On being a prat in tech and social spaces (Yes, this might be about you 😘)

From where I’m standing, a lot of people are being absolute prats when it comes to social and technological issues. That should be obvious… but clearly, it’s not. We’ve got two basic paths here:

#Block everything you don’t like. Predictably, this just creates more prat-ish behaviour and pushes us all deeper into toxic bubbles.
Ask questions. Grow. Listen. Respond. This reduces prat-ish behaviour – over time, maybe even composts it into something useful.

Now, in the era of #stupidindividualism, which path do you think most people are taking? Yeah. That one. If you’re blocking conversations that challenge you, you’re still kneeling at the altar of the #deathcult. Look up. You’re making a mess of social technology.

“Get off your knees” comes to mind, stop worshipping the #deathcult of neoliberalism, salted with postmodernism. These ideologies have poisoned our communities by turning freedom into isolation and choice into greed. I’m all for freedom, yes, you can choose to be a prat. But I reserve the freedom to call that behaviour toxic and self-destructive. What you do with that communication is up to you, just don’t pretend that #blocking it is some kind of moral high ground.

As Thalia Campbell rightly says, sometimes the best path is just to kindly correct, share info, or talk things through face-to-face. Most of this online prat-ness wouldn’t survive a real conversation, it’s bloated on anonymity, context collapse, and dopamine-fuelled feedback loops.

Yes, what meany people do now is a mess, but mess makes good compost, compost builds soil, soil feeds the common good. And talking about “common sense” is just a way of stirring that compost.

But here’s the mess makeing: we keep repeating the same shit, and instead of composting, we leave it to fester. Capitalism, rooted in self-interested greed, claims to serve the common good. But on the fundamentalist path we have been on for 40 years, it’s clearly failing. War. Growing economic divides. Visible #climatechaos. Poisoned ecosystems and communities.

We can’t survive, or flourish, in a society based on greed. That’s just a simple #KISS message. And neoliberalism, still much of our #mainstreming “common sense”, is nothing but extreme capitalism. It’s the purest form of the #deathcult. It’s eating us alive. Please talk about this.

The #dotcons we have been building our lives in for the last 20 years are undiluted deathcult, surveillance capitalism wrapped in shiny UX. The #openweb? Often like herding cats. And scratch the surface, and yes, sometimes you find the #deathcult there too. But we can’t keep going down this path. We need to stop pushing #mainstreaming agendas that lead us back into the same poisoned mess. That path is BAD. It’s ending in ruin.

We’ve got to try, seriously try, to make things better. Not perfect. Not flashy. Just better.

And that means less prat-ing about. More compost. More care. More common good.

Can people engage with the #4opens process?

The #4opens is a completely obverse social restating of the #FOSS development model — but with a critical edition: The return of #openprocess, something we’ve lost over the last 10 years due to the shift from public email archives to our reliance on encrypted chat.

With this in mind, what is still #blocking the #openweb reboot? One thing I’ve learned from the last five years of this reboot is this: The #geekproblem is inadequate for the scale of change and challenge we face. Currently, the #geekproblem is HARD #blocking, obstructing both, funding, and tech direction. Think: #NLNet, #NGIZero, #SummerOfProtocols, #InvestInOpen — they say the right words, have potential, but are actually #blindly caught in a loop of the same limiting #blocking patterns.

This is why we need activism, this can be #spiky, sometimes all it takes Is a rock or a stick. Think of Greek shepherd dogs in the mountains — they come at you like wolves. But just bending down to pick up a rock or stick? They back off. No violence. Just clarity and intention. Think of the #4opens like this when facing #mainstreaming, suddenly, it starts to make sense.

Nuts and nutters, Yes — you’re right, this can sound like blinded ideology. But remember: Humans are meaning-creating creatures. One word for that is ideology — there are others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synonym

If we can compost this mess, that’s a big if, will the #OMN Work? Simple answer: Yes.
Complex answer: No. My answer to that riddle? We find the complex by implementing the simple. That’s the #KISS principle in action. Walk the simple path, we discover our way through the complex path by implementing and walking the simple one #KISS.

#Mainstreaming = #Deathcult Worship

Most mainstream agendas are pointless. Why? Because they’re built on “common sense” — Which today often just means #deathcult worship. Something to keep in mind… whenever you’re doing anything that matters. Hope this slight poetry piece helps. One thing I keep saying, please don’t be a prat, thanks.

