The New Frontier

The late 19th century Americas were the heyday of exploration and modern day conquest. Cowboys facing off in the high noon sun, pirates swashbuckling around and doing piratey shit. Worlds where every man was looking out for himself, and himself only. Where you could do anything you wanted, and there was no long arm of the law to close in on you. While we have excessively romanticised this lifestyle in our current society, most sane people can see that life as a gun-slinging cowboy or swashbuckling pirate would be much less glamorous in real life than we like to portray it as. But what if I told you that you could live that life right now: present day, present time. And what's more, you could live it without any of those pesky side-consequences like having you're possessions stripped or being shot in the head with a block of lead. All you need is to be born somewhere decent and to own a piece of super-modern technology. A time machine. Wait, I meant a computer. Or I guess a phone if you're fine being forever pleb tier. What I'm really talking about is the good old Internet, and you should've guessed: it's the only thing I talk about!

Quoting a wise anon from /jp/, “the internet is still in it's wild west stage, and I'd like to keep it that way desu.” The capabilities of the internet are currently mostly unexplored. Every week some new web technology is revealed, and the 70s sci-fi Borg rhetoric edges ever closer to reality. Many remote corners of the internet remain lawless; the ever elusive deep web, the real hives of Nazi flat earth societies; gee, even actual pirating is a thing. It is a way to get information directly from real people, to communicate with anyone anywhere without the veil of some supreme authority. A place where any opinion is valid, and anything can be said/done without repercussions. The current internet is rife with opportunity, but also with danger. But the danger is what makes it fun. Any idiot can wander into the deepest corner of internet culture, but they'll be damned if they don't understand the language used, etiquette preached and exactly how everything works, almost like walking into a bar without knowing its run by a local drug lord. For those in the know it acts almost as a second home, somewhere to refuge from all those normies and wallow in depressing cyclical arguments.

While its cool to make comparisons pointing out the similarities, I want to throw in one, important, parallel. The wild west didn't last forever. Eventually the federalists came in and set up the rule of law, imposed taxes, stopped all that damn killing. Already we see the enormous conglomerates moving in and marking down their territory and their rules. Economic machines such as Google or Facebook, once themselves children of internet freedom, now controlling large portions of internet usage closely. When once people would visit independent forums to surf, they now flock to much more normal corporate websites. While the fringes of the cyber frontier are far from being under their authority, we're all definitely at risk. And there doesn't seem like there's much we can do but watch. Its the classic trade of freedom for safety; but do we need safety when there's nothing to fear? The internet never killed nobody, and now acts as the vanguard for free speech in an ever more controlling society. Always question authority and stand up to it, while we still have the upper hand.