just saw a video from contra tenore responding to a person saying that a lot of ppl treat others as if they’re just NPCs. and he’s like, that’s basically what the internet has done: everything is personalized and catered to you – your entire *epistemological sphere* is personalized to you. regardless of what you believe, you can find a pocket of the internet where those beliefs will be reinforced and validated. made me think of: - [[we cannot assert authority over epistemology]] - [[epistemology is the context in which we think]] - [[media literacy does not address epistemological differences]] it’s less that people … lack trust (?) in institutions and more that their unique belief system is reinforced through algorithmic amplification. --- there are one million more pressing things happening in the world, but i’ve been struck by how much more divisive the internet has been, just over the past week. for every hot take, there is an equal and opposite perspective --- dana boyd has argued that we cannot assert authority over epistemology – that is, i can’t tell you that you’re *thinking* wrong, that your conclusions are incorrect because of how you arrived at them. when we discuss media literacy, it is unhelpful to point people to institutions and methods of knowing that they don’t trust; you aren’t going to convince an anti-vaxxer of anything by pointing to science produced by people and organizations who *aren’t* anti-vax. this feels shaky to me in some ways, but it’s similar to naomi klein’s note that [[they know about cellphones]]. everyone believes they are engaging with media and information intentionally, that they are thinking critically. maybe it’s beyond the fact that we have *different* epistemological frameworks; **we each have our own playgrounds of thinking and learning…** --- it’s actually crazy – doomscrolling used to make me feel like i could formulate some idea of what was happening around me or in the world. even divisive media served some kind of purpose and i felt more informed for having watched it. now literally everything is a slap-fight. all of it. everything i encounter online is just one person saying a thing and another person saying nuh-uh and then them screaming at each other. [[2026-03-14]] [[2026-01-24-12-48 morning - minnesota]] → *a handheld infinity of terrible things*