Their livelihood is tied to the fate of the US oligarchs. They are the sycophants. The yes-men.
Anyone who has been around before the tech oligarch era can attest to how different things are. What we have today isn’t anywhere close to the type of anarchist, anti-establishment type of nerds of the older internet eras. Today those types of people are all but extinct.
As you said, nobody actually talks critically about the tech industry. It’s certainly not in the way people used to. The term “walled garden” has long ago fallen out of the internet lexicon. The tech monopoly took root. The dominant narrative became of those in support of single closed ecosystems.
The tech nerd sycophants took over. There haven’t been competitors so long. There’s only one reddit. Only one twitter. Only one facebook. Only one youtube. And the prevailing mindset of tech is in support of this. Nobody speaks out against it. These companies have written the paychecks and funded the retirement of all those nerds.
It’s the influence on people’s behavior that’s far more my concern than the faith I have in people expressing self-awareness they have in terms of what they say (what you hear them say). Absolute addicts to technology can often not discuss their extreme addictions. You can witness the behavior all over in public since year 2010.
“One characteristic of those who live in a Technopoly is that they are largely unaware of both the origins and the effects of their technologies.”
― Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, 1992
The USA population and society has really lost all sense of what life was like before there was a constant notification stream of antics from billionaires. People are absolutely engrossed in the screen game of LOL at Donald Trump and Elon Musk so much they have no sense of life before 2008. There are huge numbers of people in March 2025 behaving as if Donald Trump is a new event and have lost every sense of him having been elected and in office in 2017.
For example, I never witness anyone on Reddit criticize Apple Computers for funding Twitter / X in 2025.
By funding you mean resuming advertising on the platform, right? I am not aware that Apple is financing X directly. In the end it is money in Musk‘s pockets, I know, but the distinction is worth pointing out nonetheless.
I think the USA has taken a deep dive in international standing since January 2025, and Reddit is a USA-flavored USA-centered content publisher in terms of front page community. Things were pretty anti-USA with all the support of Israel in 2024, but now in 2025 with Elon Musk being the center of all USA society attention every minute of every day, sites like Reddit are being turned away from (or people only reading to mock the USA) - where the HiveMind is extremely USA technology consumerism / technology lifestyle worship.
For example, I never witness anyone on Reddit criticize Apple Computers for funding Twitter / X in 2025. It’s tech addiction as the primary religion on Reddit. And I think those outside the USA are sick of that machine lust / machine mind behavior of Elon Musk, Zuck, Amazon, etc.
“Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology.” ― Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, 1992
Reddit is historically US tech workers. When the userbase was younger they were still some what anti-establishment. They have gotten more institutionalized as the years have gone by. They support big tech. They support the tech bro oligarchs. Their livelihood is tied to the fate of the US oligarchs. They are the sycophants. The yes-men.
Anyone who has been around before the tech oligarch era can attest to how different things are. What we have today isn’t anywhere close to the type of anarchist, anti-establishment type of nerds of the older internet eras. Today those types of people are all but extinct.
As you said, nobody actually talks critically about the tech industry. It’s certainly not in the way people used to. The term “walled garden” has long ago fallen out of the internet lexicon. The tech monopoly took root. The dominant narrative became of those in support of single closed ecosystems.
The tech nerd sycophants took over. There haven’t been competitors so long. There’s only one reddit. Only one twitter. Only one facebook. Only one youtube. And the prevailing mindset of tech is in support of this. Nobody speaks out against it. These companies have written the paychecks and funded the retirement of all those nerds.
I rarely hear about apple at all. And most of the time it’s people bitching about them make the space bar a suppository
It’s the influence on people’s behavior that’s far more my concern than the faith I have in people expressing self-awareness they have in terms of what they say (what you hear them say). Absolute addicts to technology can often not discuss their extreme addictions. You can witness the behavior all over in public since year 2010.
“One characteristic of those who live in a Technopoly is that they are largely unaware of both the origins and the effects of their technologies.” ― Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, 1992
The USA population and society has really lost all sense of what life was like before there was a constant notification stream of antics from billionaires. People are absolutely engrossed in the screen game of LOL at Donald Trump and Elon Musk so much they have no sense of life before 2008. There are huge numbers of people in March 2025 behaving as if Donald Trump is a new event and have lost every sense of him having been elected and in office in 2017.
By funding you mean resuming advertising on the platform, right? I am not aware that Apple is financing X directly. In the end it is money in Musk‘s pockets, I know, but the distinction is worth pointing out nonetheless.
yes.