News, the signal-to-noise mess

Almost all our posting in the #openweb and in the #dotcons in response to #mainstreaming news is noise. It’s reactive, fragmented, performative. We scroll, we rage, we boost, we dunk, but we don’t build. Sometimes, someone posts something thoughtful, something deep, meaningful. But it vanishes in the churn. The system is designed this way.

Even on our #openweb, where we have more autonomy, we are mirroring this spectacle path, feeding it attention, reposting its narratives, amplifying its framing. In the mess of this world, our timelines become echo chambers of secondhand despair and outrage. In short, we’re still speaking their language, on their terms, with their tools.

Why? Because we haven’t (re)built a place for real signal yet. The #OMN (Open Media Network), is a push to shift this dynamic. It’s not about broadcasting noise slightly more ethically. It’s about creating new spaces entirely, where the roots of stories matter more than the spin, where the focus is on shared compost rather than hot takes, where people and community are producers, and where signal isn’t just a flash, but a ongoing process.

The current state of the web, especially under the domination of the #dotcons, is colonized communication. It rewards (stupid)individualism, immediacy, virality. It buries context, nuance, history. It’s a structure that #blocks liberation because it’s built to sell alienation back to us, one like or scroll, on click at a time.

Even the current #openweb reboot, for all its potential, reproduces these patterns, because we carry them with us. We don’t just need alternatives in name, we need alternative cultures, processes, and values. We need to compost the mess, the #techshit, and grow new paths from the decay. That’s what the #OMN is seeded to do.

But let’s be honest, we’re not there yet. And we won’t get there unless we start collectively focusing on building signal, not just yelling about the noise. The tools need to be #KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid), the governance needs to be transparent, trust-based, and the tech has to get out of the way, not be the centre. This requires stepping away from the #geekproblem, the cult of control, complexity, and abstraction, and towards living, messy, grassroots cultures that prioritize access, action, and accountability.

The mainstream is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. That collapse is not the revolution. What grows next is.

#OMN #OGB #4opens #openweb #geekproblem #deathcult #nothingnew #buildalternatives #grassroots #trustbasedgovernance

Take media coverage of protests as an example. It’s always framed through the lens of disruption and spectacle, “violent clashes,” “unrest,” “inconvenience to commuters” rather than the systemic injustices that birthed the protest in the first place. The message from the #mainstreaming is clear: “Why can’t you express your anger in a way that’s easier for us to ignore?” This is not journalism, it’s narrative policing. It flattens struggle into caricature and erases the causes: the exploitation, the dispossession, the broken promises. This is normal when we have media infrastructure of our own. Without projects like #indymediaback to hold space for grounded, first-voice storytelling, all we get is the echo of power describing its own reflection.

Regime change in the West

There’s a “normal” dangerous illusion still clinging to liberal democracies: that we’re in a time of political turbulence, but the foundations remain intact. That, somehow, we’ll “course correct.” But this needs to be seen as blinded thinking.

What is obvious is that we’re actually experiencing regime change, not in some distant land, but right here in the West. And it’s not coming from tanks or coups, but through the ballot box, boardrooms, social media algorithms, and #NGO “common sense”. It’s a sometimes hard sometimes soft, systemic shift rightward, authoritarian, nationalistic, and wrapped in the aesthetics of democracy.

From the U.S. to the UK, the EU to Australia, this right-on-right push is becoming the new normal. Neoliberal “centrism” no longer holds the centre, it’s morphing, accommodating and enabling hard-right politics, law-and-order, border control, national identity, anti-progress, pro-surveillance, anti-labour, the #deathcult is adapting to survive.

The #mainstreaming left is either co-opted, defanged, or fragmented. The radical left, where it exists, is distracted, performative, and lost in a fog of internal squabbles. Meanwhile, the far-right is disciplined, funded, and in motion. They’re winning not just in elections, but in narrative, shaping what is possible, what is sayable, and what is unthinkable.

The mainstream was never a neutral space, it’s a battleground, and we are losing it. Every time we dismiss a new policy as “just politics,” or think this is just another swing of the pendulum, we miss the simple truth that a new regime is consolidating, one that sees basic rights, justice, and truth as obstacles, not goals.

We need to name this clearly. We need to organize outside the institutions, because those institutions were never neutral. The work is not just advocacy or lobbying, it’s resistance and reconstruction. We need to rebuild from the bottom up. Projects like the #OGB, the #OMN, and a rebooted #Indymedia are small seeds. But they matter. Because if we don’t grow our own ecosystems, we’ll be forced to live under theirs.

This is not alarmism. It’s the world as it is. Let’s not wait for the full lock-in before we act, please.

