It didn’t “infect” anything. It was always here. I noticed it when I moved from Vancouver to Calgary as a kid. If you live in one of Canada’s three major cities, you just aren’t exposed to it, but the second you get into the suburbs or further, it’s on full display. There’s a reason we had Harper for an entire decade, gagging scientists, cutting corporate taxes, cuts to education and health care, and driving profits into the hands of the rich.

I would definitely be down with a return to things like webrings. Everyone creates their own website and uploads content, and good creators invite eachother to their rings. I don’t know why we ever stopped doing that.

I think younger people don’t give a shit about privacy because they grew up in a post 9/11 surveillance world. Facebook, Instagram and the internet at large became a giant surveillance machine and they’ve never known another possibility, so it’s normalized to them.