#regimechange #rightshift #geekproblem #openweb #deathcult #grassroots #buildalternatives #OGB #OMN

For a radical liberal view, https://www.theindex.media/america-the-isolated of this same issue.

Mainstreaming: Building Grassroots Balance

Our history of involvement in #EU digital outreach and policy meetings has made one thing starkly clear, our #openweb is deeply entangled in the process of #mainstreaming, a messy, often co-optive dynamic where grassroots voices are softened, diluted, and redirected into bureaucracy, then in the end they are simply #blocked. Yes, while there is value in taking part, it’s also a wake-up call.

The push to shape digital paths from above is strong. But without active grassroots alternatives, there will be no balance that is needed. The building of a so-called “commons” is reshaped to fit into #NGO boxes, filled with #dotcons-friendly language, and stripped of any radical potential. This is why our #openweb projects now matter more than ever.

At the heart of this approach must be #KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) in both technology and user experience. We don’t need more convoluted tools or platforms weighed down by geek prestige. We need simple, effective frameworks and networks that allow users-as-producers to build the social complexity on their own terms. Complexity should come from people, not code.

And this brings us to the elephant in the room, the #geekproblem. Our own grassroots digital spaces are still shaped by a narrow, deterministic culture that lacks wider social understanding. In the path we need to be on, we cannot code our way to liberation if the ideology behind the code is warped, and currently, it is. As we often say: all code is ideology solidified, and it has real social effects.

Right now, way too much of that ideology stems from the #deathcult, hidden behind kind words, progressive branding, and empty buzzwords. This disconnect between stated values and real-world outcomes is dangerous, and disturbingly common.

This is why we’re pushing the #OGB, an online Open Governance Body for the #fediverse and beyond. Built around the #4opens and grounded in social paths, the OGB is designed to be a real voice for grassroots communities. It’s an open project, a no-permissions outreach tool, use it if you find value in it.

We’re currently looking for funding support and collaborators, particularly developers who are attracted to this vision. If you have links, networks, or skills to offer, get in touch.

The time is urgent. The mainstreaming machine is rolling forward. Let’s compost the #techshit, reclaim our spaces, and grow better from the bottom up.

A sharp take, systems are visibly broken

In the end, all social action happens through generalized talk, categories, metaphors, shorthand. That’s how language works. But we live in a cultural amnesia where this is forgotten, mistaken for “common sense.” The #OMN embraces this messy, human space, while the #geekproblem seeks rigid machine-like CONTROL. They’re often technically right, but socially intolerant. We, by contrast, are often technically wrong, but humanly right. What we need is a bridge between these approaches, or we’ll just keep circling. The #OMN needs some control; the #geekproblem needs a lot of humanity. But they don’t see this, and so they keep #BLOCKING. For example, take the common pattern where someone says, “why don’t you just develop it?” That line unconsciously dumps all responsibility on narrow “geeks” while ignoring the role of social imagination, UI/UX design, and the deeper process we’re trying to solve together. That’s the #geekproblem: not the code, but the refusal to look at the problem outside the code. So here we are again—rinse, repeat. Let’s not. Let’s build the bridge.

We are living through a deep crisis, not just of environment, economy, or governance, but of imagination and the will to live. The old systems are visibly broken, the #IPCC reports confirm what many already feel, we are trapped inside a #deathcult, and #mainstreaming culture offers only distraction, careerism, and status games for isolated individuals. There is no hope there.

But hope is not some fluffy optimism, it’s a social force. And in every grassroots, federated, DIY tech project, the solution is always the same, more people. Not more gatekeepers. Not more hierarchy. Just more people. This is the core truth of the #OMN (Open Media Network). It’s not a product, it’s a process. It’s not a startup pitch, it’s a compost heap where good things grow, if we turn it, feed it, and invite others to join in.

We already know how the far right wins, they appeal to real feelings of injustice, then twist those feelings into #stupidindividualism that serves their own class interests. It’s reactionary ideology, and it’s spreading fast. What do we do? Step away from their game. Get involved in building something different. The #4opens gives us a simple, powerful tool to judge who’s building towards the commons and who’s just repackaging and pushing the same poison.

https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/4opens

From #GeekProblem to #OMN Solutions

Not for the first time, and certainly not the last, we hit the same wall: misunderstanding and misdirection. The #geekproblem isn’t just about bad code or poor decisions, it’s about an unhealthy, almost inhuman obsession with control. Where we are now? The federated model, which is a useful half step, a half-measure? Federation is an interesting paradox, as it panders to control, offering people their own little digital kingdoms. It dilutes control, spreading authority so thinly that it could evaporate into nothing.

The “problem” is that the tech conversations are controlled by ghosts. For ten years, “control” was the centre of everything in tech, privacy, moderation, governance, structure. Now that conversation is fading into the background, this makes you wonder, What was directing those conversations? Why did they fade? And why do we keep falling for the same cycle of control and distraction? If I were a conspiracy nutter, I’d say these people were paid by lizards to keep us agitated just enough to stay passive, so that back in the day we’d accept the next wave of #dotcons with open arms.

The non conspiracy view is that every day, we carry tiny shrines to the #deathcult in our pockets, and at every moment pull them out to endlessly scroll, consuming, and reinforcing the same failed, despondent paths. So, if we empty our pockets, what’s the alternative?

Shovels, I call for shovels, we need to dig deep and build real alternatives.
In this, the #OMN isn’t about recreating old power structures, it’s about growing new ones.
The #4opens isn’t just a technical framework, it’s a way to judge and navigate tech without getting lost in corporate distractions and traps.

What can we do now? Instead of trudging along with the same tired paths, let’s build and support real #KISS solutions. Support projects that aren’t just replicating the old models. Stop chasing the latest distraction and focus on the real work. Turn agitation into action, not passivity. Shovels in hand, it’s time to dig the #OMN, this could be fun, but it won’t be easy.

Critique without action is just noise. If we want real change, we need to move beyond commentary and into building. The #OMN isn’t just an idea, it’s a framework waiting for hands to shape it. So, instead of watching from the sidelines, who’s actually up for developing the tech we need? The tools exist, the knowledge is there, and the moment is ripe. If we don’t build our own paths, we’ll keep walking the ones laid out by the same failing institutions.

https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network

The #4opens vs. liberal tokenism in #openweb tech

The “social./bill-of-rights” is a new example of a well-meaning but toothless attempt at defining ethical tech. It’s the same process and project as the #4opens, but framed in a way that’s more palatable to liberal and capitalist interests. The difference? The #4opens isn’t just an appeal to values—it’s a functional way of judging developers and projects. #KISS

For those who actually want to build a better #openweb, the real work is here: https://unite.openworlds.info/Open-Media-Network/4opens

This should not be about reinventing the wheel. We really don’t need another set of guidelines that sound good but change nothing. What we need is real accountability and practical tools that push projects directly to actually align with the open principles they claim to support.

The #4opens isn’t just an ideal—it’s a framework for action.
If a project doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, it’s not open.

#nothingnew comes to mind, but diversity is not necessarily bad, diversity in approaches is good, but fragmentation isn’t. These initiatives need to be linked together in a meaningful way, rather than diluted into disconnected efforts. This is basic #openweb thinking, connect, build, and push back against the corporate creep.

If the #deathcult of neoliberal tech has taught us anything, it’s that soft reforms lead to co-option. The path is through grassroots accountability and practical, enforceable openness #KISS

The Forgotten Story of Social Technology: Why It Matters

UPDATE: then you have the #fediforum implosion https://kolektiva.social/deck/tags/fediforum

A guest post – The Mess of the Current #OpenWeb Path: A User’s Experience

Paranoid individualism and composting the mess

Fighting the #mainstreaming is pointless if you don’t have anything to replace it with #KISS.

We need to present a sharp critique: funding structures not only shape but often stall #openweb development. The core issue is that #NGO funding models divert energy away from real grassroots alternatives, trapping projects in bureaucracy rather than fostering a thriving #DIY culture.

The rise of full-scale, paranoid individualism—born from #stupidindividualism and fueled by the #deathcult’s mainstream influence—further entrenches these issues. NGO funding mechanisms consume real alternatives, replacing them with sanitized, ineffective projects that lack transformative potential. The missing link is a genuine #DIY culture, yet structural forces keep it suppressed.

The #OMN and #OGB offer a possible escape, but without more organic intellectuals actively engaging, the cycle of stagnation will only repeat. The challenge is clear: can the #OGB carve out a space where real alternatives can grow, or will it become just another casualty of the NGO machine?

For the #OMN and #OGB to succeed, they must open a genuine alternative path—but the battle is uphill. The key lies in the organic intellectual: grounded, engaged, and practical. This stands in stark contrast to the alt-tech “chatting classes,” who recycle uninspired narratives instead of building real solutions.

The #mainstreaming mess

The #mainstreaming project is visibly failing. Worse, it is set to catastrophically fail over the next 30 years as #climatechaos escalates. The signs are everywhere: environmental collapse, political instability, and the hollow nature of mainstream culture. Yet, large parts of liberal society continue to bow to the #deathcult, a path of power, greed, and control over life, community, and sustainability. The end result we can now clearly see is the rule of big, dumb, ugly men with guns, a world driven by violence and fear rather than cooperation and creativity.

But we do still have a choice, on the internet we can build and support alternative projects and paths. Instead of kneeling before the #deathcult, we could embrace a #lifecult dedicated to nurturing the #grassroots, growing resilient communities, and reclaiming our collective autonomy. This path is not easy, nor is it comfortable, but it is one of the humane outcomes we can hope for. Am not up for cults my self, but if this is what people won’t let’s make it life rather than death.

The challenge of change, is that this does not emerge from #mainstreaming circles without friction. When alternative movements gain traction, they are both rejected outright and then co-opted and diluted until they become meaningless. The #OMN hashtag story highlights this process, and pushes back the rejection, to balance the struggle, and the slow but real impact on agendas we need.

The question is whether people can engage with this, in the needed #4opens processes. The #4opens is a completely obverse “social” restating of the #FOSS development process, with a crucial addition: #openprocess. Over the last decade, much of this transparency has been lost as activist communities and developers shifted towards encrypted chat for process, locking away vital discussions from needed public discourse.

The weaponization of process, in my experience, whenever we create rigid structures, people inevitably pick them up and start hitting each other with them. This pattern has repeated over decades, killing countless effective grassroots social challenge/change projects. Nearly all of them, in fact. The result? Communities that should be working together end up tearing each other apart over minor ideological differences, procedural disagreements, or personal conflicts. This cycle of infighting and stagnation serves the interests of those in power, it ensures that no real alternative ever gains momentum.

Food for thought is how do we break this cycle? One path is rebuilding the commons, which is currently possible in the digital spaces. Yes, more evaluation than revolution. It’s not about grand theoretical debates or ideological purity, it’s about doing the work by getting involved in your communities. By gather a group together to take practical steps towards #stepaway to move to the #openweb and start rebuilding commons outside the #dotcons.

From a growing network of people and groups doing this, we might get real social change, or we might not. But at least we’ll be doing something practical, rather than simply feeding the current corporate machine.

Seeding the #OMN is a solution to a universal problem, the shit nature of both mainstream/traditional media and the #dotcons that dominate the media landscape. Our lives, economies, and governments are now totally embedded in these corporate-controlled spaces, leaving us little room to manoeuvre. The #OMN offers an alternative, but the biggest barrier is not technology, it’s people’s capture and passivity. Right now, the ONLY thing holding us back is the mass acceptance of despair. The #mainstreaming system breeds apathy. It tells us there’s no alternative, that change is impossible, that resistance is futile. But we know that’s a lie.

The question is: will we act before it’s too late?

Struggling for a Real Alternative

For the last 5 years conversations have been about, the #Fediverse, #Web3 and more recently the pushing of #mainstreaming into the #openweb native path. But despite this, the fediverse is still a notable outlier in the digital landscape. This is in part because unlike the dominant tech trends, which emerge from Silicon Valley and the cross-Atlantic #dotcons agenda, the fediverse is rooted in European ideals of decentralization, federation, and digital autonomy, it’s a “native” openweb project.

When you step outside, into so-called “global” tech events, you’re hit with a wall of #techshit nonsense. Looking back, when I used to bring up the Fediverse at these events, the reaction was predictable: blank stares, polite nods, and then a quick return to parroting the latest #bluesky, #blockchain, talking points. This tells us that the techshit is still mainstreaming and more native paths will continue to be invisible to most people looking for real decentralized alternatives.

One of the issue that pushes this is Identity Politics, in our own spaces, beyond the tech sphere, this issue impacts the Fediverse and grassroots media projects or more precisely, its misapplication dose. By overemphasizing individual identity over collective struggle, leftist and progressive movements fall into fragmentation, making them easier for the #nastyfew to co-opt, divide, and neutralize. This is not to dismiss identity politics outright, systemic oppression is real, and addressing issues of race, gender, and class matters deeply. But when these struggles are disconnected from broader grassroots organizing, they are easily absorbed into the neoliberal agenda.

This is the normal mess dressed in a dress, to push a likely unhelpful metaphor. We’ve seen this time and again with corporate tokenism of big tech and NGOs pushing superficial diversity while maintaining exploitative structures. This “thinking” leads to co-optation of radical movements, which are watered down into harmless social branding exercises that don’t threaten power. Feeding divisiveness, when instead of organizing collectively, activists are pitted against each other over micro-issues, while top-down power structures remain untouched.

The central question is who gains power, the only question that matters in activism, are we giving more power to the centralizers, or are we shifting power to the grassroots? Everything else, culture wars, internal leftist feuds, academic debates, is secondary. And the normal reality is that our current #mainstreaming always leads to power centralization. When the path we need to take, requires discomfort, real change, which is never easy. And right now, we are still stuck in this mess, watching many in the #Fediverse waste time repeating liberal nonsense instead of challenging the #neoliberal dieing old world order.

This leads us onto the illusion of the liberal “centre”, where many so-called progressives are still worshipping the #deathcult, by amplifying right-wing culture war narratives. Why? Because it’s easier. The liberal-left is caught in an endless cycle of reacting to right-wing provocations instead of fighting systemic power. The truth, is that the “centre” is not holding, the centre is never going to hold. And that if you refuse to choose a side, both the left and the right will decide your fate for you. Liberal fence-sitting has always been about the rise of reactionary forces, both online and offline. Thus, if you’re still spending your time fighting over petty internal issues while ignoring the big-picture consolidation of power, you are helping the system you claim to oppose.

What’s can people do? A good first step is building real alternative’s. my example is the #OMN projects and growing the Fediverse, this means: Keeping focus on systemic power, not just individual experience that people keep focusing on. Actively pushing back against co-optation, building truly decentralized native alternatives, not only clones of corporate platforms. Rejecting the culture war distractions and pushing real organizing.

The Fediverse should be better, it’s one of the last remaining spaces where you can create rather than just consume. But we won’t get there unless we actively fight for it. So the question is: Are we ready to stop feeding shit and start building something real?

#Techshit Hype – #NothingNew

The is nothing new to pointing out that our #fashionistas #mainstreaming crew push tech mess.

Remember in when drone deliveries were going to revolutionize shopping? When every major news outlet unthinkably reported that we’d have autonomous quadcopters dropping off toothpaste and Amazon boxes on our doorsteps?

Or when 3D TVs were the future of entertainment, pushed so aggressively that manufacturers stopped making non-3D models for a while? Where are they now? Rotting covered in dust in clearance bins or forgotten in garages.

Then there was the Internet of Things (#IoT) hype, your fridge was supposed to talk to your toaster, which would text your smart kettle to boil water before you even knew you wanted tea. Instead, we got insecure, surveillance-riddled devices spying on us for #dotcons corporate profit.

And we need to not forget #blockchain, #NFTs, and the endless #Web3 hype? Each was pushed as a revolution, yet all followed the same pattern of hype, vulture capital gold rush, and then, inevitably, disillusionment. NFTs went from “the future of digital ownership” to being silently abandoned by even their most vocal promoters.

Why do we keep pushing this #techshit? Every time a new #mainstreaming tech fad appears, it follows a predictable, boring hype cycle. First, it’s marketed as the next big thing, a must-have, must-invest, must-embrace technology. Then, sceptics, like this site, are ridiculed as out-of-touch or anti-progress, at best or simply trolling at worst. But when the promised revolution never materializes, we quietly move on, forgetting the past mistakes and priming ourselves for the next wave, this is a rinse and repeat cycle.

We need more people to say, “Not this again, you were wrong last time”? So we have space to ask why do we let the wannabe #nastyfew feed us this mess, why do we let it slide, allowing the same marketing binds to #blind us over and over?

The answer is that we have our heads down worshipping a #deathcult, and this is the pushing of #fashernista tech, the cycle of embracing new trends not because they work but because they fit the cultural moment. A mixture of corporate propaganda, social pressure, and the desire to be seen as forward-thinking creates a path where critical thinking is drowned out by #FOMO (fear of missing out). It’s fear, simply fear.

How do compost this? A first step is, instead of dismissing critics, we should embrace grounded scepticism as part of a healthy tech culture. The goal isn’t to reject all new technology, it’s to demand real, meaningful progress rather than letting corporations sell us snake oil over and over. There’s a hashtag for that: #nothingnew, a reminder that most “revolutions” are just recycled ideas repackaged for a new round of exploitation.

This is part of the native #openweb story, not just about technology, but about culture. We don’t need to mindlessly adopt every new fad. Instead, we should compost the hype, extract what’s useful, and discard the corporate waste. Yes, it’s messy. But that’s what being native to the #openweb means.